Letitia had broken off her conversation with Lord Charles and was leaning a little forward. The Marquis nodded sympathetically.
"Hunting, then?"
David smiled.
"You gallop over a pastoral country on a highly-trained animal, with a pack of assistant hounds to destroy one miserable, verminous creature," he said. "Of course, you take risks now and then, and the whole thing looks exceedingly nice on a Christmas card, but for thrills, for real, intense excitement, I prefer the mountain ledge and the bear, or the rounding up of a herd of wild elephants."
"Mr. Thain preserves the instincts of the savage," the Duchess observed, as she sipped her wine. "Perhaps he may be right. Civilisation certainly tends to emasculate sport."
"The sports to which Mr. Thain has alluded," the Marquis pointed out, "are the sports of the stay-at-home Englishman. Most of our younger generation—those whose careers permitted of it—have tried their hand at big game shooting. I myself," he continued reminiscently, "have never felt quite the same with a shotgun and a stream of pheasants, since a very wonderful three weeks I had in my youth, tiger hunting in India.—I see that Letitia is trying to catch your eye, Caroline."
The women left the room in a little group, their figures merging almost into indistinctness as they passed out of the lighted zone. David's eyes followed Letitia until she had disappeared. Then he was conscious that a servant was standing with a note on a salver by his side.
"This has been sent down from Broomleys, sir," the man explained.
David took it and felt a sudden sinking of the heart. The envelope was thin, square and of common type, the writing was painstaking but irregular. There was a smudge on one corner, a blot on another. David glanced at the Marquis, who nodded and immediately commenced a conversation with Grantham. He tore open his message and read it:
"The time has arrived. I wait for you here."