At the remark, instantly in her face its former expression of constraint appeared.
“No, he is to join us later.”
At the other end, where the duchess sat, everybody was laughing. The lady had been giving an account of a recent bankruptcy, that of Lord Auld Reekie.
“Heavens!” Violet Silverstairs exclaimed. “What will become of Bobbles!”
Bobbles was Lady Auld Reekie, a fair young craft of light timber and many sails.
Camille de Joyeuse, summoning her diligent smile, replied: “She will go into the hands of a receiver.”
Another jest followed, and presently, in the contagion of it almost the entire table joined.
The delicately toxic fare, the slightly emotionalising wines, loosened tongues, robbing them of discretion, and, before the servants, as though the latter were deaf and dumb, hosts and guests revealed their naked minds.
“It is rotten to talk in that way before these men,” Tempest exclaimed. “They get their wages with lessons in anarchy thrown in. It’s too much.”
“I had not heard,” Leilah replied. “I was thinking of that friend of yours whom you never met.”