“Your little girl?” Jack looked at him, frankly nonplussed. “You mean Mendoza? No, she’s not coming.”
“I don’t mean Mendoza, if that’s the dark girl. Never mind: I was only joking.”
Who the blazes was his little girl, thought Jack, who was ignorant of two unhappy experiences which an unconsidered extra girl had had on previous visits. The mystery, however, was soon cleared up, for the baronet walked slowly to where Adele Leamington was making a pretence of studying her script.
“Good morning, little lady,” he said, lifting his cap an eighth of an inch from his head.
“Good morning, Sir Gregory,” she said coldly.
“You didn’t keep your promise.” He shook his head waggishly. “Oh, woman, woman!”
“I don’t remember having made a promise,” said the girl quietly. “You asked me to come to dinner with you, and I told you that that was impossible.”
“I promised to send my car for you. Don’t say it was too far away. Never mind, never mind.” And, to Michael’s wrath, he squeezed the girl’s arm in a manner which was intended to be paternal, but which filled the girl with indignant loathing.
She wrenched her arm free, and, turning her back upon her tormentor, almost flew to Jack Knebworth with an incoherent demand for information on the reading of a line which was perfectly simple.
Old Jack was no fool. He watched the play from under his eyelids, recognizing all the symptoms.