'Who's that?' he said; but his tone added, 'Not that it matters.'
'You don't know her? Well, that's a proof of how you've neglected your friends since the new Government came in. But you really mean it—that nobody has introduced you to Miss Levering yet? What is Freddy thinking about!'
'Dinner!' replied a voice at her elbow with characteristic laconism, and Freddy Tunbridge pulled out his watch.
'Oh, give them five minutes more,' said his wife, indulgently.
'That's not a daughter of old Sir Hervey?' pursued the other man, his eyes still on the young woman talking to Lady John and the foreign ambassador.
'Yes; go on,' said Mrs. Freddy, with as cloudless a brow as though she had no need to manufacture conversation while the dinner was being kept waiting. 'Go on! They all do it.'
'Do what?' demanded the great man, suspiciously.
'"Why haven't they seen her before" comes next. Then the next time you and I meet in the country or find ourselves alone in a crush, you'll be saying, "What's her story? Why hasn't a woman like that married?" They all do! You don't believe me? Just wait! Freddy shall take you over, and——' Was Mrs. Freddy beaming at the prospective success of her new friend, or was her vanity flattered by reflecting upon her own perspicacity? Unavoidable as it was in a way that Mrs. Graham Townley should be taken down to dinner by the new minister—nevertheless the antidote had been cleverly provided for. 'Freddy dear—why, I thought he was—— Oh, there he is!' Seeing her hungry husband safely anchored in front of the iris gown, instantly she abandoned the idea of disturbing him. 'After all,' she said, turning again to Haycroft, who had stood the image of stolid unimpressionableness—'after all, Freddy's right. Since she's going to sit beside you at dinner, it's a good reason for not making you known to each other before. Or perhaps you never experience that awful feeling of being talked out by the time you go down, and not having a single thing left——' She saw that the great man was not going to vouchsafe any contribution to her small attempt to keep the ball rolling; so without giving him the chance to mark her failure by a silence, however brief, she chattered on. 'Though with Vida you're not likely to find yourself in that predicament. Is he, Ronald?' With the instinct of the well-trained female to draw into her circle any odd man hovering about on the periphery, Mrs. Freddy appealed to her brother-in-law. Lord Borrodaile turned in her direction his long sallow face—a face that would have been saturnine but for its touch of whimsicality and a singularly charming smile. 'My brother-in-law will bear me out,' Mrs. Freddy went on, quite as though breaking off a heated argument.
Lord Borrodaile sauntered up and offered a long thin hand to Haycroft ('the fella who's bringing the country to the dogs,' as Mrs. Freddy knew right well was his conviction).