'Hm!' grumbled Fox-Moore. 'I never saw you at a loss.'
'You did last night.'
'No, I didn't. I saw you getting on like a house afire with Haycroft and the beguiling Borrodaile. It's a pity all the decent men are married.'
Mrs. Fox-Moore allowed her own coffee to get cold while she hovered over the sacred rite of scientific tea-making. Mr. Fox-Moore, talking to Vida about the Foreign Office reception, to which they had all gone on after the Tunbridges' dinner, kept watching with a kind of [half-absent-minded] scorn his wife's fussily punctilious pains to prepare the brew 'his way.' When all was ready and the tea steaming on its way to him in the hands of its harassed maker, he curtly declined it, got up, and left the room. A moment after, the shutting of the front door announced the beginning of yet another of the master's absences.
'How can you stand it?' said Vida, under her breath.
'Oh, I don't mind his going away,' said the other, dully.
'No; but his coming back!'
'One of the things I'm grateful to Donald for'—she spoke as if there were plenty more—'he is very good to you, Vida.' And in her tone there was criticism of the beneficiary.
'You mean, he's not as rude to me as he is to you?'
'He is even forbearing. And you—you rather frighten me sometimes.'