'Oh, he was immensely amused at the fellow's impudence. You see, Stonor could understand the art of the thing as well as the fun—the fierce economy of line——'
Nobody listened. There were other attempts at conversation, mere decent pretence at not being absorbed in watching for the appearance of Geoffrey Stonor.
CHAPTER VI
There was the faint sound of a distant door's opening, and there was a glimpse of the old butler. But before he could reach the French window with his announcement, his own colourless presence was masked, wiped out—not as the company had expected by the apparition of a man, but by a tall, lightly-moving young woman with golden-brown eyes, and wearing a golden-brown gown that had touches of wallflower red and gold on the short jacket. There were only wallflowers in the small leaf-green toque, and except for the sable boa in her hand (which so suddenly it was too warm to wear) no single thing about her could at all adequately account for the air of what, for lack of a better term, may be called accessory elegance that pervaded the golden-brown vision, taking the low sunlight on her face and smiling as she stepped through the window.
It was no small tribute to the lady had she but known it, that her coming was not received nor even felt as an anti-climax.
As she came forward, all about her rose a significant Babel: 'Here's Miss Levering!' 'It's Vida!' 'Oh, how do you do!'—the frou-frou of swishing skirts, the scrape of chairs pushed back over stone flags, and the greeting of the host and hostess, cordial to the point of affection—the various handshakings, the discreet winding through the groups of a footman with a fresh teapot, the Bedlington's first attack of barking merged in tail-wagging upon pleased recognition of a friend; and a final settling down again about the tea-table with the air full of scraps of talk and unfinished questions.
'You didn't see anything of my brother and his wife?' asked Lord Borrodaile.
'Oh, yes,' his host suddenly remembered. 'I thought the Freddys were coming by that four-thirty as well as——'