‘Sarah!’
She stood looking at him a moment, and then ran out of the room.
Horrified, he ran after her; but she had locked herself into the bedroom, their bedroom—locked herself in, and him out.
This was their first scene. And it was peculiarly distressing, because nobody was angry, only sorry.
XIII
Soon after this the Fanshawes gave a dinner, and invited the Moncktons. It was, in fact, a dinner for Catherine, who hadn’t enjoyed their dance very much, they felt. Dinners were perhaps pleasanter for her now, they decided. It couldn’t be much fun, Ned had remarked, to sit looking on at that great red-headed lout of hers dancing with a pack of girls, just as if she were chaperoning her débutant s——
‘Oh hush, Ned!’ cried Kitty Fanshawe, stamping her foot.
For some reason, impossible Catherine considered to account for, except as one of the many off-shoots of their warmly benevolent dispositions, the Fanshawe family as one man loved her. They had known her slightly in the days of George, and with growing intimacy ever since. In those days they had deplored that she should be tied to one so old; they were now engaged in deploring that she should be tied to one so young. Fanshawe-like they wouldn’t even to themselves judge any one they loved, but tacitly making the best of a bad job, set about seeing what they could do to amuse and entertain her.
They came to the conclusion that a little dinner at a restaurant would be more amusing than a dinner at home, and chose the Berkeley; and they reserved one of those tables in the window-recesses which have sofas fitted round three sides of them.
The party was eight: themselves, the Moncktons, Sir Musgrove and Lady Merriman—great friends of theirs, and both delightful, which made them conspicuous among married couples, who sometimes were, the Fanshawes were forced regretfully to admit, unequal in attractiveness, so that while one of them would make a party go the other would prevent its budging—and Duncan Amory, a rising barrister. But at the last moment Kitty Fanshawe caught a cold and couldn’t come, and Mrs. Fanshawe invited Emily Wickford, an agreeable spinster, to take her place.