The Fanshawes saw their mistake, and were repenting bitterly. Of course Emily Wickford should have been put on the sofa. Better still, not asked at all. She was ruining the party for every one except Catherine’s husband. Duncan Amory, usually such good company, was sulking; Musgrove—they couldn’t have believed it of him; Lydia Merriman—naturally she was vexed; Catherine—well, they hardly liked to look at her.
The band left off playing, and the couples all came back except Christopher and Miss Wickford. They disappeared through the arch into the next room, Emily smiling back over her shoulder at her hosts, and Christopher holding up an explanatory cigarette case.
It was Emily who proposed this. She said she didn’t want any more dinner, and thought it much more fun not to sit cooped up at that table, with which Christopher heartily agreed.
‘They all seem so old,’ said Emily, bending forward for him to light her cigarette. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘Fossils,’ said Christopher, forgetting in his admiration of the face being lit up by the match he was holding, that Catherine was one of them, but he did ask, after a minute, whether she didn’t think the Fanshawes would mind their not going back.
‘Oh, they never mind anything,’ said Emily easily. ‘They’re darlings.’
The Fanshawes, however, did mind this. They fumed. It was a stricken party that remained at the table. Mrs. Fanshawe was casting her mind back to whether Emily knew Christopher was Catherine’s husband, and couldn’t remember that she had made this clear when she introduced them. But how, after all, could one make a thing like that clear, short of taking the other person aside and explaining in a whisper? Just to say, ‘And this is Mr. Monckton,’ after having introduced somebody to Mrs. Monckton wasn’t in this case, she was afraid, enough. On the other hand one couldn’t introduce him as Mrs. Monckton’s husband. Still, instinct ought to have told Emily. Mrs. Fanshawe, who never was unfair, was unfair now. She was angry. She was the last person in the world to grudge young people having a good time, and was of an easy-goingness that verged on laxity; but this deeply annoyed her, this carrying off of Christopher. Also, she considered that Christopher oughtn’t to have let himself be carried off. He, at any rate, knew he was Catherine’s husband.
It was a stricken party. Ned was furious, Sir Musgrove fidgeted, Duncan Amory sulked, and Catherine seemed to be shrivelling smaller before their very eyes. Only Lady Merriman and Mrs. Fanshawe talked,—across the table to each other, gallantly, after the manner of women, trying to cover things up.
The music began again, and everybody watched the arch. It was some time before the two appeared, and when they did they were talking and laughing as happily as ever.
‘Come here—you are very unkind, you two, deserting us like this,’ Mrs. Fanshawe called out to them as they danced past; but they didn’t hear, and danced on.