"You're feeling played out, aren't you?" Jack Raleigh was saying to his companion while the instruments were being tuned.
"Oh, no, only bored to death. I wonder which is the worst, to be married or musical? But both at once—poor Mr. Raleigh!"
Jack broke into a laugh, which was hardly warranted by the smallness of the joke; and as the first chord was struck on the piano simultaneously, Lady Joan's reputation was not improved among the disturbed audience by the circumstance. At any other time she would have enjoyed the shocked glances that were thrown in her direction; but this afternoon she was feeling too cross to be perverse, and she hardly waited for the end of the trio to take leave of the smiling host.
"So you're off already? I knew you were played out," said Jack, whose vocabulary, like his perception, was limited; "shall I let fly for a hansom?"
"Oh, no; didn't I tell you before that I had the carriage?" answered Lady Joan, impatiently, though she realized the futility of censuring an offender who was always blind to his offence. "And I can see myself out, thank you."
"But—you will let me come with you? It's beastly foggy out, and something might easily happen, don't you know. You said you hadn't brought the man along, and I'd sooner see you through, 'pon my honor I would. I won't bother, I won't really, don't you know, and you can fire me at the next block if I'm in the way. That's straight, isn't it?"
In spite of the American drawl, there was something familiar in the pleading tones of his voice that reminded her unpleasantly of an incident she had been trying to forget, and she would have curtly refused his offer had she not found the pale eyes of Mrs. Reginald Routh fixed inquiringly upon her.
"If you like, I shall be delighted," she said, with a sudden show of graciousness that both pleased and surprised him; "you will see if the brougham is there? Good-bye, Mrs. Routh; so glad to see you looking so well. I suppose I can't give you a lift? Auf Wiedersehen, Norah; shall expect you both to lunch to-morrow; don't forget. What detestable weather it is; I shall go and vegetate at Relton if this fog goes on. Is it there, Mr. Jack? Oh, thanks very much."
In the brougham, she leaned back and closed her eyes, and wished the fog did not make them smart, and that she had managed to evade her companion after all, in spite of the exquisite annoyance he had enabled her to inflict on Mrs. Reginald. But Jack guessed nothing of her thoughts, and plodded on with his own instead, which all related to her and to a certain desire that filled his mind at that moment; he could only think about one thing at a time.
"I say, you—you didn't rightly mean what you said just now, did you?" he began slowly, as they stopped in the Circus in a dead block of omnibuses and traffic.