She was flushed with the excitement of the successful battle she had just had with her husband, and with the other excitement of meeting her eldest brother-in-law, and George showed nothing but pleasure at sight of her. They came into the drawing-room talking brightly, and the baronet scarcely exchanged more than a couple of sentences and a hand-shake with his surly brother, so pleased was he to find a pleasant woman again in his house.
When Wilfred arrived, just before dinner, he in his turn engrossed her completely; and at dinner these two new-comers took up so much of her attention that the convalescent Harry, who was at dinner with the rest for the first time since his illness, began to look very black, and to find fault with everything which was put before him.
“I can’t eat that. How am I to hack at it with only one hand?” he growled, when the servant offered him some mutton.
“Shall I cut it up for you, sir?”
“No, I won’t have it; I don’t want anything at all!” said he, looking with a frown at his wife, who turned from George to tell the servant to bring the plate to her, and dutifully cut up the mutton, which her sulky husband, without thanks, then condescended to eat.
Annie had put on a very pretty pale gray silk gown with elbow-sleeves and square-cut bodice edged with dainty lace, and a long spray of pink azalea fastened carelessly on one side of the neck. She was delighted at the pleasure they all—except her morose husband, who tried hard not to laugh when his brothers did at any speech of hers that amused them—evidently took in her society; and she smiled and laughed and chattered and looked so charming that not one of the men could keep his eyes off her for more than a few moments at a time.
“Have you seen anything of the Mainwarings, Annie?” asked George, when dinner was nearly over.
“Oh, yes! I met Mrs. Mainwaring the other day with a volume of ‘The Band of Hope Review’—I don’t know whether you have heard of it—under one arm. She said she thought of coming to read to Harry, if he would like it, to cheer him up.”
Something in Annie’s demure tone set them all laughing.
“I said he would be delighted; but we didn’t think too much excitement was good for him just at first. And she asked if Sir George had any good books in his library, and I said, ‘Oh, yes!’ and she said I ought to read some to him. I said I thought I ought, and I came back and read him the Sporting Dramatic News all through.”