“I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings, my dear Madame Rocada, by my bluntness,” said he. “But the fact is the girls are both of very difficult character to manage, and it is my particular wish that they should live the quietest of lives, without any dangerous excitements, for a few years longer.”
Audrey summoned enough courage for a mild protest.
“Surely it’s not a very dangerous excitement to spend the afternoon with me!” she said.
“Of course not. But you forget that you have friends coming——”
Audrey interrupted sharply:—
“Friends! These horrible, noisy, fast men and faster women with their card-playing and their racing jargon are not my friends. Clients, customers, if you like, they may be. But never my friends!”
“Well, they are useful people to know, at least,” he persisted, more gently than ever.
Audrey turned away without reply, and the announcement he wished to make to her concerning some of the guests of the evening he had to leave unmade.
It came upon her, therefore, with a shock of surprise when, Mr. Candover having been forced to leave the house, as she gave him no invitation to remain to dine with her, he returned about nine o’clock in the company of half a dozen of the men whom she had had to accept as habitués of the house, and with two young men, both of unmistakably dissipated appearance, who were introduced to her as “Mr. Edgar Angmering” and “Mr. Geoffrey Angmering”.
It was with the greatest difficulty that Audrey could keep her countenance. For they were, she knew, the sons of Lord Clanfield, and first cousins of her own husband.