VI
IN the drawing-room with the blue curtains Mr. Held was saying to Pauline Leicester: “Yes, it’s just gone ten. It’s too late for a telegram, but I’m sure you’ll get a message somehow to say she’s coming. After all, he can telephone from Brighton.”
“He mayn’t have succeeded,” Pauline said. “Oh, I’m sure he’s succeeded,” Mr. Held answered. “I feel it in my bones.”
It was now the thirtieth or fortieth time that since eight o’clock he had uttered some such words, and he was going on to say: “He and she are great friends, aren’t they?” when Saunders opened the door to say that a lady wished to speak to Mrs. Leicester.
“Oh, they are great friends,” Pauline answered Mr. Held. “Miss Lascarides is his cousin”; and then to Saunders: “Who is it?”
Saunders answered that he didn’t know the lady, but that she appeared to be a lady.
“What’s she like?” Pauline said.
The butler answered that she was very tall, very dark, and, if he might say so, rather imperious.
Pauline’s mouth opened a little. “It’s not,” she said—“it’s not Lady Hudson?”
“Oh, it isn’t Lady Hudson, mum. I know Lady Hudson very well by sight. She goes past the house every day with a borzoi.”