“Take these gentlemen to Sir Ormsby Galloway, and then ask Mr. Temple Barholm if he'll come down-stairs,” he said.
It is possible that Captain Palliser felt himself more irritatingly infolded in the swathing realization that some one was in a ridiculous position, and it is certain that Mr. Palford felt it necessary to preserve an outwardly flawless dignity as the duke surprisingly left his chair and joined them.
“Let me go, too,” he suggested; “I may be able to assist in throwing light.” His including movement in Miss Alicia's direction was delightfully gracious and friendly. It was inclusive of Mr. Hutchinson also.
“Will you come with us, Miss Temple Barholm?” he said. “And you too, Mr. Hutchinson. We shall go over it all in its most interesting detail, and you must be eager about it. I am myself.”
His happy and entirely correct idea was that the impending entrance of Mr. James Temple Barholm would “come off” better in the absence of audience.
Hutchinson almost bounced from his chair in his readiness. Miss Alicia looked at Tembarom.
“Yes, Miss Alicia,” he answered her inquiring glance. “You go, too. You'll get it all over quicker.”
Rigid propriety forbade that Mr. Palford should express annoyance, but the effort to restrain the expression of it was in his countenance. Was it possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually held its own in a matter as serious as this? And could even the most cynical and light-minded of ducal personages have been involved in its unworthy frivolities? But no one looked jocular—Tembarom's jaw was set in its hard line, and the duke, taking up the broad ribbon of his rimless monocle to fix the glass in his eye, wore the expression of a man whose sense of humor was temporarily in abeyance.
“Are we to understand that your Grace—?”
“Yes,” said his Grace a trifle curtly, “I have known about it for some time.”