By this means Lord Lullworth who had great difficulty in finding his mother had for a companion for quite half an hour of this lovely afternoon, Miss Severn, and for even a longer space of time Josephine West was by the side of Pierce Winwood beneath the red brick walls which had once sheltered a great Man of Letters.
They talked of the great Man of Letters and indeed other topics.
CHAPTER XXI
Amber had come to the conclusion that it would be better for her to be frank with her friend Josephine in regard to the personnel of her fellow-guests at The Weir for the Sunday. A month had passed since Josephine had promised to keep herself disengaged for this particular Sunday, but in the meantime a good many things had happened, the most important being (as she fancied) the dinner at Ranelagh, which had given a certain amount of prominence to Mr. Win-wood and had aroused a curious prejudice against him in the estimation of Josephine. It was thus, she thought, only fair to Josephine to tell her that Mr. Winwood had also promised to go to The Weir for the Sunday, so that, if she felt that another day spent in his company would be insupportable, she might have a chance of concocting some excuse for remaining in town.
The daughter of a politician of eminence should be at no loss for a plausible excuse to extricate herself from the consequences of a promise of a month’s standing. She should have at her command—even though her father did not actually belong to the Cabinet—a sufficiency of that subtle element called (by the organs of the Opposition) tergiversation to tide her over a shoal place.
It was this thoughtfulness on the part of Amber that impelled her to let Josephine know that Mr. Winwood also had promised to go to The Weir, and she felt greatly relieved to find that her friend did not make any attempt to draw upon her imagination for an excuse to prevent her joining the party at Sir Creighton’s riverside cottage.
She wondered if Josephine’s prejudice was abating already, or if she was merely showing how polite she could be.
It was when she was trying to recover from the startling effects of the return of Pierce Winwood to the drawing-room after the departure of Lord Lull-worth, that her father came to her, saying something about Pierce Winwood.