Mr. Groves backs Mrs. Lascelles's invitation freely.
"You will come and dine, Sir Henry," says she; "promise, and I'll let you off this minute. You know you are dying to get back to that wicked betting. Think of Helen. She'll be tired to death with the journey to London in a stuffy railway. Things! You don't want any things. Besides, why not work the wires? Telegraph for your servants to bring them down. We needn't dress for dinner. Captain Vanguard, if you can get away from the barracks, won't you come too?"
Frank looked at Helen, Helen looked resolutely at the card in her hand. He was forced, unwillingly, to decline, but doubtless remarked the colour fade in her cheek while he did so, expressing at the same time a hope of meeting next day. Uncle Joseph, who had quite abandoned the control of his own household, expressed entire satisfaction with everybody's arrangements, and Miss Ross whispered in his ear, "it was very dear of him to be so good-natured!"
Goldthred, too, having lost nine pairs of gloves, six and a half, three buttons, to Mrs. Lascelles, was in the seventh heaven. Altogether, not many race-goers left the Course better pleased with themselves that day. And Mr. Picard, looking down at Helen as he passed her carriage driving home, said to the loudish lady by his side—
"That's the handsomest girl I've seen the whole season! I wonder who she is?"
To which the loudish lady replied with acrimony—
"Do you think so? Well, perhaps she is fresh looking, in a bread-and-butter, missy-ish sort of style. Can't you go a little faster? One gets choked with this horrid dust!"