"All! No such thing! Miss Devenish, can you look me in the face and say we met only once, at a ball?"
She did look him in the face, but with such an expression of reproach in her eyes as must have abashed any but an Alastair. She replied in a low voice, and with a good deal of dignity: "It is true that we have several times met: I do not forget it."
She got up as she spoke, and with a slight inclination of her head moved away to where her aunt was seated.Lord George looked after her for a moment, and then turned to his hostess, saying briskly: "Where's Bab? Inanother salon? I'll go and find her. Now, don't bother your head about me, Lady Worth, I beg! I shall do very well."
She was perfectly willing to let him go, and with a nod and a smile he was off, making his way across the crowded room through the double doors leading into the farther salon. These had been thrown open, and as he approached them George saw his brother Harry standing between them in conversation with Lord Hay. He waved casually, but Harry, as soon as he caught sight of him, left Hay and surged forward.
"Hallo, George! When did you arrive? Where are you quartered? I am devilish glad to see you!"
George answered these questions rather in a manner of a man receiving a welcome of a boisterous puppy; twitted Harry on the glory of his brand-new regimentals; and demanded: "Where's Bab?"
"Oh, with Audley somewhere, I daresay! But what a hand you are, not to have written to tell us you were coming!"
"Who's Audley?" interrupted George, looking over the heads of several people in an attempt to see his sister.
"Why, Worth's brother, to be sure! Lord, don't you know? Bab's going to marry him - or so she says."
This piece of intelligence seemed to amuse George. "Poor devil! No, I didn't know. New, is it?"