"I should not care to do so in your situation."
A gleam shot into the half-closed eyes; they looked sideways at Augusta. "Dearest Gussie! So respectable!" Barbara murmured.
Chapter Three
Lady Worth walked into her breakfast-parlour on the morning of April 5th, to find that she was not, as she had supposed, the first to enter it. A cocked hat had been tossed on to a chair, and a gentleman in the white net pantaloons and blue frock-coat of a staff officer was sitting on the floor, busily engaged in making paper boats for Lord Temperley. Lord Temperley was standing beside him, a stern frown on his countenance betokening the rapt interest of a young gentleman just two years old.
"Well!" cried Judith.
The staff officer looked quickly up, and jumped to his feet. He was a man in the mid-thirties, with smiling grey eyes, and a mobile, well-shaped mouth.
Lady Worth seized him by both hands. "My dear Charles! of all the delightful surprises! But when did you arrive? How pleased I am to see you! Have you breakfasted? Where is your baggage?"
Colonel Audley responded to this welcome by putting an arm round his sister-in-law's waist and kissing her cheek. "No need to ask you how you do: you look famous! I got in last night, too late to knock you up.
"How can you be so absurd? Don't tell me you put up at an hotel!"
"No, at the Duke's."