"Do you want me, Mrs. Haddington?" asked Beulah.
"Kindly go downstairs and see that the markers are all ready, and the pencils properly sharpened. Miss Spennymoor, please come to my daughter's room! I should have thought you could both have found something better to do than to sit gossiping here."
"Yes, Mrs. Haddington!" said Miss Spennymoor meekly. "Not but what it was quite my fault, and not at all Miss Birtley's, which it is only right I should say, because I was telling her how I used to know Lord Guisborough's poor mother, and one thing leading to another -"
"Lord Guisborough's mother?" repeated Mrs. Haddington. "Indeed!"
This icy interjection not unnaturally covered the little dressmaker with confusion. She scuffled her thimble and her scissors into her work-bag, and picked it up, saying in a crushed voice: "Quite ready now, Mrs. Haddington!"
"Then please come downstairs!" said Mrs. Haddington.
Chapter Five
At eight o'clock, fortified by the tablet of aspirin she had swallowed on her hurried return to her lodging in Earl's Court earlier in the evening to fling herself into her one dinner-dress, Beulah joined the small party assembled in the drawing-room. Originally, the only invited guest had been Dan Seaton-Carew, but Cynthia, encountering Lord Guisborough and Mr. Harte at her luncheon-party, had, with reckless hospitality, begged both to dine in Charles Street before the rest of the Bridge-guests arrived. Since Beatrice Guisborough, who shared a studio with her brother, had not been present, she was easily able to forget the propriety of including her in her invitation; and as Lord Guisborough was contemptuous of all social conventions, and, in any event, never considered the convenience of anyone but himself, he had no hesitation in accepting the invitation, and leaving Beatrice to join the Bridge-party under her own escort.
Mrs. Haddington, informed midway through the afternoon of this alteration of her plans, had almost lost her temper with her idolised daughter, even going so far as to say that it was really rather thoughtless of her. Her chef entirely lost his, and was only deterred from walking out of Mrs. Haddington's life then and there by the reflection that the incident, judiciously handled, would provide him with an unanswerable pretext for demanding an increase in his already handsome salary.
"My pet, if you had invited one of them, it would have been quite all right," said Mrs. Haddington, in the fond voice none but her daughter was privileged to hear. "But now our numbers are wrong!"