“With all my heart,” bowed Lethbridge, and rose, offering his arm.
She laid her hand on it, and they left the box together, wending their way across the space that lay between it and the main pavilion. Skirting a gaily chattering group, Horatia said with her pronounced stammer: “Where shall we p-play, R-Robert? Not in that c-crowded card-room. It wouldn’t be discreet.”
A tall woman in an apple-green domino turned her head quickly, and stared after Horatia, her lips just parted in surprise.
“Certainly not,” said Lethbridge. “We shall play in the little room you liked, leading off the terrace.”
The green domino stood quite still, apparently lost either in surprise or meditation, and was only recalled to her surroundings by an apologetic voice murmuring: “Your pardon, ma’am.”
She turned to find she was blocking the way of a large
Black Domino, and stepped aside with a light word of apology.
Though there was plenty of music to be heard coming from various corners of the gardens, the fiddlers who scraped in the ballroom were temporarily silent. The pavilion was pretty well deserted, for the supper interval was not yet over. Horatia passed through the empty ballroom on Lethbridge’s arm, and was just stepping out on to the moonlit terrace when someone in the act of entering almost collided with her. It was the man in the Black Domino, who must have come in from the gardens by the terrace steps. Both fell back at once, but in some inexplicable fashion the edge of Horatia’s lace under-dress had got under the stranger’s foot. There was a rending sound, followed by an exclamation from Horatia, and conscience-stricken apologies from the offender.
“Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, ma’am! Pray forgive me! I would not for the world—Can’t think how I can have been so clumsy I’
“It does not signify, sir,” Horatia said coldly, gathering up her skirt in her hand, and walking through the long window on to the terrace.