“Ay, that’s a challenge. He must answer that!” whispered Sir Raymond Orton.
“I can at least tell you, cousin, that a portrait of me hangs in the pink salon at Barham. A very damnable likeness of me as a child, taken with my late lamented brother,” said my lord softly.
“A hit!” Mr Belfort confided to Prudence. “That’s a hit!”
She sat in an attitude of negligent attention, an arm flung over the back of the chair, and her calm face inscrutable. She nodded, and was conscious of Fanshawe’s eyes upon her.
Rensley banged his fist down on the table. “It’s not the pink salon!” he declared. “There is no pink salon!”
Mr Belfort was of the opinion that this was a bad check.
“In my day,” said his lordship, undisturbed, “it was pink.”
“Faugh, what do you know of it? You’re trying to brazen it out with a bare-faced lie!”
Mr Fontenoy spoke grudgingly. “There was a pink salon,” he said. “Lady Barham used it.”
My lord swept round to face him. “Ah, you remember then?” he said eagerly. “A pink salon in the west wing! There was an oriole window, and my mother’s broidery table set there!” He became rapt in reminiscences.