Her voice was touching in its gratitude, and he was touched at this damsel, so pretty, courageous and forlorn.
"I hope, my dear," he said, "that you will give us all the pleasure of seeing you here very often."
At that moment Mrs. Amberley looked up and her fine, shrewd eyes swept round the table. She was a handsome, hook-nosed dame, with a lavish coronet of grey hair, stately and kindly in expression, obviously capable of many tolerances, but with moments when "ne louche pas à La Reine" could be very plainly written on her face.
As she gathered up the three women and rose, Mr. Amberley knew in a moment that all was not quite well. No one else could have even guessed at it, but he knew. The years that had dealt so prosperously with him; Fate which had linked arms and was ever debonnair, had greatly blessed him in this also. He worshipped this stately madam, as she him, and always watched her face as some poor fisherman strives to read the Western sky.
The door of the Dining Room was towards Mrs. Amberley's end of the table, and, as the ladies rose and moved towards it, Gilbert Lothian had gone to it and held it open.
His table-napkin was in his right hand, his left was on the handle of the door, and as the women swept out, he bowed.
Herbert Toftrees thought that there was something rather theatrical, a little over-emphasised, in the bow—as he regarded the poet, whom he had met for the first time that night, from beneath watchful eye-lids.
And did one bow? Wasn't it rather like a scene upon the stage? Toftrees, a quite well-bred man, was a little puzzled by Gilbert Lothian. Then he concluded—and his whole thoughts upon the matter passed idly through his mind within the duration of a single second—that the poet was an intimate friend of the house.
Lothian was closing the door, and Toftrees was sinking back into his chair, when the latter happened to glance at his host.
Amberley, still standing, was watching Lothian—there was no other word which would correctly describe the big man's attitude—and Toftrees felt strangely uneasy. Something seemed tapping nervously at the door of his mind. He heard the furtive knocking, half realised the name of the thought that timidly essayed an entrance, and then resolutely crushed it.