“I’m so sorry, so very sorry, not to have seen Sir Isaac,” Lady Beach-Mandarin insisted.
The raid had accomplished its every object and was drifting doorward. For a moment Lady Beach-Mandarin desisted from Lady Harman and threw her whole being into an eddying effort to submerge the already subjugated Mrs. Sawbridge. Miss Sawbridge was behind up the oak staircase explaining Sir Isaac’s interest in furniture-buying to Miss Sharsper. Mr. Brumley had his one moment with Lady Harman.
“I gather,” he said, and abandoned that sentence.
“I hope,” he said, “that you will have my little house down there. I like to think of you—walking in my garden.”
“I shall love that garden,” she said. “But I shall feel unworthy.”
“There are a hundred little things I want to tell you—about it.”
Then all the others seemed to come into focus again, and with a quick mutual understanding—Mr. Brumley was certain of its mutuality—they said no more to one another. He was entirely satisfied he had said enough. He had conveyed just everything that was needed to excuse and explain and justify his presence in that company.... Upon a big table in the hall he noticed that a silk hat and an umbrella had appeared since their arrival. He glanced at Miss Sharsper but she was keenly occupied with the table legs. He began to breathe freely again when the partings were over and he could get back into the automobile. “Toot,” said the horn and he made a last grave salutation to the slender white figure on the steps. The great butler stood at the side of the entrance and a step or so below her, with the air of a man who has completed a difficult task. A small attentive valet hovered out of the shadows behind.
§5
(A fragment of the conversation in Lady Beach-Mandarin’s returning automobile may be recorded in a parenthesis here.
“But did you see Sir Isaac?” she cried, abruptly.