"And, Weeks, have the launch sent back at three sharp, with the baggage on board. Becket needn't come. I'm going to Beverbrook immediately after lunch, and shall sleep there. Good-day, Weeks."
"Good day, Sir Bryan."
Meantime, the girl, unfurling her parasol and balancing it daintily on her shoulder, walked toward the land, looking about her with a bright interest at the blue bay, the white sails of the yachts, and the smartly dressed crowd loitering outside the yacht club enclosure. She wore a white linen princesse robe, its costly simplicity adorned only by a wide band of embroidery that ran from throat to hem, and a big gray straw hat trimmed with a wreath of what roses would look like if nature had had the good taste to make them the color of pansies—the roses that bloom in the Rue de la Paix.
Slowly as she walked, she had reached the hedge of the enclosure before her companion overtook her. Inside the lawn was not crowded. The big regatta had taken place the day before, and it was lunch hour. Such groups as were strolling up and down or sitting in little encampments of canopied arm-chairs stopped flirting or talking to stare and whisper. On some of the women's faces appeared the dubious admiration that is kept for social audacity in their sex. The girl seemed unconscious of the effect she was creating and looked about her indifferently. Espying some friends in a far corner, she signalled vigorously with her open parasol.
"Bryan, there's Lady Carphilly and Mrs. Rolf d'Oyley. I must go and talk to them. Will you come too, or wait?"
"I'll wait," the man answered shortly. "I've sent in for my letters and I'll open them here. We ought to have lunch soon. Don't be long, Flash."
A club waiter who had been standing in the offing with a pile of letters on a salver and an initialled leather dispatch case, approached and disposed them on a table near the chair into which the baronet had flung himself. Lumsden bestowed a casual glance upon the pile and looked toward the man's free hand.
"What have you got there?"
"A telegram for Miss Barbour, Sir Bryan."
"Give it to me."