Brenda smiled in a slightly ironical way.
'Why should they be?' she asked practically. 'I am not afraid of Captain Huston. He is a gentleman, at all events.'
'He was!' put in his wife bitterly.
'And I suppose there is something left of his former self?'
'Not very much, my dear. At least, that phase of his present condition has been religiously hidden from my affectionate gaze.'
Brenda drew her gloves pensively up her slim wrists, smoothing out the wrinkles in the black kid. There was in her demeanour an air of capable attention, something between that accorded by a general to his aide-de-camp on the field of battle, and the keen watchfulness of a physician while his patient speaks.
'Theo,' she said conversationally, 'would be a great comfort to us. He is so steadfast and so entirely reliable. But we must do without him. We will manage somehow.'
'I am horribly afraid, Brenda. It has just come to me; I have never felt it before. You seem to take it so seriously, and ... and I expected to find Theo at home.'
'Theo is one of the energetic men with brains who have their own affairs to attend to,' said Brenda, in her cheery way. 'We are not his affairs; besides, as I mentioned before, he is in Bulgaria—in his element, in the midst of confusion, insurrection, war.'
'But,' repeated Mrs. Huston, with aggravating unconsciousness of the obvious vanity of her words, 'suppose I telegraphed for him?'