“Really, Richard, I don’t know. He’s been out sailing, I expect, and the wind or something has kept him.”
“I won’t have it”; he glowered at everyone. “He knows when meals are, he must be here. I must have obedience; and now I come to think of it”—he paused and looked round the table—“it has happened often lately. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I remember now; frequently—yes—late.”
Then, after a pause during which no one said a word, “What has he been doing?”
This was so precisely the question that everyone else had been asking carefully and surreptitiously during the last few days that everyone looked guilty, as though they had been discovered in a crime. Then everyone turned to Maradick.
He smiled. “I’ve been about with him a good deal lately, Sir Richard. I really don’t know what we’ve done very much beyond walking. But I think he was going to sail this afternoon.”
Lady Gale looked anxiously at the waiter. If the food were all right the danger might be averted. But of course on this night of all nights everything was wrong: the potatoes were hard, the peas harder, the meat was overdone. Sir Richard glared at the waiter.
“Ask Mr. Bannister if he would spare me a minute,” he said. Bannister appeared as spherical and red-cheeked as ever.
“Things are disgraceful to-night,” Sir Richard said. “I must beg you, Mr. Bannister, to see to it.”
Bannister was gently apologetic. The cook should be spoken to, it was abominable; meanwhile was there anything that he could get for Sir Richard? No? He was sorry. He bowed to the ladies and withdrew.
“It’s abominable—this kind of thing. And Tony? Why, it’s quarter to nine; what does he mean? It’s always happening. Are these people he knows in the town?”