Mrs. Ercott answered dryly:
“You know the House of Commons has a holiday?”
The Colonel murmured:
“Oh! I don't want that chap!”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Ercott, “you would like Mark Lennan.”
The Colonel looked at her most dubiously. Dolly could talk of it as a tragedy, and a—a grand passion, and yet make a suggestion like that! Then his wrinkles began slowly to come alive, and he gave her waist a squeeze.
Mrs. Ercott did not resist that treatment.
“Take Olive alone,” she said. “I don't really care to go.”
When the Colonel went to fetch his niece he found her ready, and very half-heartedly he asked for Cramier. It appeared she had not told him.
Relieved, yet somewhat disconcerted, he murmured: