Then, with a preliminary knock on the door, Mrs. Carré came in with brilliant lobsters and crisp lettuces for lunch, and, hungry as they all were, their souls loathed the thought of eating.
"They are just out of the pot," beamed she, "and the lettuces were growing not five min'ts ago. Ech!"—at sight of Pixley—"is he ill?"
"Mr. Pixley has just had bad news from home, Mrs. Carré," said Graeme. "He will have to go by to-day's boat."
"Ach, but I am sorry! And him so happy yesterday and dancing the best in the room," and her pleasant face clouded sympathetically.
"Meg, I'll go up to your room for a minute and finish my hair," said Hennie Penny. "I ran out just as I was—"
"It was very kind of you," said Charles Svendt, and the general sympathy seemed to comfort him somewhat.
"No good feeling too bad about it, old man, till you know all the facts," said Graeme, when the girls had gone off upstairs.
"It hits me, Graeme. Not financially, as I said. But in every other way it hits me hard.—Have you reached the point of seeing that it may hit her too?"—and he nodded towards upstairs.
"I suppose there was a glimmering idea of the chance of that at the back of my head somewhere, but we won't trouble about it just now. How about your mother?"
Pixley shook his head dismally again. "It will be a terrible blow to her. He was a bit hard and cold at home, you know, but she looked up to him as immaculate. Yes, it will hit her very hard. As to money, of course, she will be all right. I have plenty. But the talk and the scandal—" and he groaned again at thought of it all.