"I met him in the woods once before Christmas, and he was lost, and I showed him the way out, and father saw us . . . and was just as cross."
Mrs Ffolliot felt more in sympathy with her husband than usual. But all she said was, "Well, well, it's evident you don't need an introduction. I forgot you'd seen him when he called. I'm glad you told me in time to prevent it, or he would have thought it so odd—come, my child, we must go down."
"You aren't cross, are you, mother?" Mary asked wistfully.
"Cross!" Mrs Ffolliot repeated, "at your first party. What is there to be cross about? Yes, my child, that dress is quite charming—father was right, you can stand that dead white—but it's trying to some people—come."
The Campions called for Eloquent, and he found himself seated side by side with Sir George on one of the little seats, while Lady Campion and a pretty niece called Miss Bax sat opposite. Miss Bax was disposed to be friendly and conversational, but to Eloquent the fact that he was going to Redmarley was no ordinary occurrence, and he would infinitely have preferred to have driven out alone, or, better still, to have walked through the soft spring night from his aunt's house to the Manor, which still held something of the glamour that had surrounded it in his childhood.
For him it was still "the Manshun," immense, remote, peopled by inhabitants fine and strange, and far removed from ordinary life. A house whose interior common folk were, it is true, occasionally allowed to see, walking on tiptoe, speaking in whispers, led and instructed by an important rustling old lady who wore an imposing cap and a silk apron; a strange, silent house where none save servants ever seemed to come and go. He had not yet quite recovered from the shock it was to him to hear voices and laughter in that old panelled hall which he had known in childhood as so vast and shadowy. He liked to remember all this, and to feel that he was going there as THEIR guest, to be with THEM on intimate friendly terms. It was wonderful, incredible; it was part of the dream.
". . . don't you think so, Mr Gallup?" asked Miss Bax, and Eloquent woke with a start to realise that he had not heard a word his pretty neighbour was saying. He was thankful that the motor was dark and that the others could not notice how red he was.
"I beg your pardon," he said loudly, leaning forward, "I didn't catch what you said."
"Is the man deaf?" Miss Bax wondered, for the motor was a Rolls-Royce and singularly smooth and noiseless. "I was saying," she went on aloud, "that it will probably be my lot to go in to dinner with Grantly Ffolliot, and that cadets as a class are badly in need of snubbing; don't you agree with me?"
"I haven't met any except young Mr Ffolliot," Eloquent said primly, "and I must say he did not strike me as a particularly conceited young man."