"Very well, Dickie," she said, bowing her head.—Then she added quickly, with a little gasp of renewed distress and apology:—"But—but, oh! dear me, Honoria is here too!"
Whereat Richard laughed outright. He could not help it, she was so vastly engaging in her distress.
"All right," he said, "I am equal to accepting Honoria St. Quentin into the bargain. In short, mother dear, I take over the lot, and if anybody else turns up between now and two o'clock I'll take them over as well.—Why, why, you dear sweet, don't look so scared! There's nothing to trouble about. I'm not too good to live, never fear. On the contrary, I am prepared to do quite a fine amount of living—only on new and more modest lines perhaps. But we won't talk about that just yet, please. We'll wait to give it a name until we're a little more sure how it promises to work out."
CHAPTER VII
WHEREIN TWO ENEMIES ARE SEEN TO CRY QUITS
Godfrey Ormiston scudded along the terrace, past the dining-room windows, at the top of his speed, and Miss St. Quentin followed him at a hardly less unconventional pace. Together they burst, by the small, arched side-door, into the lobby. There ensued discussion lively though brief. Then, Winter setting wide the dining-room door in invitation, sight of Honoria was presented to the company assembled within.—She, in brave attire of dark, red cloth, black braided and befrogged, heavy, silk cords and knotted, dangling tassels—head-gear to match, dark red and black, a tall, stiff aigrette set at the side of it—in all producing a something delightfully independent, soldierly, ruffling even, in her aspect, as she pushed the black-haired, bright-faced, slim-made lad, her two hands on his shoulders, before her into the room.
"May we come to luncheon as we are, Cousin Katherine?" she cried. "We're scandalously late, but we're also most ferociously hungry and——"
But here, although Lady Calmady turned on her a welcoming and far from unjoyful countenance, she stopped dead, while Godfrey incontinently gave vent to that which his younger brother—sitting beside his mother, Mary Ormiston, at table, on Richard Calmady's right—described mentally as "the most awful squawk." Which squawk, it may be added—whatever its effect upon other members of the company—as denoting involuntary and unceremonious descent from the high places of thirteen-year-old, public-school omniscience on the part of his elder, produced in eight-year-old Dick Ormiston such overflowings of unqualified rapture that, for a good two minutes, he had to forego assimilation of chocolate soufflet, and, slipping his hands beneath the table, squeeze them together just as hard as ever he could with both knees, to avoid disgracing himself by emission of an ecstatic giggle. For once he had got the whip hand of Godfrey!—Having himself, for the best part of an hour now, been conversant with interesting developments, he found it richly diverting to behold his big brother thus incontinently bowled over by sudden disclosure of them. He repressed the giggle, with the help of squeezing knees and a certain squirming all down his neat, little back, but his blue eyes remained absolutely glued to Godfrey's person, as the latter, recovering his presence of mind and good manners, proceeded solemnly up to the head of the table to greet his unlooked-for host.
Honoria, meanwhile, if guiltless of an audible squawk, had been—as she subsequently reflected—potentially alarmingly capable of some such primitive expression of feeling. For the shock of surprise which she suffered was so forcible, that it induced in her an absurd unreasoning instinct of flight. Indeed, that had happened, or rather was in process of happening, which revolutionised all her outlook. For that the unseen presence, consciousness of which had come to be so constant a quantity in her action and her thought, should thus declare itself in visible form, be materialised, become concrete, and that instantly, without prologue or preparation, projecting itself wholesale—so to speak—into the comfortable commonplaces of a Sunday luncheon—after her slightly uproarious race home with a perfectly normal schoolboy, from morning church too—affected her much as sudden intrusion of the supernatural might. It modified all existing relations, introducing a new and, as yet, incalculable element. Nor had she quite yet realised what power the unseen Richard Calmady, these many years, had exercised over her imagination, until Richard Calmady seen, was there evident, actually before her. Then all the harsh judgments she had passed upon him, all the disapproval of, and dislike she had felt towards, him, flashed through her mind. And that matter too of his cancelled engagement!—The last time she had seen him was in the house in Lowndes Square, on the night of Lady Louisa Barking's great ball, standing—she could see all that now—it was as if photographed upon her brain—always would be—and it turned her a little sick.—Nevertheless it was impossible to pause any longer. It would be ridiculous to fly, so she must stick it out. That best of good Samaritans, Mary Ormiston, began talking to Julius March across the length of the table.