The dance was not timed to begin for half an hour or more, but the members of the house-party had congregated together at the upper end of the room and were chatting desultorily. Sir Philip Brabazon and Tony were included amongst them, in addition to a couple of pretty girls, nieces of Lady Susan, and three or four stray men who had been invited down to swell the ranks.
“And how’s Ann?” demanded Sir Philip of his hostess.
“Ann? Oh, you’ll find her a trifle thinner, I think, that’s all,” responded Lady Susan discreetly. To her own eyes Ann seemed to have altered wofully in the course of the last few months, but she reasoned that Sir Philip was no more observant than the majority of men and that if she prepared him for the fact that Ann was somewhat thinner than of old he would accept the change quite naturally and not worry the girl herself with tiresome questions as to the cause of such a falling off.
It had been a very difficult winter, but Lady Susan had the satisfaction of knowing that she and the rector between them had triumphantly routed Ann’s detractors, and although it was well-nigh impossible to utterly stamp out of a country district such as Silverquay the hydra-headed monster called scandal, they had certainly succeeded in drawing his fangs. But if Lady Susan had been successful in her campaign against the tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood, she had been powerless to restore that sheer joy and happiness in living which had been so peculiarly Ann’s gift until the day when Eliot Coventry went out of her life, taking from her, as he went, everything except the courage to endure.
Lady Susan had never forgiven Brett for his share in the work of destroying Ann’s happiness, and she chafed bitterly against her own inability to help matters. It was only through the merest accident that she had at last seen the possibility of being of service. She had been up in town a few days prior to the date fixed for the dance and had encountered Tony shopping in the Army and Navy Stores. He happened to mention that he had run across Coventry at Mentone, and a chance remark elicited the fact that he had regaled him with the history of the Dents de Loup adventure.
Perhaps Lady Susan’s face had expressed more than she knew, for Tony, perceiving that she attached some special importance to the matter, looked suddenly anxious.
“I say, I’ve not been giving Ann away, have I?” he demanded in honest consternation. “I made sure she’d told you all about it by this time. I never thought—”
“Don’t worry,” Lady Susan reassured him hastily. “You’re not giving her away. She did tell me—all about it.”
When she returned home she had taken her courage in both hands and written to Eliot asking him to come back. And to-night, doubtful whether her letter had reached him in time to allow of his returning for the dance, totally ignorant of the reception it would receive, and uncertain even as to how Ann would welcome him if he actually did return, she was on tenterhooks of nervousness and anxiety.
“You do grow thinner in the winter, you know,” she continued airily to Sir Philip, unwisely elaborating her comment upon Ann’s appearance.