There was a long pause. Jack was now crumbling up his bread and then smoothing out the crumbs with a kind of mechanical, steam-roller movement of his right-hand forefinger.
Rosamund was the first to speak. "Why, she hasn't even told us his name!" she exclaimed. "How very funny of her!"
And then Godfrey Radmore spoke, just a thought more sharply than usual: "I'm not at all surprised at that. She wants to start quite clear again."
Betty said quietly: "That's natural enough, isn't it?" But her heart was full of aching sympathy for her brother. She felt, rather than saw, his rigid, mask-like face.
They all got up, and slowly began to disperse. After all, there was only one among them to whom this news was of any real moment.
Janet, feeling curiously tired, went into the drawing-room. The moment she had finished Enid Crofton's letter she had begun to torment herself as to whether she had done right or wrong after all?
To her relief Godfrey Radmore came into the drawing-room. "I want to put those two unfortunate people out of their misery, Janet. Shall I tell Dolly, or will you tell her, that I want to give her a thousand pounds as a wedding present?"
Janet had very strong ideas of what was right and wrong, or perhaps it would be better to say of what was meet and proper.
"I don't think they could take a present of that sort from you," she said very decidedly. "These are hard times, Godfrey, even for rich people. But you always talk as if you were made of money!"
"Do I?"