So she set about to stem the tide of Diana’s grief.
She wrote to Mrs. Hastings and begged the loan of her son for a few days, because of those other days of long ago. She wanted to see what (she meant who) he was like: and, of course, Miles’s mother was only too delighted any one should see what her son was like, so he was despatched to London—against his will—to see Mrs. Sloane: not to Bestways; that would have been too clumsy a move on the part of the old lady, and too obvious. She had yet to make a complete plan: London, at present, was as far as she had got in her manœuvres.
Just before she started Diana flew in—it was the word Mrs. Sloane invariably used to describe Diana’s movements: she had a telegram in her hand which she gave in silence to Mrs. Sloane to read. And in silence Mrs. Sloane read it. Shan’t was not so well.
“I must go to-night,” said Diana.
“You must go, of course,” said Mrs. Sloane, adding that she would have waited and gone with her, so far as London: but she had an engagement for luncheon.
So Mrs. Sloane went to London alone and drove straight to that hotel at which she knew a young man would like best to lunch: although she had a very shrewd suspicion that she was about to rob a young man of his rightful appetite. When she arrived at the hotel she went into one of the rooms where she was most certain of seclusion, and sat down in one of the windows to wait. Personally she would have preferred one of the quieter, older-fashioned hotels: but this was a concession on her part to fashion and to youth.
She had only to wait a few minutes when into the room came a young man, and at the sight of him her heart stirred, for reasons of its own, not unknown to her. A vast area of rose-coloured carpet, a vista of mirrors, and rows of pillars generally have a dwarfing effect, but Miles Hastings looked very big and absurdly like his grandfather. Her heart was beating normally again as she rose to meet the young man, and going up to him she slipped her hand within his arm and gave it a little squeeze of affection. “How kind of you to come!”
He smiled, wondering what this dear old lady wanted.
“Let me look at you,” she said. “You have grown!”
He said it was perhaps a long time since she had seen him.