Volume Two—Chapter Fourteen.
“Where’s Gwen?”
Not for long are the companion and curate permitted to carry on the confidential dialogue, in which they had become interested. Too disagreeably soon is it interrupted by a third personage appearing upon the scene. Miss Linton has at length succeeded in dragging herself out of the embrace of the somnolent divinity, and enters the breakfast-room, supported by her French femme de chambre.
Graciously saluting Mr Musgrave, she moves towards the table’s head, where an antique silver urn sends up its curling steam—flanked by tea and coffee pot, with contents already prepared for pouring into their respectively shaped cups. Taking her seat, she asks:
“Where’s Gwen?”
“Not down yet,” meekly responds Miss Lees, “at least I haven’t seen anything of her.”
“Ah! she beats us all to-day,” remarks the ancient toast of Cheltenham, “in being late,” she adds, with a laugh at her little jeu d’esprit. “Usually such an early riser, too. I don’t remember having ever been up before her. Well, I suppose she’s fatigued, poor thing!—quite done up. No wonder, after dancing so much, and with everybody.”
“Not everybody, aunt!” says her companion, with a significant emphasis on the everybody. “There was one gentleman she never danced with all the night. Wasn’t it a little strange?” This in a whisper and aside.
“Ah! true. You mean Captain Ryecroft?”