“Walter says they have offered profuse apologies, and regrets.”
“For what?”
“For the necessity they are under of becoming uncle’s guests.”
“I don’t believe so—no, not a bit. Look at their rude behaviour at the very beginning—kissing that bold girl Bet Dancey, in the presence of a thousand spectators! Ha! well punished was captain Scarthe for his presumption. He feel regret! I don’t believe it, Lora. That man’s a hypocrite. There’s falsehood written in his face, along with a large quantity of conceit; and as for the cornet—the only thing discernible in his countenance is—stupidity.”
As Marion pronounced the last word, she had completed her toilette—all that she had promised or intended to make. She was one who needed not to take much trouble before the mirror. Dressed or in déshabille she was the same—ever beautiful. Nature had made her in its fairest mould, and Art could not alter the design.
Her preparations for the dinner table consisted simply in replacing her morning boddice by one without sleeves—which displayed her snow-white arms nearly to the shoulders. Having adjusted this, she inserted one hand under her wavy golden hair; and, adroitly turning its profuse tresses round her wrist, she rolled them into a spiral coil, which by means of a pair of large hair pins she confined at the back of her head. Then, dipping her hands into a basin of water, she shook off the crystal drops from the tips of her roseate fingers; wiped them on a white napkin; flung the towel upon the table; and cried “Come on!”
Followed by the light-hearted Lora, she descended to the dining hall, where the two officers were already awaiting their presence.
A dinner-party under such circumstances as that which assembled around the table of Sir Marmaduke Wade—small in numbers though it was—could not be otherwise than coldly formal.
The host himself was polite to his uninvited guests—studiously so; but not all his habitual practice of courtly manners could conceal a certain embarrassment, that now and then exhibited itself in incidents of a trivial character.
On his part the cuirassier captain used every effort to thaw the ice that surrounded him. He lost no opportunity of expressing his regret: at being the recipient of such a peculiar hospitality; nor was he at all backward in censuring his royal master for making him so.