“Well, you are an odd man, I do think!” Virginia suddenly attacked him. “Do you mean to say that you aren’t in the least curious to know what my host, friends, and husband will think at my not turning up to dinner?”
“But, Virginia, they wouldn’t be your host, friends, and husband if they were very surprised at a little thing like that, would they? Of course we can send a message,” he added. “I’ve got a kind of car somewhere about the house. It’s an American car——”
“Oh, no! To send a man three miles to say I’m not turning up for a dinner which they’ll have eaten by then—oh, no! They’ll just think I’m lost, that’s all.”
“And so I am!” she added, with a sudden smile.
She touched her hair, she jumped up and looked into the mirror, and she made a face at what she saw.
“If you will show me to your bedroom, Ivor,” she turned to him to say, “I will somehow or other put the fear of God into ‘Swan and Edgar’....”
3
It was after eleven when they heard the rustle of a car on the little gravel drive. The rustle stopped.
Ivor grandly waved a hand towards the curtained windows: “Here come the messengers of Kare and Tarlyon to demand a very fair lady.”
Virginia, again in the depths of her chair after dinner, looked mildly surprised; but just a little more than mildly when her husband came in almost on top of Turner. George Tarlyon stood grinning at Virginia from the doorway, and at Ivor. And Ivor couldn’t help smiling back at the “clever fellow” expression on the handsome face.