"Thank——!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood—and then she suddenly paused, for she met the old thoughtful eye of Robinson.
"Yes!" she remarked irrelevantly. Then she folded the paper. "There is no answer," she said. "When you've taken the tea away—please tell Mrs. Robinson that quite unexpectedly Mrs. Jack Dashwood is arriving at seven. She must have the blue room—there isn't another one ready. Don't let in any callers for me, Robinson."
All that concerned the Warden's lodgings concerned Robinson. Oxford—to Robinson meant King's College. He had "heard tell" of "other colleges"; in fact he had passed them by and had seen "other college" porters standing about at their entrance doors as if they actually were part of Oxford. Robinson felt about the other colleges somewhat as the old-fashioned Evangelical felt about the godless, unmanageable, tangled, nameless rabble of humanity (observe the little "h") who were not elected. The "Elect" being a small convenient Body of which he was a member.
King's was the "Elect" and Robinson was an indispensable member of it.
Robinson went downstairs with his orders, which, dropping like a pebble into the pool of the servants' quarters, started a quiet expanding ripple to the upper floor, reaching at last to the blue bedroom.
Alone in the drawing-room Lady Dashwood was able to complete her exclamatory remark that Robinson's solemn eye had checked.
"Thank Heaven!" she said, and she said it again more than once. She laughed even and opened the telegram again and re-read it for the pure pleasure of seeing the words. "Arrive this evening."
"I've risked Jim's life—and now I've saved it." Then Lady Dashwood began to think carefully. There was no train arriving at seven from Malvern—but there was one arriving at six and one at seven fifteen. Anyhow May was coming. Lady Dashwood actually laughed with triumph and said—"May is coming—that for 'Belinda and Co.'!"
"Did you speak to me, Lady Dashwood?" asked a girlish voice, and Lady Dashwood turned swiftly at the sound and saw just within the doorway a girlish figure, a pretty face with dark hair and large wandering eyes.
"No, Gwen!" said Lady Dashwood. "I didn't know you were there——" and again she folded the telegram and her features resumed their normal calm. With that folded paper in her hand she could look composedly now at that pretty face and slight figure. If she had made a criminal blunder she had—though she didn't deserve it—been able to rectify the blunder. May Dashwood was coming! Again: "That for Belinda and Co.!"