May could scarcely refuse. She rose. Harding was making his way to Gwendolen Scott and raising his eyebrows at his wife as a signal for her to appropriate Mrs. Potten. Bingham was standing in the middle of the room staring at Lady Dashwood. Some problems were working in his mind, in which that lady figured as an important item.
Gwendolen Scott looked round her. Mr. Harding had ignored her at lunch, and she did not mean to have him sitting beside her again. She was quite sure she wouldn't know what to say to him, if he did speak. She got up hurriedly from her chair, passed the astonished Harding and plunged at Mrs. Dashwood.
"Oh, do let me come and see over the house with you," she said, laying a cold hand nervously on May's arm. "I should love to—I simply love looking at portraits."
"Come, of course," said May, with great cordiality.
Boreham stiffened and his voice became very flat. "I've got no portraits worth looking at," said he, keeping his hand firmly on the door. "I have a couple of Lely's, they're all alike and sold with a pound of tea. The rest are by nobodies."
"Oh, never mind," said Gwen, earnestly. "I love rooms; I love—anything!"
Boreham's beard gave a sort of little tilt, and his innermost thoughts were noisy and angry, but he had to open the door and let Gwendolen Scott through if the silly little girl would come and spoil everything.
Boreham could not conceal his vexation. His arrangements had been carefully made, and here they were knocked on the head, and how he was to get May Dashwood over to Chartcote again he didn't know.
"What a nice hall!" exclaimed Gwen. "I do love nice halls," and she looked round at the renaissance decorations of the wall and the domed roof. "Oh, I do love that archway with the statue holding the electric light, it is sweet!"
"It's bad style," said Boreham, walking gloomily in front of them towards a door which led into the library. "The house was decent enough, I believe, till some fool in the family, seeing other people take up Italian art, got a craze for it himself and knocked the place about."