“Thanks very much, Mrs Ingram. It is a great pleasure to be here, and to meet you all again. I only wish I could have managed to make a longer stay.”
Malham was obviously ill at ease, obviously annoyed when his wife took up the strain, and in her flat voice proceeded to enlarge on her husband’s marvellous powers. With the obvious intention of avoiding the ordeal he bent forward towards Juliet, and pointing to a miniature which hung from her neck, said in a low voice, “Is that one of the six? The little girl? May I see?”
Juliet beamed broadly as she held out the pearl-rimmed case containing a pretty round young face. “And you? How many have you?”
“None,” he said shortly, and Juliet hurried to retrieve her mistake.
“Yes. That’s the girl. A great pet, of course. I called her Celia. Her father thought it too fanciful, but he had had his own way about the boys, so I insisted on it. It’s such a pretty name, so sweet and winsome—don’t you think so? And uncommon. One meets so many Gladyses and Phyllises, but so seldom a Celia. Did you ever know a Celia?”
She looked at him, and the motherly smile faded at sight of his tortured face.
“Yes. I knew a Celia,” he said thickly, and Juliet looked hurriedly in another direction, her heart leaping to a swift conclusion.
“He loved a girl called Celia, and she died, and he married Lady Anne for her position. All his success has not brought him happiness. Oh, the poor, poor man!”
Meantime Lady Anne’s voice had trailed into silence, and Rupert Dempster was answering Mrs Ingram’s unspoken summons. Like Manning he had but little to say, but there was all the difference in the world in his manner of saying it.
“I wished for Eve,” he said simply. “Here she is!” and again he slipped his hand through his wife’s arm. As a matter of course he had seated himself by her side; as a matter of course Eve had looked for his coming. For all their friendliness and courtesy, there was about these two an air of detachment from their surroundings, an air of living apart in a world of their own, fenced round with an ambuscade through which no darts could pass. The affectionate camaraderie of the Lessings and Maplestones was a good and pleasant thing to witness, but the bond which bound these two was finer, more exalted.