Of course that was madame’s opinion: but my impression was that, let us talk as much as we would, in a high key or a low one, that poor nodding woman neither heard nor heeded it.
“Don’t you think you are fidgety about it, madame?”
“Well, perhaps I am,” she answered. “I assure you, Lady Jenkins is an anxious charge to me.”
Therefore, being quite at home now at Jenkins House (to return to the evening and the soirée I was telling of), I ran in the nearest way to do Mrs. Knox’s behest. That was through the two back gardens, by the intervening little gate. I knocked at the glass-doors of what was called the garden-room, in which shone a light behind the curtains, and went straight in. Sitting near each other, conversing with an eager look on their faces, and both got up for Mrs. Knox’s soirée, were Captain Collinson and Madame St. Vincent.
“Mr. Ludlow!” she exclaimed. “How you startled me!”
“I beg your pardon for entering so abruptly. Mrs. Knox asked me to run in and see whether anything was the matter, and I came the shortest way. She has been expecting you for some time.”
“Nothing is the matter,” shortly replied madame, who seemed more put out than the occasion called for: she thought me rude, I suppose. “Lady Jenkins is not ready; that is all. She may be half-an-hour yet.”
“Half-an-hour! I won’t wait longer, then,” said Captain Collinson, catching up his crush hat. “I do trust she has not taken another chill. Au revoir, madame.”
With a nod to me, he made his exit by the way I had entered. The same peculiarity struck me now that I had observed before: whenever I went into a place, be it Jenkins House or Rose Villa, the gallant captain immediately quitted it.
“Do I frighten Captain Collinson away?” I said to madame on the spur of the moment.