"Has Hatton had any orders?"
"Yes, miss. I've just told him what her ladyship wishes. He's to tell everybody that Lady Henry's very sorry, and hoped up to the last moment to be able to come down as usual."
"Has Lady Henry all she wants, Dixon? Have you taken her the evening papers?"
"Oh yes, miss. But if you go in to her much her ladyship says you're disturbing her; and if you don't go, why, of course, everybody's neglecting her."
"Do you think I may go and say good-night to her, Dixon?"
The maid hesitated.
"I'll ask her, miss--I'll certainly ask her."
The door closed, and Julie was left alone in the great drawing-room of the Bruton Street house. It had been prepared as usual for the Wednesday--evening party. The flowers were fresh; the chairs had been arranged as Lady Henry liked to have them; the parquet floors shone under the electric light; the Gainsboroughs seemed to look down from the walls with a gay and friendly expectancy.
For herself, Julie had just finished her solitary dinner, still buoyed up while she was eating it by the hope that Lady Henry would be able to come down. The bitter winds of the two previous days, however, had much aggravated her chronic rheumatism. She was certainly ill and suffering; but Julie had known her make such heroic efforts before this to keep her Wednesdays going that not till Dixon appeared with her verdict did she give up hope.
So everybody would be turned away. Julie paced the drawing-room a solitary figure amid its lights and flowers--solitary and dejected. In a couple of hours' time all her particular friends would come to the door, and it would be shut against them. "Of course, expect me to-night," had been the concluding words of her letter of the morning. Several people also had announced themselves for this evening whom it was extremely desirable she should see. A certain eminent colonel, professor at the Staff College, was being freely named in the papers for the Mokembe mission. Never was it more necessary for her to keep all the threads of her influence in good working order. And these Wednesday evenings offered her the occasions when she was most successful, most at her ease--especially whenever Lady Henry was not well enough to leave the comparatively limited sphere of the back drawing-room.