She flung them a smile.
"Lord Lackington is going," and she hurried on.
Lord Lackington was standing in a group which contained Sir Wilfrid Bury and Mr. Montresor.
"Well, good-bye, good-bye," he said, as she came up to him. "I must go. I'm nearly asleep."
"Tired with abusing me?" said Montresor, nonchalantly, turning round upon him.
"No, only with trying to make head or tail of you," said Lackington, gayly. Then he stooped over Julie.
"Take care of yourself. Come back rosier--and fatter."
"I'm perfectly well. Let me come with you."
"No, don't trouble yourself." For she had followed him into the hall and found his coat for him. All the arrangements for her little "evening" had been of the simplest. That had been a point of pride with her. Madame Bornier and Thérèse dispensing tea and coffee in the dining-room, one hired parlor-maid, and she herself active and busy everywhere. Certain French models were in her head, and memories of her mother's bare little salon in Bruges, with its good talk, and its thinnest of thin refreshments--a few cups of weak tea, or glasses of eau sucrée, with a plate of patisserie.
The hired parlor-maid was whistling for a cab in the service of some other departing guest; so Julie herself put Lord Lackington into his coat, much to his discomfort.