“Conrad, how can you be so unfeeling? I perfectly detest that horrid trick of joking about everything,” said in sharp, indignant tones a young lady seated opposite him. It was Lady Margaret. Several people looked up in surprise.
“Beginning in good time,” murmured a man near the end of the table.
“Why, do you believe in that? I don’t,” replied his companion in the same low tone.
Conrad looked across the table at his cousin in surprise.
“Come now, Maisie,” he said, “you make me feel quite shy, scolding me so in company. And I’m sure I didn’t mean to say anything witty at the poor chap’s expense. If I did, it was quite by mistake I assure you.”
“Anything ‘witty’ from you would be that, I can quite believe,” Lady Margaret replied, smiling a little. But the smile was a feeble and forced one. Conrad saw, if no one else did, that his cousin was thoroughly put out, and he felt repentant, though he scarcely knew why.
Half an hour later Lord Southwold and his daughter were talking together in the sitting-room, where the former had been breakfasting in invalid fashion alone.
“I would promise to be home to-morrow, or the day after at latest, papa,” Lady Margaret was saying; “Mrs Englewood will be very pleased to have me, I know, even at the shortest notice, for last week when I wrote saying I feared it would be impossible, she was very disappointed.”
“Very well, my dear, only don’t stay with her longer than that, for you know we have engagements,” and Lord Southwold sighed a little.
Margaret sighed too.