Clearly, sweetly, decisively, Gundred interposed.
‘Dear Lady Adela,’ she said, ‘really, you make the very best tea that anyone could imagine. And it is such a rare art nowadays. But, do you know, I must not stay another minute. Poor papa will be getting quite anxious. Kingston dear, you may get me a hansom if you like, but I cannot let you come with me. Your mother will almost forget she ever had a son. You must stay with her and tell her about that dreadful play.’
‘Look here, do let me come with you,’ pleaded Kingston. ‘I hardly feel to have seen you at all to-day. I want to talk to you.’
‘Dear boy,’ smiled Gundred, ‘you have just had three and a half hours of my company.’
‘In a stuffy theatre, with four hundred people looking on the whole time. Besides, one can’t talk—really talk, in a theatre. It isn’t really being together, sitting side by side in the stalls. One might as well be with one’s grandmother, for all one is able to say. There are ever so many things I haven’t had a chance of saying to you. Take me home with you, Gundred, and let me dine with you.’
Gundred shook her head. ‘Impossible, dear,’ she answered decidedly. ‘We have got people coming, and it would put the table out. You may run in to lunch to-morrow, though. And now, may he ring for a hansom, Lady Adela?’
But at this point Mrs. Mimburn intervened with an urgent plea that Gundred should let herself be driven home in Mrs. Mimburn’s carriage.
‘Now, do, dearest Gundred,’ pleaded Mrs. Mimburn, nerving herself to the inevitable audacity of calling the new niece by her Christian name. Then she fetched her breath in a gasp of relief, and went on. ‘Our horses go like the wind, and you will be home in a flash—an éclair, a positive éclair.’
To Gundred’s British mind the word merely suggested confectionery, and the proposal, as emanating from Mrs. Mimburn, was altogether distasteful. She smiled a cordial refusal. But Mrs. Mimburn pressed her point.
‘We must really see something of each other, dear,’ she went on, ‘now we are to be relations. A cosy little drive together, now, don’t say no. I shall be quite offended if you do.’ Mrs. Mimburn persisted until Gundred saw that there was no hope of being able decently to decline the offer.