But Bonnybell had, with all her knowledge of Charlie’s power of revengeful tit-for-tat in the case of a supposed snub, done as much for him as she could for the moment manage, and she excused herself with pretty ingenuity, asserting, with a smile that was ordered still to keep well to the front, that the anecdote could be entertaining only to a person acquainted with the Aylmer family, and would lose all its point in the case of one who had not that advantage. Inwardly, while uttering her little apology for refusing, she was sharply regretting that her glove had been taken off previous to the “old friend’s” detested caress, and wondering how soon she would cease to be conscious of it on the back of her hand.
The announcement of luncheon put a welcome end to the importunities to which her refusal subjected her. The sight of one more place laid at the table than there were occupants for made her draw the inference that the “new friend” had been expected, and had failed to appear, but she waited in vain for some comment upon his absence. To Lady Tennington’s easy-going board people came or not as they chose. If they appeared at it, so much the better; if they didn’t appear at it, not so very much the worse. In Flora’s circle promises and engagements did not go for much, nor did the breaking of them cause her either annoyance or surprise.
The conversation at the repast was chiefly in Charlie’s hands and under his guidance. He was a past-master in the art of double-entendre, and had a power that it would be difficult to surpass of giving to the most plain and innocent sentences an indecent meaning. From off the guileless backs of most English girls Charlie’s conversation could fall in a harmless cascade, as being too bad to be understood, but there was not one of his innuendoes and perverse twistings of the commonplaces of speech that Bonnybell did not fully comprehend, with the added knowledge that he knew that she did so.
Flora called him to order once or twice, but not very severely. Charlie was really very amusing; and, after all, Bonnybell was not like other girls. It was such a comfort that one need not be on one’s P’s and Q’s with her.
Scarcely ever, in all the reach of her eighteen years’ memory, had Miss Ransome sat at a feast—and Flora’s cuisine deserved that title—with a more uneasy and unenjoying mind. Not even the unwonted solace of as many post-luncheon cigarettes as she could desire at all compensated her for the distastefulness of the company, or for the racking twin anxieties that occupied her mind; the anxiety to get home as fast as possible, so as to obviate all risk of discovery incident upon a possible change of plan in Mr. and Mrs. Tancred, and to prevent Charlie from escorting her. All her manœuvres to get her hostess alone in order to ask for her aid in obtaining this latter boon having failed, she had to content herself with the meagre consolation that, at all events, she would have the chaperonage of the chauffeur.
Immediately after luncheon the rest of the party sat down to dummy bridge. It was not without loud outcries on the part of two of her companions, and some umbrage at the gentle fixity of her determination not to make a fourth—for Harrington never dared show umbrage at anything—that Bonnybell escaped their upbraiding importunities. If she allowed herself to acquiesce, Heaven knows how long she might be chained to the card-table, when once they had got hold of her, and her longed-for departure postponed if she was not firm. But it was not without paying the toll of some gibing jests at her benefactors’ expense—jests which she did not in the least enjoy, and which caused her an unexpected subsequent remorse—that she was let off, and given the inspiriting promise that the motor should be at the door in half an hour’s time. She waited to hear the message really given, and then to escape the pursuit of Charlie’s eyes, which, though not so good as they had been, were still only too embarrassing, she left the trio, to resume her hat and wraps.
In former days Bonnybell had never been in time for anything, but to-day, though twenty minutes must elapse before the motor was due, she stood restless and troubled, awaiting its arrival in a conservatory which opened out of the room in which the players had settled down to their mutilated gamble. She could hear, between the deals, Charlie firing off his double-entendres to lighten the seriousness of the pursuit, and Flora’s stimulating rebuke, “Oh, come, Charlie, that is rather too stiff. You must remember that we have a fille à marier on the premises.” And then they all laughed.
Well they might! thought the listener. A fille à marier! And yet that was precisely what she was! With what other purpose but the insane one of furthering that object was she there? And how likely were such a milieu and atmosphere to promote it!
The conservatory was a long one, and by walking to the end of it she could get out of earshot of the bridge-players. Why go on listening to Charlie for twenty minutes, if she could help it? A cluster of wicker chairs stood under a palm, and into the cushions of one of them she sank, looking round with uneasy eyes upon the mass of bloom about her. She did not care a straw about flowers in their natural and out-door state, and forced ones represented to her mind out-of-season extravagances of ten and twenty-five guinea January bouquets—represented to her the past and Claire.
What a fool she had been! Had ever any one risked so much to gain so little? Thinking it over coolly—that was just what she could not do, since so much was at stake—what were the odds in favour of her getting home undetected? Even if she did so, the danger was by no means over. A slip of the tongue, a stupidity, a malice on the part of one of the servants, happening any time during the next six months, might wreck her. She must be very, very civil and pleasant to the whole establishment. If she got any étrennes in the shape of money, she would have to tip them heavily; and yet even so, she would never be able to be quite free from anxiety.