He laid his hand comfortingly on hers.
"Look here, little girl," he said. "It's no use taking things hard. We have to make the best of it. It won't last for ever.... We must look at the funny side of it. That's the bargain."
The swift drive through the night was already over. Three men, pushing aside the servants, were slapping Barnaby on the back. They bore a family likeness to each other, big men, with creased red necks, and short, rumpled sandy hair.
"Come along in," they cried heartily. "The house is full of old friends wanting to get at you,—and nothing but odds and ends for dinner."
But one of them managed to lower his hearty voice a trifle.—"You won't mind meeting Julia Kelly? She has asked herself for the night."
"Who else?" said Barnaby, in his ordinary tones.
"Kilgour and the Slaters and Rackham and the Duchess;—and a few more," reeled off his host, thankfully dropping the awkward subject now he had got out his warning. He rushed them into the house, and Susan was bewildered by the tumult that greeted them, the sea of unknown faces. Men and women alike were seizing on Barnaby and exclaiming. She hardly realized that they were at the same time taking stock of her. The three Drakes stood near her like a bodyguard, kind and stolid, settling into their usual phlegmatic form; and she felt glad of them.
"Getting on all right?" said Barnaby, as she passed him on her way in to dinner, and she smiled back at him.
He and she were not near each other; but once or twice he looked her way, bending his head and slewing half round to catch a glimpse of her; that—or else Lady Henrietta's stars, kept up her courage. She listened politely, not understanding much, to the local gossip running along the table.
"Have you picked up any horses yet, Barnaby? Sims has one or two going up on Saturday, at Leicester."