And they both laughed.
Towards the end of November one day Daventry said to Dion in the Greville Club:
“Beatrice is going to give a dinner somewhere, probably at the Carlton. She thought of the twenty-eighth. Are Rosamund and you engaged that night? She wants you, of course.”
“No. We don’t go out much. Rose is an early rooster, as she calls it.”
“Then the twenty-eighth would do capitally.”
“Shall I tell Rose?”
“Yes, do. Beattie will write too, or tell Rosamund when she sees her.”
“Whom are you going to have?”
“Oh, Mrs. Chetwinde for one, and—we must see whom we can get. We’ll try to make it cheery and not too imbecile.”
As Daventry was speaking, Dion felt certain that the dinner had an object, and he thought he knew what that object was. But he only said: