Lord Holme stared at his varnished boots and looked rather like a puzzled boy at a viva voce examination.
“The worst of it is, I can’t be in the country lookin’ at a horse that night,” he said with depression.
“Why not?”
She hastily added:
“But why should you? You ought to be here.”
“I’d rather be lookin’ at a horse. But I’m booked for the dinner to Rowley at the Nation Club that night. I might say the speeches were too long and I couldn’t get away. Eh?”
He looked at her for support.
“You really ought to be here, Fritz,” she answered.
It ended there. Lady Holme knew her husband pretty well. She fancied that the speeches at the dinner given to Sir Jacob Rowley, ex-Governor of some place she knew nothing about, would turn out to be very lengthy indeed—speeches to keep a man far from his home till after midnight.
On the evening of the twelfth Lord Holme had not arrived when the first of his wife’s guests came slowly up the stairs, and Lady Holme began gently to make his excuses to all the tiresome dears who had had their cards left at forty-two Cadogan Square. There were a great many tiresome dears. The stream flowed steadily, and towards half-past eleven resembled a flood-tide.