And presently she too slept.
CHAPTER IX
IN the morning Lord Holme woke very late and in a different humour. Lady Holme was already up, sitting by a little table and pouring out tea, when he stretched himself, yawned, turned over, uttered two or three booming, incohorent exclamations, and finally raised himself on one arm, exhibiting a touzled head and a pair of blinking eyes, stared solemnly at his wife’s white figure and at the tea-table, and ejaculated:
“Eh?”
“Tea?” she returned, lifting up the silver teapot and holding it towards him with an encouraging, half-playful gesture.
Lord Holme yawned again, put up his hands to his hair, and then looked steadily at the teapot, which his wife was moving about in the sunbeams that were shining in at the window. The morning was fine.
“Tea, Fritz?”
He smiled and began to roll out of bed. But the action woke up his memory, and when he was on his feet he looked at his wife again more doubtfully. She saw that he was beginning, sleepily but definitely, to consider whether he should go on being absolutely furious about the events of the preceding night, and acted with promptitude.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said quickly. “I’ve made up my mind to forgive you. You’re only a great schoolboy after all. Come along.”