“When you see him standing about alone—he is really very absent-minded—go up and make him talk to you. He will get your ideas—the time, you see, will not be wasted. And neither will the general public,” she added, “be confronted with the spectacle of a Lieutenant-Governor who looks as if he had a contempt for his own hospitality.”
“I’ll try. But I hardly think my ideas upon points of administration are calculated to enliven a social evening. And don’t send me now. The Bishop is doing very well.”
“The Bishop?” She turned to him again, with laughter in the dark depths of her eyes. “I realised the other day what one may attain to in Calcutta. His Lordship asked me, with some timidity, what I thought of the length of his sermons! Tell me, please, who is this madam bearing down upon me in pink and grey?”
Ancram was on his feet. “It is Mrs. Daye,” he said. “People who come so late ought not to insist upon seeing you.”
“Mrs. Daye! Oh, of course; your——” But Mrs. Daye was clasping her hostess’s hand. “And Miss Daye, I think,” said Mrs. Church, looking frankly into the face of the girl behind, “whom I have somehow been defrauded of meeting before. I have a great many congratulations to—divide,” she went on prettily, glancing at Ancram. “Mr. Ancram is an old friend of ours.”
“Thank you,” replied Miss Daye. Her manner suggested that at school such acknowledgments had been very carefully taught her.
“My dear, you should make a pretty curtsey,” her mother said jocularly, and then looked at Rhoda with astonishment as the girl, with an unmoved countenance, made it.
Ancram looked uncomfortable, but Mrs. Church cried out with vivacity that it was charming—she was so glad to find that Miss Daye could unbend to a stranger; and Mrs. Daye immediately stated that she must hear whether the good news was true that Mrs. Church had accepted the presidency—presidentship (what should one say?)—of the Lady Dufferin Society. Ah! that was delightful—now everything would go smoothly. Poor dear Lady Spence found it far too much for her! Mrs. Daye touched upon a variety of other matters as the four stood together, and the gaslights shone down upon the diamond stars in the women’s hair, and the band played on the verandah behind the palms. Among them was the difficulty of getting seats in the Cathedral in the cold weather, and the fascinating prospect of having a German man-of-war in port for the season, and that dreadful frontier expedition against the Nagapis; and they ran, in the end, into an allusion to Mrs. Church’s delightful Thursday tennises.
“Ah, yes,” Mrs. Church replied, as the lady gave utterance to this, with her dimpled chin thrust over her shoulder, in the act of departure: “you must not forget my Thursdays. And you,” she said to Rhoda, with a directness which she often made very engaging—“you will come too, I hope?”
“Oh, yes, thank you,” the girl answered, with her neat smile: “I will come too—with pleasure.”