When Loring entered his library at midnight, Jack was contentedly smoking a cigar and looking at a richly illustrated book on trout-flies. Closing the book, he accepted a brandy and soda and took up his stand by the fire-place.
"I heard you say you were giving a party at Chepstow," he began. "I was wondering whether Babs was going."
"Allowing for her rather erratic temperament, I should say 'yes.' I didn't want her, but she's invited herself." Loring described the 'Children's Party,' ending, "After that, I decided to have no more to do with her, but I was reckoning without Vi. As soon as the engagement was announced, Barbara called and virtually persuaded her that she'd arranged the whole thing by inviting us both to her ball and opening my eyes to the fact that I was in love. I wasn't in the mood then to quarrel with my worst enemy, so I said she could come.... Jack, have you seen or heard anything of her lately?"
"Not since Ross House. What's she been doing?"
"Oh, nothing in particular. She's won her laurels, and there's no temptation. When all's said and done, the Children's Party was a big idea. She's made a unique position for herself; there's no one of her age, there's not an unmarried girl in England, who can compete with her—my sister Amy, Phyllis Knightrider, Sally Farwell, even Sonia, who makes the running for her; there are precious few married women, even among the political lot and semi-public hostesses, who can touch her; and, when it comes to a tussle between a girl of twenty-one and a woman like Harriet Pebbleridge, who's as solid and well-established as the Nelson Column, it's Barbara who wins. I'm told she's had a perfect crop of invitations to become visitor or patroness or vice-chairman of different things; she rules over committees on anything from a national theatre to an art guild—and does it uncommon well, I believe.... How do you stand with her now? You're very likely to meet, if you pay your annual visit to Raglan."
"That's why I asked. I want to."
Loring was conscious that he had been talking rather volubly to postpone what he knew Jack had come there to discuss; inevitably advice would have to be given, an opinion expressed, responsibility shouldered.
"Apart from a formal invitation, she's made no effort to meet you? Jack, I wonder whether she's been playing the game with you. It's incomprehensible to me that a girl should let you get to the point of proposing and then fall back on something that's either non-essential or else so important that she ought to have warned you beforehand."
"I'm afraid you're rather biassed against poor Barbara."
Four years earlier, Loring knew that he would have been as immovable, if any one had suggested that Sonia had a blemish. Oakleigh had tried and failed; but he was right in trying....