"Jack knows she's going to be with us," was all that he could answer. "He asked specially; he's very anxious to meet her again."
"Oh, well!... I only wanted to be sure that there was no unpleasantness."
"Unpleasantness?"
Loring laughed incredulously; but, when his aunt was gone and he returned to his letters, the word echoed maddeningly.
As Jack had asked that Barbara should not be warned in advance of their meeting, the Chepstow party had to be handled strategically at Paddington. Lady Knightrider and Phyllis, Charles Framlingham and Jack were in a reserved carriage at the back of the train, and Barbara was deftly flanked by an obscuring bodyguard consisting of Arden, Deganway, four maids and a footman. Whatever the outcome of their meeting, her sense of the dramatic would have been excited if she had known that Jack and she were in different parts of the same train, travelling to the end of England for the last round in their long contest. For himself, Loring only wished that he could get rid of Barbara and of her elaborate atmosphere of mystery and intrigue; if she decided to marry Jack, he would rather not have it said by the Warings that he had abetted their son in a course which they would never condone: if there were any kind of unpleasantness, he would sooner have it happen elsewhere than at Loring Castle.... And in the meantime Barbara sat in her corner, sparring impartially with Deganway and Arden.
It seemed for a moment that he might get his wish and avert the meeting. Lady Knightrider wrote two days later to ask whether the arrangements for the ball held good. Her son had written from London to say that "a man in the War Office" did not see how hostilities could be prevented. The word was to be interpreted in its widest sense; an outbreak between Austria and Servia was inevitable, and it was no less inevitable that Russia should come to the support of Servia and Germany to the aid of Austria. Then France would throw in her lot with Russia, and Great Britain with France. The sequence was automatic and inevitable. The diplomatists might possibly find a safety-valve, but, unless they did, there would be war, "and that," proclaimed Victor Knightrider, "is where we come in."
"It's all so unnecessary and so dreadful," wrote his mother, "that one feels almost wicked to talk of things like dancing until we see what is going to happen. Of course, you understand that, if the ball takes place, I shall come; I'm so happy about you and dear Violet that nothing would keep me away from a gathering like this. But, if you decide to postpone it till a less stormy day...."
Loring debated with himself and with his mother, before deciding to leave his arrangements unchanged. No one could pretend to be satisfied with the political outlook, but war on Victor Knightrider's all-embracing scale was inconceivable.
"Unless there's any change for the worse before Friday," he wrote in reply, "I propose to go on."
The papers, morning and evening, confirmed him in his optimism. A world at war had only to be imagined in order to be dismissed. It was not until the late afternoon before the ball that George Oakleigh, O'Rane and Summertown, deriving their information from different sources and speaking with different degrees of conviction and gravity, persuaded him that, even if the incredible did not take place, at least a great many intelligent observers thought that it would. At Raglan no one shared Lady Knightrider's alarms. Phyllis and Framlingham were as much resolved not to be cheated of the ball as Jack was determined to meet Barbara. He assured his hostess that Victor was only trying to make her flesh creep. For two days Framlingham and Phyllis played tennis or motored together, and for two days Jack walked up and down one bank of the stream that bordered the Knightrider property, meditatively thrashing the water and smoking one pipe after another. His luncheon he carried with him when he left the house after breakfast; on both days Lady Knightrider drove through the woods in her pony-carriage with a tea-basket and drove back again because she lacked courage to ask him about Barbara.