"Are you going down to him this term?"
She shook her head.
"I'm too busy, and he doesn't want me, or he'd have sent for me long ago. Not that I should have gone, of course...." She glanced quickly round to satisfy herself that the others were absorbed in their own conversations; then lowered her voice and laid her hand on my sleeve. "Mr. Stornaway, you do agree with me that it's absolute rot for him to be there, don't you? Old Mr. Oakleigh's offered him any money he wants—again and again; I've got five hundred a year from father; he could wipe out what he calls his debts and live here with the utmost ease. And he ought to be in London, he ought to be in the House; there are all sorts of jobs that he could get in the City.... If you want a message, tell him that he must choose Melton or me," she went on with a pout and a rising voice. "If he hasn't chucked Melton by Christmas, I shall chuck him. Tell him that I shall elope to Sloane Square—I don't believe anyone's ever eloped to Sloane Square, but it's the handiest place in the world; even the Hounslow and Barking non-stop trains stop there,—so sweet of them, I always think—I shall go there with Peter and live in his flat and star in revue where I shall be an amazing draw, you know; and Colonel Grayle would scowl at me from the stage box, and, darling Lady Maitland, you'd boom me and invite fashionable clergymen to meet me at lunch, and George would have his car at the stage door to take me home—I don't know that I shall wait till Christmas."
She paused for lack of breath and looked delightedly round the table. My expression, I imagine, was bored, Lady Maitland's perplexed; only poor Beresford's was unaffectedly pained.
"Mr. Stornaway's quite right," Lady Maitland said, when she had collected herself. "You talk a great deal of nonsense."
"I mean it, though."
"Rubbish, my dear."
Yet I believe that both she and I felt a current of discontent running underneath the froth of nonsense. Perhaps we shewed it, perhaps Lady Maitland reconsidered her judgement, for, when Deganway sat down to play rag-time after dinner and Mrs. O'Rane kicked the rugs aside and began dancing with Pentyre, she observed at impressive intervals——
"Darling Sonia is always in such spirits".... "I don't think it's quite the thing for a young man like that—quite good-looking, you know—to be living here; Mr. O'Rane will have a great deal to answer for, if there's any unpleasantness, and you can give him that message from me." ... "Tell him a husband's place is beside his wife.... But he must make her a home where she can live. I forget whether you were here that night—yes, you were! Well, Lady Dainton's quite right.... Just like the casual-ward of a workhouse...." "Of course, her mother brought her up atrociously".... "I really hope that she's going to have a family; it would just make the difference."