"You don't mind my coming like this, do you?" she asked timidly, disengaging herself from Lady Poynter's embrace and indicating her commandant's uniform. "I was at the hospital until eight."
"As if I minded what you wore!" her hostess cried. "In war-time, when we haven't a moment to turn round … ! And it isn't as if this were a party."
Mrs. Shelley walked to a mirror and looked thoughtfully at her unassertive reflection. Her hair was a dusty brown, her eyes an unsoftening grey, and her cheeks, which were careworn with exacting, humble ambition, acted at once as frame and background for a thin nose and unrelaxing mouth.
"You always say that, darling," she protested gently, leaning forward to the mirror and dabbing at herself with a powder-puff. "And it means the most delightful——"
"I've got Eric Lane coming," interrupted Lady Poynter, groping for a crumpled half-sheet of paper marked as with the sweeping strokes of a hay-rake in soft mud. "Who else? Sonia O'Rane you know; Max—or did Max say he was dining at his club? It doesn't matter, because I can't pretend that Max contributes much, even though he is my husband; then there's my nephew, Johnnie Gaymer; and Babs Neave——"
"Dear Babs," murmured Mrs. Shelley with conscientious enthusiasm. It was her favourite boast that she sincerely tried to make allowances for all and permitted ill-speaking of none. In the years before the war, when Lady Barbara's friends were wondering whether they really could continue to know her, Mrs. Shelley remained embarrassingly loyal. "I haven't seen her for months."
"She's been nursing at Crawleigh all this time, simply wearing herself out. I've never seen any one so changed. We met in Bond Street this morning; I hadn't meant to invite her, but I felt I must do something.…" Lady Poynter projected herself from the sofa and rustled to the door, murmuring: "I must find out whether Max is dining at home to-night."
Mrs. Shelley made her way downstairs to the drawing-room and stood on the balcony outside one of the French windows, looking down through the warm dusk on Belgrave Square. An open taxi drew up at the door, and she watched Mrs. O'Rane descending daintily and smiling at the driver; a second taxi drove from the opposite corner of the square, and Captain Gaymer, in Flying Corps uniform, jumped out and hurried to the door, looking apprehensively at his watch. Mrs. Shelley left the balcony and shook hands with Lord Poynter who was dutifully dressed in time to receive any guests who might arrive before his wife appeared.
"Two. Four," he counted timidly. "Babs Neave is sure to be late. That leaves only Lane. Does every one know him?"
An indistinct murmur was drowned by Gaymer, who knitted his brows and repeated: