As the brief lull ended, my thoughts went back to the morning of Armistice Day when I paused on my way home from the Admiralty to reckon how many of my own generation had survived the war. As Robson bent, straightened himself and turned at the stair-head, I expected at every moment to hear him calling out “Captain Dainton” or “Lord Loring” or “Mr. Arden”; had I shut my eyes to their absence, I could have fancied that we were living in 1914. Now, as then, Crawleigh was so much engrossed in a political altercation with Bertrand that he walked stormily into the drawing-room without noticing us; Sam Dainton trotted up grinning—as usual—and whispering scandal into Violet Loring’s reluctant ear; Sir Roger, waiting uneasily for his wife, was mistaken—as usual—for a hired waiter and urged to tell John Gaymer where he could get his usual drink.
“The last time I did this sort of thing was at my coming-of-age ball,” Barbara murmured.
“Which you gave for yourself because no one would give it for you?”
“Well, I hated father’s friends; and he hated mine,” she laughed. “Besides, I’d been in so many scrapes that I had to see whether people would continue to know me.”
“They all came,” I said.
“Except one. That was the time when Jack Waring proposed to me one day and quarrelled with me the next,” she explained lightly. “Why he wanted to marry me when he disapproved of everything I did . . . I invited him specially.” . . .
“And he wouldn’t come?”
“No. Apparently . . . Eric isn’t coming . . . to-night.”
The announcement fell so tranquilly, it was so long since we had mentioned Eric Lane’s name that I doubted for a moment if I had heard her aright.
“You . . . invited him?,” I asked.