"I—I fancied that I had," she was answering, when there arose a noise outside the drawing-room as if some one had violently knocked over a metal tray.
By the time the door opened, Carrissima was seated in the easy-chair gazing at the fire, while Mark stood at the farther side of the small room with one of David Rosser's novels (hastily snatched from a side table) in his hand.
Enter Bridget, accompanied by Jimmy and looking her best in what might have been her wedding dress.
"So immensely sorry!" she cried, hastening forward as Carrissima rose.
"She looks sorry, doesn't she?" said Jimmy, with a laugh. "You must both try your hardest to forgive us," he added, as Bridget turned towards Mark.
"I do hope you two good people haven't been bored to death," she continued. "Especially as Mark seems to be reading one of my father's books!"
"We've done our level best—in the circumstances," he answered, with an embarrassed, boyish laugh, and then, dinner being announced, Jimmy offered his arm to Carrissima. While the servants were present everybody seemed to have a great deal to say with the exception of Miss Faversham, whose silence failed, however, to attract the least attention. By the time dessert was reached she began to show symptoms of recovering from her not unnatural embarrassment; Jimmy's glass was full. He drank champagne this evening.
"I was wondering," said Mark, when the four were left by themselves, "whether I might be of some use before the evening ended. Carrissima suggested an accident."
"There was not much you could call accidental about it, was there,
Bridget?" said Jimmy.
"Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "I wish somebody would say something illuminating! I am positively dying from curiosity!"