"No! not this afternoon, Harry, dear. You know the Damers may come at any time between this and seven o'clock, and I should not like to be out when they arrive."
"And may I ask Mrs. Clayton who are the Damers," inquired a friend of her husband, who, on account of being handsome, considered himself licensed to be pert—"that their advent should be the cause of our losing the pleasure of your company this afternoon?"
But the last thing Bella Clayton ever did was to take offence.
"The Damers are my cousins, Captain Moss," she replied; "at least Blanche Damer is."
At this juncture a dark-eyed man who was sitting at the other end of the table dropped the flirting converse he had been maintaining with a younger sister of Mrs. Clayton's, and appeared to become interested in what his hostess was saying.
"Colonel Damer," he continued, "has been in India for the last twelve years, and only returned to England a month ago; therefore it would seem unkind on the first visit he has paid to his relatives that there should be no one at home to welcome him."
"Has Mrs. Damer been abroad for as long a time?" resumed her questioner, a vision arising on his mental faculties of a lemon-coloured woman with shoes down at heel.
"Oh dear no!" replied his hostess. "Blanche came to England about five years ago, but her health has been too delicate to rejoin her husband in India since. Have we all finished, Harry, dear?"—and in another minute the luncheon-table was cleared.
As Mrs. Clayton crossed the hall soon afterwards to visit her nursery, the same dark-eyed man who had regarded her fixedly when she mentioned the name of Blanche Damer followed and accosted her.
"Is it long since you have seen your cousin Mrs. Damer, Mrs. Clayton?"