“You see! I obeyed your message on the instant,” said the newcomer to Fenella, in an undertone, audible in the fell silence around. “Last week you said don’t come—it is stupeed. Now you say, come!”
“Ah, but we have had some new visitors since then, and it is much more amusing.”
After which really impudent remark, Fenella leant back, and with a look of infantile innocence on her piquante face, indicated Jacynth.
“I want to make you two acquainted. I like my friends to like each other. Mr. Jacynth—Count de Mürger.”
The two men’s eyes met. Clitheroe’s gaze gravely observant, De Mürger momentarily taken aback, then bowing with gay readiness, as who should say, “A rival? Come on! measure swords.”
Next he looked across and started.
It was only a slight start, yet Castleton’s cheeks at once puffed with suppressed mirth. Lucille gave the faintest inclination of her handsome dark head. But Onslow, laying his arms on the table with a cool superiority that in a less well-bred man might be offensive, stared at his enemy full, not stirring a muscle.
The cut was direct, cutting De Mürger short in an instinctively begun bow of politely cold recognition. A brilliant smile instantly lightened the young Austrian’s face. He had suspected a trap, but now he knew his ground.
An awkward silence ensued. Then Castleton demanded, in nervous accents:
“What fish is this, waiter—eh?”