‘I have lived abroad a great deal, Lady Renshaw.’ As she spoke these words she rose abruptly and crossed to the other side of the room. ‘This woman is insufferable,’ she said to herself. ‘She must have some motive for her questions. What can it be?’
‘There’s something in her life she wants to hide. I scent a mystery,’ remarked Lady Renshaw to herself with a fine sense of complacency.
Miss Wynter had again become absorbed in furtively watching Mr Dulcimer. ‘Poor Dick, how sanctimonious he looks! But then, to be sure, he’s the son of a bishop!’ she whispered to herself with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
Next moment the door was opened, and in came Miss Gaisford and Miss Loraine. At the sight of strangers they stopped suddenly. Madame De Vigne came forward. Lady Renshaw and Miss Wynter rose.
‘Lady Renshaw—Miss Wynter—permit me to introduce to you Miss Gaisford and my sister, Miss Loraine.—Penelope, Clarice—Lady Renshaw and her niece, Miss Wynter—friends of Mr Ridsdale.’
The two girls shot a critical glance at each other, as girls always do when they are introduced.
‘The girl Archie’s engaged to!’ remarked Bella under her breath. ‘Well, she’s awfully handsome; nobody can deny that. I suppose that by the side of her I look a regular gipsy. That gown she’s got on was never made in town. Quite a country cut. But how well she carries it off.’
‘What a very pretty girl!’ was Clarice’s unspoken comment. ‘Only I never remember hearing Archie mention her name.’
As Lady Renshaw peered at Clarice through her eyeglass she instinctively felt that if young Ridsdale were really engaged to this splendid young creature, any hopes she might have cherished of winning him away from her side were likely to end in smoke. She at once admitted to herself that whatever pictures of the two sisters she might previously have drawn in her mind’s eye were totally unlike the reality. If these women were adventuresses, they certainly didn’t look it, so far as her experiences of such beings went. None the less did it seem certain that Archie was being inveigled into a marriage against which his father would no doubt resolutely set his face. There was no knowing what strange turn Fortune’s wheel might bring about. Meanwhile she must watch and wait and keep her own counsel.
‘May I be permitted to assume, dear Madame De Vigne, that, with the exception of Mr Ridsdale, your little party is now complete?’ queried her ladyship.