"I have no conscientious scruples about matrimony in the abstract," parried Chilminster.
"But I have. I object altogether to the paragraph. I resent it."
"Then you did not insert it?"
"I insert it? I?" flamed Jeannette. She drew herself up as haughtily as a pretty woman can under the disadvantage of being seated in a yielding easy chair. "Do you mean to assert, Lord Chilminster, that I——?"
She was interrupted by the entrance of the butler.
"Luncheon is served, my lord," he announced.
"You will take off your coat?"
Lord Chilminster turned to Miss Urmy, and advanced a step in anticipation. The butler—with a well-trained butler's promptness—was behind her, and before she could frame a word of objection, the fur-lined garment had slipped from her shoulders.
Thus must martyrs have marched to the stake, was one of Jeannette's bewildered reflections as she preceded her host out of the room, and, as in a dream, found herself a few minutes later facing him across the luncheon table. Outwardly, the meal proceeded in well-ordered calm. Lord Chilminster made no further reference to the debatable topic; only talked lightly and pleasantly on a variety of non-committal subjects.
As the lady's host that, of course, was the only attitude he could adopt; but the fact remains that he did so de bonne volonté. Perhaps because, so far, he had scored more points than his opponent in the morning's encounter; perhaps, also, because of her undeniable good looks, his irritation, due to the circumstances that had prompted that encounter, began to lessen with truites en papilotte, was almost forgotten in face of a mousse de volaille, and entirely vanished among asperges vertes mousseline.