‘Dearest George—what a charming surprise!’
And she advanced, preparing to bestow on him a chastely maternal kiss. But the boy avoided it dexterously, and bent low over her hand, just not touching it with his lips instead. Her ladyship, as I judged by her rising colour, was not insensible to the slight though she rattled on gaily enough.
‘And our good Mr. Brownlow too! How really delightful! Surprise on surprise. But, George’⸺
Her tone changed, a note of anxiety, real or assumed, piercing the playfulness, not to say levity, of it.
‘Is anything wrong? You look positively ghastly, my poor child—as white as a sheet. Tell me—nothing is the matter—nothing serious?’
‘Oh dear, no,’ Hartover answered. ‘Nothing serious is ever the matter in our family, is it? We bask in perpetual sunshine, are clothed in scarlet with other delights, fare sumptuously every day and all the rest of it. Serious? Of course not. What could touch us?’
Lady Longmoor smiled, raising her eyebrows and throwing me a meaning glance. She believed, or pretended to believe, the boy was not sober, and wished me to know as much.
‘If it amuses you to talk nonsense, do so by all means,’ she said. ‘Only I am afraid you will have to forgive my not stopping here very long to listen to it, for I am simply expiring of fatigue’—she stifled a neat little yawn—‘and want to go quietly to bed.’
‘I am sorry,’ Hartover answered courteously, ‘if I have been inconsiderate. But I thought you might care to have some news of my father. I am just back from Bath.’