CHAPTER XV THE CAPTURE OF MASTER BOBBY
As dinner-time approached, Alf found himself left alone while his companions slipped upstairs to change their flannels for uniform. He felt rather lonely and out of place. He wandered into the great hall and sat down in a large leather-covered armchair. But Barnby the butler was fussing about here, and his disapproving and contemptuous eye fixed on Alf's clothes was more than the sensitive Mr. Wentworth could bear. He therefore looked about for a more secluded spot, which he found in a little alcove behind some palms. Here he could see without being seen, so that he could give himself up undisturbed to his reflections. He hoped that Isobel would be the first to appear—then he could seize the opportunity and see her, for the first time, alone.
But the first person to appear was Denis Allen. He came downstairs quickly and looked about with an eager air. His face clouded with disappointment, and he picked up an evening paper and sat down in an armchair. He had hardly settled, however, when a Vision appeared at the top of the stair. He threw down his paper and sprang up.
Alf, in his alcove, stared with all his eyes. He had never seen Isobel in evening dress before, and she quite literally took his breath away. She had put on her favorite frock for Denis' benefit, and was looking radiant.
"Lumme!" said Alf softly to himself.
A new feeling began to stir inside him. Up till now he had accepted his quest of Isobel as one of the strange things which his mad, uncomfortable new life had brought to him. He had wanted her because both Bill and Eustace had made him feel that his duty to his new position demanded it. Now, to his own surprise, he found himself wanting her for himself. Social differences had suddenly ceased to count. The triumphant self-confidence of the afternoon was still with him. He was, for the time, drunk with the heady wine of success, and all things seemed possible to him.
She paused only for an instant at the stairhead, then she came down into the hall. Alf gazed and gazed, drinking in the grace of her movements with eyes that seemed only now for the first time to have learnt to see.
Alf stood up, trembling, and was on the point of leaving his retreat; but as Isobel reached the hall Allen took a couple of steps forward and after a quick glance round to make sure that they were unobserved, he caught Isobel in his arms and began to kiss her passionately. Alf had some hazy idea of rescuing beauty in distress; but he caught sight of Isobel's transfigured face and hastily fell back again into his alcove. Beauty had no desire to be rescued. Alf, with his house of cards in fragments about him, saw Isobel slip free of Allen's enthusiastic embrace.
"You mustn't, darling," she said softly—yet not so softly that Alf could not hear. "Somebody will be coming. Let's go into the garden."