“No, my lady. When Mr. Donnithorpe told me to come down here, I asked him about the name-cards, and he said he didn’t want them.”
“Let me see the list,” she said, recovering her languid manner.
“Certainly, my lady.” He handed her the paper. “The only reason I mentioned Lord Trevanion,” he continued, “was because I happen to know his lordship is one of the most particular men in England, and I couldn’t bear to have things done anyhow when he was dining at the house.”
She laughed in her charming way. “The blood’s on Mr. Donnithorpe’s head, not yours, Rolliter.”
Rolliter had been in her father’s service before she was born and had followed her, as butler, when she married.
“Thank you, my lady,” said he, retiring and leaving her with the list of guests.
It was an instructive and at the same time bewildering document. It contained the names of representatives of all the disgruntled and pacifist factions in England. No wonder Edgar dared not face the publicity of a club or restaurant dinner! No wonder he had lied to her about his guests. No wonder he had sent Rolliter to the country without writing out the cards. He wanted to hide the identity of his guests even from his butler! At each name a new shiver went down her back. Lord Trevanion, blatant millionaire Little Englander whom even the Radical Government of 1906 had joyfully allowed to purchase a peerage, so as to get him out of the House of Commons. There were Benskin and Pottinger and Atwater, members of a small Parliamentary gang who lost no opportunity of impeding the prosecution of the war. Lady Edna gasped. Finch of the Independent Labour Party. Was Edgar going mad? Samways, M.P. and Professor of History, pessimistic apostle of German efficiency and preacher of the hopelessness of the Allies’ struggle. Editors of pacifist organs—Featherstone, the most brilliant, whose cranky brain had made him the partisan of England’s enemies all through his journalistic career; Fordyce, snaky in his intellectual conceit; Riordan, dark and suspect. . . . There were others, politicians and publicists, self-proclaimed patriots and war-winners, but openly hostile to the Government. Altogether the most amazing crew that ever Minister of the Crown delighted to honour.
That the ultimate object of this gathering was the overthrowal of the Government there could be no doubt. How they were going to manage it was another matter. A rabble like that, thought Lady Edna scornfully, could not upset a nervous old lady. It looked rather like a preliminary meeting, held in secrecy, to start the network in which greater personalities should be enmeshed and involved. At any rate, on the part of Edgar Donnithorpe it was black treachery. The more she scanned the list the more did her soul sicken within her. It seemed intolerable that this pro-German orgy should take place in the house of which she was the mistress, while she remained here, fooled, with her little week-end party. She burned with vengeance against her husband.
It was half-past four. She stood in the drawing-room, which she had entered a few minutes before, leaving her guests on the lawn, in order to give some trivial order, and twisted the accusing paper in her hands, her lips thin, deep in thought. Presently into her eyes crept a smile of malice, and she went out of the French window and crossed the grass and joined her friends. There were only three, Colonel and Mrs. Barrington and Miss Delamere. A couple of men who were to have come down had providentially been detained in London.
“My dear people,” she said, smiling. “The war has spread to Moulsford. There’s nothing in the house for dinner. There’ll be heaps to-morrow, but none to-night.”