‘I am rather worried,’ said Noel, snatching at any opportunity to talk about himself as opposed to themselves. The others could not now be long in coming, until they did, the conversation must be kept on a safe level. He cursed Jasper for leaving them together, typical piece of spitefulness. ‘I am doubtful now whether I shall get that appointment in Vienna I told you of. My uncle, who has some influence there, is still trying hard to get it for me, and General von Pittshelm, an old friend of my parents, is pulling certain strings, I believe. All the same, it seems fairly hopeless – so much stands in the way.’
On hearing this Mrs Lace felt thankful that things had gone no farther between herself and Noel. She had begun to think during the calm, dull weeks which had succeeded the pageant that the penniless heir to a throne, which he was unlikely ever to ascend, would be a poor exchange for the solid comforts of the Lace home, although he might provide a sweet romance to while away a boring summer. It behoved her to be discreet.
‘You never came to say good-bye to me,’ she murmured, plaintively.
‘Darling, it wasn’t possible. If you only knew –’
‘I think I do. We must say good-bye here, then, I suppose. In public. It seems hard.’
‘But I shall come to Chalford again awfully soon, you know.’
‘It can never be the same. My husband – he knows something of our romance and suspects more. I have had a terrible time since you left.’
‘I say, not really? Is he – will he – I mean he hasn’t got anything on us, has he?’
‘My husband,’ said Mrs Lace, grandiloquently, ‘will forgive me everything. He has a noble character and moreover he loves me to distraction.’
‘Thank heaven!’ said Noel, ‘I mean – you know, darling, that I would love to carry you right away from Chalford for ever, but it isn’t possible in the circumstances. I am much too poor. Besides, I could never have taken you from your children; the thought of them would have come between us in the end. All the same, I shall love you for ever; you will always be the love of my life.’
‘And you,’ said Mrs Lace, ‘of mine.’
She looked up at him with her sideways glance that she supposed to be so alluring, and thought, as she used to think when he first came to Chalford, that his was an unromantic appearance. ‘More like a stockbroker than a king,’ she thought.
‘If you should ever happen to be passing through Vienna,’ he was saying, ‘you must look me up, if I go, and we will do the night clubs together if there are any, although I hear it is far from gay there now. A friend of mine who has just come back from there tells me that he is off to North Wales in search of amorous adventure – been reading Caradoc Evans, I suppose.
‘Ah!’ he cried, greatly relieved, ‘here come the others at last.’
A buzz of lively conversation could be heard approaching down the corridor. Mrs Lace took up a position by the window, twitching at her fox. She opened her eyes very wide and assumed an expression of romantic gloom.
The door burst open. Lady Marjorie, radiant and beautiful in white crêpe-de-chine with a huge black hat, appeared hand in hand with Mr Wilkins. She looked the very picture of happiness. Mr Wilkins looked the same as usual, except for his smart grey suit and buttonhole of a red carnation. Immediately after them came Lady Fitzpuglington, escorted by a well-known statesman and followed by a flock of smart and glittering young people, which included Poppy St Julien.
Lady Fitzpuglington, considering what her feelings must have been on the subject, had behaved extraordinarily well to Marjorie over this marriage. She had made three earth-shaking scenes about it, after which, seeing that nothing she could say would avail to alter the girl’s determination, she had given way with a good grace, merely stipulating that the wedding itself should be kept absolutely private, in order that the Duke of Dartford’s feelings might be spared as far as possible.
‘There’s nothing to be done,’ she told her brother. ‘Marjorie is of age and madly in love, therefore nothing I can say or do will stop her. We must make the best of a bad job and be thankful that divorce is such an easy matter in these days. Poor Mr Wilkins, of course, doesn’t want to marry her in the least, but there it is, poor man. Now, if Puggie had only taken my advice and left her a minor until the age of forty, how different it would all have been. We should at least have had some hold over the little idiot then.’
Her ladyship’s brother did not reply. He thought that the unlucky Fitzpuglington, floating as he had been, a six months’ corpse in the Atlantic when his daughter was born, might be excused for having failed to provide against her passion for Mr Wilkins. Lady Fitzpuglington was noted in the family as being an adept at loading her own responsibilities upon the shoulders of other people.
Mrs Lace noticed that the ladies of the party were not curtsying to Noel – even his hostess had not greeted him. She found this puzzling. Surely in London he did not preserve his incognito. Also she was very much annoyed when she saw that the other young women present were every bit as pretty as she. She thought their clothes excessively boring, however. They were all of the plainly tailored variety, consisting of little suits or crêpe-de-chine dresses covered by thin woollen coats. Mrs Lace only cared for fancy dress. She
