It was even a more dreary dinner-party than Moya had imagined.
Sir Ralph Sapson was amusing in his own way, but his own way was not Moya’s way. He was a stout, handsome, young man on the right side of thirty, immensely wealthy and, according to her father, immensely capable. Though there had been no definite arrangement it was understood, mainly by Lord Flanborough, that Sir Ralph desired a closer association with the Flanborough family than his directorships gave him.
The remainder of the guests were even less entertaining than Sir Ralph. There were three other members of the peerage. Old Lord Katstock who was a political lord who had once occupied a position as undersecretary in some forgotten administration, the Marquis of Cheddar who was a sporting lord and had theories on the Bruce Low system of breeding, Lord Dumburton who was a soldier lord, very poor and very wicked, unless rumour lied, and an assortment of directors which included Mr. Reginald Boltover who recognized Michael with a guilty start and took no interest whatever in his dinner but waited with bated breath for Michael to reveal his guilty secret. There were two or three ladies who gave Michael the impression that they had been dipped in diamonds by their herculean maids, there was a thin, dowdily dressed lady with a hooked nose.
(“Has the Duchess borrowed anything, Moya?” said Michael under his breath.
“Not from me,” said the girl significantly, “but father is rather susceptible. She’s an awfully good sort really, but I do wish she wouldn’t take snuff.”)
Michael knew, or was known to, them all.
“It’s a rum idea of yours, going into the police, Pretherston,” said Sir Ralph with that air of patronage which he reserved for people poorer than himself.
“It’s just as rum an idea as your going into trade and keeping shops,” said Michael.
Sir Ralph smiled indulgently.
“We have to do something to make an honest living,” he said. “I suppose the reference to the shops is my association with the Colonial Retail Stores. That makes a hundred thousand a year, Pretherston.”
“Then you have a hundred thousand reasons for selling bad jam,” said Michael; “I’ve given up buying things at your shops.”
“That is a tragedy,” said Sir Ralph with heavy humor. “Try us again and we will endeavour to merit your patronage.”
“I have another bone to pick with you,” said Michael.
He did not like Sir Ralph Sapson.
“I came up the other day from Seahampton, the railway carriage was beastly, hadn’t been cleaned for a month, and the train was fifty minutes late. The London and Seahampton is another of your profitable ventures isn’t it?”
“I am told that I have an interest in it,” said Sir Ralph, with a smile at the girl, “but, really, my dear Pretherston, when you find a railway so badly conducted you ought to complain to the police.”
This amused him so much that he laughed without restraint and was, as a result, compelled to explain his joke to fourteen people who were anxious to share it.
Michael had to leave early.
“I should dearly love to stay and play bridge with you,” he said.
“Michael, you are a little horrid, aren’t you?” asked the girl.
“Horrid?” he asked, puzzled.
“You are so practical, you weren’t always like that.”
“And you weren’t always unpractical,” he laughed.
She had hoped—she did not know exactly what she had hoped, but the new Michael was so unlike the old that she could almost have cried with vexation. Gone was the old recklessness, the old extravagance (save in directions annoying to her guests) and the old adoration which shone in his eyes. There was an unpleasant feeling that he was laughing at her all the time and that did not add to her happiness.
“I don’t think you’re nice, anyway,” she said; “won’t you come more often to see us?”
“When you lose a pearl necklace, or find the hired lady surreptitiously carrying off your provisions, drop a line to Inspector Michael Pretherston, Room 26, Scotland House and I will be with you in a jiffy.”
“By which I understand you don’t want to see us at all,” she said petulantly; “I am sorry I asked you tonight.”
“I, for my part, am very glad,” he said.
Later, when Michael had left, Sir Ralph was to find her a very unamusing companion, though why she should be annoyed with her sometime suitor only a woman can understand. She did not love him. In some ways she rather disliked him, and possibly the underlying reason for her inviting him at all, was in order to confirm and seal her indifference. If Michael had been in the least way attentive, had shown the slightest desire to recover the lost ground and to resume the old romance, she would have found an intense satisfaction in checking him and would have gone to bed that night happy in the knowledge that she had permanently attached to her one for whom she had not the slightest tenderness.
This is the way of women who, when offered a dish, a dress, a colour, a material or a man, invariably say, “I would like to see something else.”
Her abstraction was so marked that Sir Ralph thought she was ill, which instantly produced that headache which it is every woman’s privilege to adopt at a moment’s notice.
“You ought to take care of Moya, Flanborough,” he said to his host at parting, “she’s not at all well.”
“I have noticed it,” said the dutiful parent who had noticed nothing of the kind and had inwardly remarked that Moya was sulking about something. “You have an extraordinary eye for things of that kind, Sir Ralph.”
“I understand human beings,” admitted Sir Ralph, “it has been my one engrossing study in life. It is almost a vice with me. When a man comes into my office I can generally sum up his character, his business and his capabilities before he has opened his mouth.”
“It’s a great gift,” said Lord Flanborough
