Sir Charles seemed bored and uncomfortable; he kissed his three exquisite bits of Dresden china, so like and yet unlike himself--they have Lady Ver's complexion, but brown eyes and golden hair like his.
"Yes; ask Harbottle for the packages," he said. "I have no time to talk to you. Tell your mother I will be in for lunch," and making excuses to me for leaving so abruptly--an appointment in the City--he shuffled out of the room.
I wonder how Lady Ver makes his heart beat! I don't wonder she prefers--Lord Robert.
"Why is papa's nose so red?" said Yseult.
"Hush!" implored Mildred. "Poor papa has come off the sea."
"I don't love papa," said Corisande, the middle one. "He's cross, and sometimes he makes darling mummie cry."
"We must always love papa," chanted Mildred, in a lesson voice. "We must always love our parents, and grandmamma, and grandpapa, and aunts and cousins--amen." The "amen" slipped out unawares, and she looked confused, and corrected herself when she had said it.
"Let's find Harbottle. Harbottle is papa's valet," Corisande said, "and he is much thoughtfuller than papa. Last time he brought me a Highland boy doll, though papa had forgotten I asked for it."
They all three went out of the room, first kissing me, and courtesying sweetly when they got to the door. They are never rude or boisterous, the three angels--I love them.
Left alone, I did feel like a dead fish. The column "London Day by Day" caught my eye in the Daily Telegraph, and I idly glanced down it, not taking in the sense of the words, until "The Duke of Torquilstone has arrived at Vavasour House, St. James's, from abroad," I read.
Well, what did it matter to me--what did anything matter to me?--Lord Robert had met us in the hall again, as we were coming out of the opera; he looked very pale, and he apologized to Lady Ver for his abrupt departure. He had got a chill, he said, and had gone to have a glass of brandy, and was all right now, and would we not come to supper, and various other empressé things, looking at her with the greatest devotion. I might not have existed.
She was capricious, as she sometimes is. "No, Robert, I am going home to bed. I have got a chill, too," she said.
And the footman announcing the electric at that moment, we flew off and left them, Christopher having fastened my sable collar with an air of possession which would have irritated me beyond words at another time, but I felt cold and dead, and utterly numb.