“Oh Lord!” ejaculated Lady Susan, bringing her foot and the shovel down with a crash. “Do you mean to say there’s nothing to eat?”
“It’s not quite as bad as that, but precious nearly,” he replied, looking at her so deplorably that Slaney felt inclined to laugh. “We’re going to have some of the waiter’s dinner. It’s a leg of mutton, and he says he don’t think it’s quite boiled yet, but I said we wouldn’t wait.”
Lady Susan seized Major Bunbury’s hand, and pulled herself out of her chair. She was stalwart and tall, and her dress fitted beautifully. With a whisk and rustle of silk petticoats she was across the room and caught Miss Morris by the arm.
“Worry, worry, worry! Sess, sess, sess!” she said, with a sufficiently fortunate imitation of her father’s kennel huntsman. “Come on and eat raw leg of mutton! I _hope_ the waiter likes onion sauce!”
In the dining-room a genial fire was blazing; a soft and rich-coloured carpet glowed on the floor; the atmosphere was of old-fashioned comfort; there was a desirable smell of fried potatoes. The party sank into their places at an oval table, and to each was administered a plateful of pink mutton that grew rosier at every slice. Captain Hugh French, late of the ----th Hussars, looked round upon his guests, and felt that champagne was the only reparation in his power.
“I feel it’s all my fault bringing you people down here to starve. You’ll have to take it out in drink,” he said helplessly.
The words were addressed to the company, but his brown eyes, that were like the eyes of a good small dog, addressed themselves to those of his wife. Slaney, following them, wondered whether he could help seeing the black line frankly drawn along the edge of Lady Susan’s lower eyelids. The white glare from the snow showed it unsparingly, as she looked at her husband over the rim of the champagne glass from which she was drinking.
“Yes, darling, you’re a silly little thing,” she said blandly; “I always said that spill had given you softening of the brain.”
“What spill?” asked Slaney. It was almost the first time she had spoken. She had sat, inwardly scornful and outwardly shy, in the midst of conversation whose knack she could not catch, and whose purport she thought either babyish or vulgar. There must be an English and an Irish form of humour, so at least it seemed to Slaney, as she listened with the intolerance of the clever provincial to Lady Susan’s loud and ready laugh. Hugh, at all events, was not, she thanked Heaven, humorous in either manner. She found herself less of a fool when she was talking to Hugh.