"Who shot you?" asked Lady Bellingdown, with the well-bred interest of a well-bred hostess. "Were you badly shot?"
When gentlemen go shooting, to be shot is so common that no one very much minds. Even Sir George's wife, loving him as she did, managed to preserve a stoical silence. To have appeared upset would have been very bad form.
"I don't know," answered the victim. "I don't know who shot me. I was ahead with Donty Down, and I heard Donty yell, and then--there I was peppered. He vows he saw the shot coming."
"How amusing!" cried the duke, delighted. "It is amusing. Donty's always funny."
The door creaked beyond and the butler came tumbling forward to whisper: "Sir Caryll Carleigh."
Then he was really there before them--the hero of the biggest harvest of talk in recent years.
There had been nothing like it since the memorable day when Nina came back from India under the protection of her cousin, the viscount, and every one had a different version of everything.
He was very pale, a slender, brown-eyed youth with his underlip twitching nervously. To all appearances he was quite scared. Still, he certainly was really there.
Naturally there was a flutter--a perfectly visible flutter--for had it not been repeatedly and authoritatively stated that this love-wreck would never be repaired and float in his own especial "swim" again?
Grenfell and the icy coast of Labrador perhaps, or a government berth in Manchuria--but never home society again. Never, never!
And now he was here. His aunt, Lady Bellingdown, hurried forward, her hands extended.
"My dear Caryll! _So_ glad to see you again. You know every one here, I'm sure. We're all _so_ glad to see you. _So_ glad, you know."
He bent and kissed her hand very prettily. Then he bravely cast his big, dark eyes over the rest of the group, taking them all in, individually as well as collectively.
He knew them, every one. Yes, they were all kinsfolk or friends, whose wedding presents he had returned a month before.
It was a trying pair of seconds, through which the duke's seed-cake cheeped like a canary.
"Did you come straight from town?" Waltheof asked in a carefully careless tone. Then he remembered. Very stupid of him; but now too late to mend.
