She led him across to the three elderly ladies. He was her partner also for the present dance; but Muriel, throwing herself into a chair beside Lady Smith-Evered, told him that she would prefer not to take the floor. He glanced at the forbidding aspect of the three, and admired what he presumed to be her self-sacrifice in the interests of diplomacy.
“Rupert, my dear,” said the General’s wife, “do be an angel and bring us some ices.”
“What a willing little fellow he is,” murmured Mrs. Froscombe, as he hurried away on his errand, and there was a tone of derision in her voice.
“He’s always very helpful,” Lady Smith-Evered retorted, somewhat sharply, for he was her pet.
“I think he’s a dear,” said Muriel. “Nice manners are a tremendous asset. I hate churlishness.”
“I think you seldom meet with churlishness in Englishmen,” remarked Madam Pappadoulopolos. Her husband had told her to flatter the English whenever she could.
Muriel laughed. “I don’t know so much about that,” she replied. “On the veranda just now I met an Englishman who, to say the least, was not exactly courteous.”
“Oh, who was that?” asked her chaperone, with interest.
Lady Smith-Evered gave a gesture of impatience. “Oh, _that_ man!” she exclaimed. “He’s in Cairo again, is he? He’s an absolute outsider.”
“What is he?—What’s he do?” Muriel asked, desiring further particulars.
“Ah! That’s the mystery,” said Lady Smith-Evered, with a look of profound knowing. “Incidentally, my dear, he is said to keep a harîm of Bedouin women somewhere out in the desert. I shouldn’t be surprised if every night he beat them all soundly and sent them where the rhyme says.”
She laughed nastily, and Muriel made a grimace.
Lord Blair rose from his chair as the door opened, and removed from his thin, furtive nose a pair of large horn-rimmed spectacles which he always wore when quite alone in his study.
“Come in, come in, my dear Mr. Lane,” he exclaimed, taking a few blithe steps forward and shaking his visitor warmly by the hand. “I’m very well, thank you, very well indeed, and so are you, I see. That’s right, that’s good,—splendid! Dear me, what physique! What a picture of health! How did you get here so quickly?—do take a seat, do be seated. Yes, yes, to be sure! Have a cigar? Now, where did I put my cigars?”