"Awful rot, isn't it?" queried Yelverton suddenly under cover of a roar
of laughter. "Why the dickens can't they talk quietly?"
"If you dislike it," she inquired unresentfully, "why do you come?"
"I beg pardon, Lady Brigit, I forgot that you belonged here; I always do
forget."
Then Joyselle turned to her, his face so eloquent that she felt like
warning him not to betray his secret. "I--I am so happy to be here," he
stammered.
Her very black, very well-drawn eyebrows drew a trifle closer together,
and with the quickness of his race he saw it.
"Forgive me, Lady Brigit," he said hastily in English. "I am sorry.
And--I will not say it again! Only----"
"Only--you _are_ glad? Well, I'm glad, too," she answered slowly. The
noisier the others grew as dinner progressed, the closer she and this
quiet-voiced boy seemed to draw together.
"Poor old Ponty, too bad he couldn't come," cried Mr. Newlyn, pecking,
sparrow-like, at a scrap of food on his plate. "Anything wrong, Lady
Kingsmead?"
"No, I don't think so. He telephoned just before dinner--_oh_!"
She broke off, and everyone turned towards the door as it opened noisily
to admit a stout, red-faced man, who stood hesitating on the threshold,
not as much apparently from shyness as from a kind of bodily stammer of
movement.
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