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"Our friend is rather too much of a professed conversationalist." "You also have a comfortable seat which possibly you would have had to give up to your guest," said Auriol. "How you know me, my dear," said I, and we rolled along very happily. I think it was one of the pleasantest days I have ever passed in the course of a carefully spent life. Auriol was at her best.
His face painted red and white was made up into an idiot grin. He opened his mouth at the audience, who applauded mildly. Lady Auriol still sat in her bemused attitude of suspense. I watched her perplexedly for a second or two, and then I saw she had not recognized him. I said: "That's Lackaday." She gasped.
Bridge, the monomania which tainted Sir Julius Verity-Stewart's courtly soul, pinned Lady Auriol down to the green-covered table for the rest of the evening. But the next day she set herself to satisfy her entirely unreprehensible curiosity concerning Colonel Lackaday.
"Mais, mon cher ami," said Lackaday, "you haven't answered my question. What are you doing here in Clermont-Ferrand?" "Didn't I write to you?" "No " I hadn't. I had meant to just as I had meant to write to Auriol Dayne.
The boy smiled reassurance. She had only gone for a walk. I breathed freely. It would have been just like her to go off by the first train. I suffered my treatment, drank my glasses of horrible water and again enquired at the hotel for Lady Auriol. She had not yet returned.
That the President and Council of Bombay did remonstrate against what they called the enormous amount of the charges of the rice with which they wore supplied, which they state to be nine rupees a bag at Calcutta, when they themselves could have contracted for its delivery at Bombay, free of all risk and charges, at five rupees and three sixteenths per bag; and that even at Madras, where the distress and demand was greatest, the supplies of grain by private traders, charged to the Company, were nineteen per cent cheaper than that supplied by the said Auriol, exclusive of the risk of the sea and of capture by the enemy.
"There'll be champagne for dinner and I'm coming down," she cried and fled like a doe to the house. At the threshold of the drawing-room she turned. "Does Cousin Auriol know?" "Nobody knows," I said. She shouted: "Good egg!" and disappeared. I turned to the frowning and embarrassed Lackaday. "Your modesty doesn't appreciate the pleasure that news will give all those dear people.
This white-haired, luminous-eyed ascetic he drank but an orangeade through post-war straws had kept us spellbound with his talk. I glanced at Auriol and read compliance in her eye. "Will you accompany us ignorant people and act as cicerone?" "With all the pleasure in life," said Bakkus. "What time shall we start?" "Would ten be too early?" "Lady Auriol and I are old campaigners."
"That's all done with." "My dear, distinguished idiot," said I. "It can never be," he declared with an air of finality. "You'll break Bakkus's heart." "Sorry," said he. "You'll break mine." "Sorrier still. No, no, my dear friend," he said gently, "don't let us talk about that any more." After he had gone I experienced a severe attack of anticlimax, and feeling lonely I wrote to Lady Auriol.
Auriol buttoned the collar of her burberry and smiled through her veil. "It's like old times." "Old times be anythinged," said I, vainly trying to find comfort on six inches of rough boarding. "It's awfully good of you to come, Tony," she said after a while. "You can't think what a help it is to have you with me."
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