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"You have that already." She looked at him satirically. "Do you know you're a terrible humbug?" she said. "And are not you?" "No; I think I show myself very much as I really am." "Can a woman do that?" he said, with sudden moodiness. "It depends. Mrs. Ackroyde can and Lady Wrackley can't." "And Lady Sellingworth?" he asked. "I'm afraid she is a bit of a humbug," said Miss Van Tuyn, without venom.
Ackroyde led the way to the next table and sat down opposite to Craven. And they began to talk about people. Craven said very little. Since the arrival of the other quartet he had begun to feel sensitively uncomfortable. He realized that already his new friendship for Lady Sellingworth had "got about," though how he could not imagine.
She knew what people were saying of her in London. Although she was in deep mourning and could not go about, several women had been to see her. They had come to condole with her, and had managed to let her understand what people were murmuring. Lady Archie had been with her. Mrs. Birchington had looked in. And two days after Lady Sellingworth's visit to Coombe Dindie Ackroyde had called.
And he felt as if he were made of glass beneath those experienced and calmly investigating eyes, as he talked steadily about acting till the bell went for the second act, and Lady Sellingworth and Braybrooke returned to the box. "Come and see me," said Mrs. Ackroyde, getting up. "You never come near me. And come down to Coombe to lunch one Sunday." "Thank you very much. I will."
And she was no longer deeply interested in the gossip of a world in which formerly she had been one of the ruling spirits. She was, therefore, rather surprised at receiving a note from Mrs. Ackroyde soon after her return from Geneva urging her to motor to Coombe on the following Sunday for lunch. "I suppose there will be the usual crowd," Mrs. Ackroyde wrote.
But Craven now acted well, for women's keen eyes were upon him. Presently they got up to go to the theatre, leaving the other quartet behind them, quite willing to be late. "Moscovitch doesn't come on for some time," said Mrs. Ackroyde. "And we are only going to see him. The play is nothing extraordinary. Where are you sitting?" Braybrooke told her the number of their box.
Miss Van Tuyn and the members of the "old guard" went home to bed that night realizing that Lady Sellingworth had had "things" done to herself before she came out to the theatre party. "She's beginning again after how many years is it?" said Lady Wrackley to Mrs. Ackroyde in the motor as they drove away from Shaftesbury. "Ten," said Mrs.
She spoke without sentimentality, almost with a sort of scientific coldness as one stating facts not to be gainsaid. Mrs. Ackroyde said she liked the theory. It was such a comfortable one. Whenever she made a sidestep she would now be able to feel that she was driven to it by an inner necessity, planted in her family by the Immanent Will, or whatever it was that governed humanity.
Ackroyde, who was at the same table as Lady Sellingworth, with Lord Alfred Craydon on her right and Sir Robert Syng on her left, looked steadily round over the multitude of her guests with a comprehensive glance, the analyzing and summing-up glance of one to whom everything social was as an open book containing no secrets which her eyes did not read.
In the long drawing-room, with its four windows opening on to a terrace, from which Coombe Woods could be seen sunk in the misty winter, Lady Sellingworth found many cheerful people whom she knew. Mrs. Ackroyde gave her blunt, but kindly, greeting, with her strange eyes, fierce and remote, yet notably honest, taking in at a glance the results of Geneva.
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