"
"My dear Mrs. Van Stuyler," he replied, as he filled his own coffee cup,
"I quite agree with you as to certain fates, but the Fates which I mean
are the ones which, with good or bad reason, I think are working on my
side. Besides, I _do_ know all the circumstances, or at least the most
important of them. That knowledge is, in fact, my principal excuse for
bringing you so unceremoniously above the clouds."
As he said this he took a sideway glance at Miss Zaidie. She dropped her
eyelids and went on eating her bread and butter; but there was a little
deepening of the flush on her cheeks which was to him as the first flush
of sunrise to a benighted wanderer.
There was a rather awkward silence after this. Miss Zaidie stirred the
coffee in her cup with a dainty Queen Anne spoon, and seemed to
concentrate the whole of her attention upon the operation. Then Mrs. Van
Stuyler took a sip out of her cup and said:
"But really, Lord Redgrave, I feel that I must ask you whether you think
that what you have done during the last few minutes (which already, I
assure you, seem hours to me) is--well, quite in accordance with
the--what shall I say--ah, the rules that we have been accustomed to
live under?"
Lord Redgrave looked at Miss Zaidie again. She didn't even raise her
eyelids, only a very slight tremor of her hand as she raised her cup to
her lips told that she was even listening.
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