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.

"Ponty!"

"Awfully sorry, Tony," explained Lord Pontefract, advancing towards his
hostess, "awfully sorry, but that idiot Hendricks got a telephone