Page:No More Parades (Albert & Charles Boni).djvu/187

 Father Consett in heaven! She was fairly sure that Father Consett—and quite possibly other of the heavenly powers—wanted Christopher not to be worried, so that he could get on with the war—or because he was a good sort of dullish man such as the heavenly authorities are apt to like Something like that

She was by that time fairly calm again. You cannot keep up fits of emotion by the hour: at any rate, with her, the fits of emotion were periodical and unexpected, though her colder passion remained always the same Thus, when Christopher had come into Lady Sachse's that afternoon, she had been perfectly calm. He had mooned through a number of officers, both French and English, in a great octagonal, bluish salon where Lady Sachse gave her teas, and had come to her side with just a nod—the merest inflexion of the head! Perowne had melted away somewhere behind the disagreeable duchess. The general, very splendid and white-headed and scarlet-tipped and gilt, had also borne down upon her at that At the sight of Perowne with her he had been sniffing and snorting whilst he talked to the young nobleman—a dark fellow in blue with a new belt who seemed just a shade too theatrical, he being chauffeur to a marshal of France and first cousin and nearest relative, except for parents and grandparents, of the prospective bride

The general had told her that he was running the show pretty strong on purpose because he thought it might do something to cement the Entente Cordiale. But it did not seem to be doing it. The French—officers, soldiers and women—kept pretty well all on the one side of the room—the English on the other. The