Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/275

 “He will come,” said Phyllida. At a quarter past nine Ruth was merciful enough to allow her guests to have a little food—one of those meals where, as my boy said very wittily, “everything was cold except the ice.” A hideous dinner! I am not now referring to the food, but to the atmosphere. Phyllida refused to come in; Brackenbury wavered and wobbled, now going out to her, now coming back. . . And the one not very interesting topic of conversation: what had happened to Colonel Butler. By ten o’clock most of us had made up our minds that he was not coming. . . By eleven I really believe some were wondering whether he had ever intended to come. He had invited himself, it is true. Or so we were told. But it really seemed as though the initiative came from Phyllida, that she might be forcing his hand, that he had suggested coming really as a means of ending the discussion at my dance. I did not know what letters had passed between them since. She might have been pressing and pressing him until he at last consented to come; then he may have seen that, once at the Hall, he would not be allowed to escape a second time. He may have invited himself with the reservation that he would stop away at the last moment and say that he had