A telephone is a very sensitive instrument. Miss Masterman was quite five miles away, but Gregory Porlock distinctly heard her catch her breath. He might have been mistaken, but he did not think so. The sound told him something which he wanted to know. It informed him that she was in her brother’s confidence. He had thought so, but it was always better to be quite sure of your ground.
When she came back presently and said that they would try to be down at the Grange by four o’clock, he was the delighted, genial host.
“Splendid! I hope you’ll like the party. All pleasant people, and one famous one. Leonard Carroll is coming, so we oughtn’t to be dull. Then there’s a very charming girl, Moira Lane. And the Totes-nice simple people. And some near neighbours thrown in. Well, all the best to your brother.”
Miss Masterman said, “Thank you,” and sounded as if she meant it.
Gregory Porlock hung up and burst out laughing.
Chapter III
Justin Leigh took Dorinda to one of those places which is just going to be the rage. When it actually did become the rage he would probably say it was vulgar and go somewhere else. He was a beautiful and immaculate young man on the opinionated side of thirty, with a job in the Ministry of Reconstruction. No one, to look at him, could have believed it possible that he had spent nearly six years in a more or less constant condition of being dirty, unshaved, and soaked to the skin, with excursions into being baked and frozen. There were also considerable periods when his immediate surroundings were going up in smoke. If you survived, it left you even filthier than before. All very incredible when you looked at the dark soigné young man with his air of careless elegance and the poise which always gave Dorinda a slight feeling of being back in the schoolroom. She didn’t give way to this feeling, because if you once let yourself start an inferiority complex with Justin, he would become simply intolerable, and that would be a pity because, umpteenth cousin or no, he was the only relation she had left.