'Never come back! What nonsense are you talking?' said Lady John.
'Is it premonition of death, or don't you like us any more?' laughed her husband.
The little group trailed across the great room, escorting the guest to the front door, Lady John leading the way. As they passed, Geoffrey Stonor was obviously not listening very attentively to Jean's enthusiastic explanation of her plan for the afternoon. He kept his eyes lowered. They rested on the handkerchief he had picked up, but hardly as if, after all, they saw it, though he turned the filmy square from corner to corner with an air partly of nervousness, partly of abstraction.
He paused an instant. 'No. Yours,' he said, mechanically, and held out the handkerchief to Miss Levering.
She seemed not to hear. Lord John had blocked the door a moment, insisting on a date for the next visit. Jean caught up the handkerchief and went running forward with it. Suddenly she stopped, glancing down at the embroidered corner.
Stonor turned his back, and took up a magazine.
Lady John's voice sounded clear from the lobby. 'You must let Vida go, John, or she'll miss her train.'
'I didn't know her name was Vida; how did you?' said Jean.
Stonor bent his head silently over the book. Perhaps he hadn't heard. That deafening old gong was sounding for luncheon.
The last of the Trafalgar Square meetings was half over when the great chocolate-coloured motor, containing three persons besides the chauffeur, slowed up on the west side of the square. Neither of the two ladies in their all-enveloping veils was easily recognizable, still less the be-goggled countenance of the Hon. Geoffrey Stonor. When he took off his motor glasses, he did not turn down his dust collar. He even pulled farther over his eyes the peak of his linen cap.
By coming at all on this expedition, he had given Jean a signal proof of his desire to please her--but it was plain that he had no mind to see in the papers that he had been assisting at such a spectacle. While he gave instructions as to where the car should wait, Jean was staring at the vast crowd massed on the north side of the column. It extended back among the fountains, and even escaped on each side beyond the vigilance of the guardian lions. There were scores listening there who could not see the speakers even as well as could the occupants of the car. In front of the little row of women on the plinth a gaunt figure in brown serge was waving her arms. What she was saying was blurred in the general uproar.