Lord John stared. '_To-day?_ Why she only came late last night! What must she go back for, in the name of----'
'Well, _that_ I didn't ask her. But it must be something important, or she would stay and talk over the plans for the new Shelter.'
Farnborough had pulled out his cigarette case and stepped out through the window into the garden. But he went not as one who means to take a stroll and enjoy a smoke, rather as a man on a mission.
A few minutes after, the desultory conversation in the hall was arrested by the sound of voices near the windows.
They were in full view now--Vida Levering, hatless, a cool figure in pearl-grey with a red umbrella; St. John Greatorex, wearing a Panama hat, talking and gesticulating with a small book, in which his fingers still kept the place; Farnborough, a little supercilious, looking on.
'I protest! Good Lord! what are the women of this country coming to? I _protest_ against Miss Levering being carried indoors to discuss anything so revolting.'
As Lord John moved towards the window the vermilion disk of the umbrella closed and dropped like a poppy before it blooms. As the owner of it entered the hall, Greatorex followed in her wake, calling out--
'Bless my soul! what can a woman like you _know_ about such a thing?'
'Little enough,' said Miss Levering, smiling and scattering good-mornings.
'I should think so indeed!' He breathed a sigh of relief and recovered his waggishness. 'It's all this fellow Farnborough's wicked jealousy--routing us out of the summer-house where we were sitting, _perfectly_ happy--weren't we?'
He interrupted Lord John's inquiry as to the seriousness of Miss Levering's unpopular and mysterious programme for the afternoon. But the lady quietly confirmed it, and looked over her hostess's shoulder at the plan-sheet that Lady John was silently holding out between two extended hands.
'Haled indoors on a day like this'--Greatorex affected a mighty scorn of the document--'to talk about--Public Sanitation, forsooth! Why, God bless my soul, do you realize that's _drains_!'
'I'm dreadfully afraid it is,' said Miss Levering, smiling down at the architectural drawing.
'And we in the act of discussing Italian literature!' Greatorex held out the little book with an air of comic despair. 'Perhaps you'll tell me that isn't a more savoury topic for a lady.'