way informed his fair audience that he was sure that it was Mrs. Talmage Eglinton’s jobbed landau that had wrought the mischief, and that she herself was in it at the time. It was the same vehicle which he had found at his own door on reaching home ten minutes ago, and to which he had just conducted her.
“Funny that she should be so secretive about it,” said Mrs. Sadgrove, reflectively. “It’s the sort of thing that most women, coming fresh from the scene, would have been full of—especially as it must have been the coachman’s fault, and not her own.”
“Exactly,” was the General’s curt comment.
“She’s a—a creature,’ Sybil Hanbury exclaimed, viciously. “Thank goodness, I don’t know her; but I’ve heard all about her from Alec. The poor boy can’t abide her; she makes eyes at him so unblushingly.”
“Then we can appreciate your sentiments about her,” remarked the General with the flicker of a smile. “How did we come to know this lady?” he added to his wife.
Mrs. Sadgrove explained that she had been asked as a favor to call on Mrs. Talmage Eglinton by a mutual acquaintance, a certain Lady Roseville, but had regretted it ever since.
[68]
