Mr. Barton was waiting patiently for us in the white drawing-room, and we had not been munching muffins for five minutes when the sound of wheels crunching the gravel of the great sweep—the windows of this room look out that way—interrupted our manufactured conversation. “This must be Bob arriving,” Mr. Carruthers[45] said, and went reluctantly into the hall to meet his guest. [45] They came back together presently, and he introduced Lord Robert to me. I felt at once he was rather a pet! Such a shape! Just like the Apollo of Belvidere! I do love that look, with a tiny waist and nice shoulders, and looking as if he were as lithe as a snake, and yet could break pokers in half like Mr. Rochester in “Jane Eyre”! He has great, big, sleepy eyes of blue, and rather a plaintive expression, and a little fairish moustache turned up at the corners, and the nicest mouth one ever saw, and when you see him moving, and the back of his head, it makes you think all the time of a beautifully groomed thoroughbred horse. I don’t know why. At once—in a minute—when we looked at one another, I felt I should like “Bob”! He has none of Mr. Carruthers’ cynical, hard, expression, and I am sure he can’t be nearly as old, not more than twenty-seven, or so. He seemed perfectly at home, sat down and had tea, and talked in the most casual, friendly[46] way. Mr. Carruthers appeared to freeze up, Mr. Barton got more banal—and the whole thing entertained me immensely. [46] I often used to long for adventures in the old days with Mrs. Carruthers, and here I am really having them! Such a situation! I am sure people would think it most improper! I alone in the house with these three men! I felt I really would have to go—but where! Meanwhile I have every intention of amusing myself! Lord Robert and I seemed to have a hundred things to say to one another. I do like his voice—and he is so perfectly sans gêne, it makes no difficulties. By the end of tea we were as old friends. Mr. Carruthers got more and more polite, and stiff, and finally jumped up and hurried his guest off to the smoking-room. I put on such a duck of a frock for dinner, one of the sweetest chastened simplicity, in black, showing peeps of skin through the thin
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