As it was so late, an early lunch at the hotel was agreed upon, before starting. They passed into the restaurant. Here Isbel received an unpleasant shock. She recognised and was recognised by a girl acquaintance belonging to her particular set-Louie Lassells, who probably was more intimate with Blanche, Marshall, and the rest than with her own relations.
Louie was lunching with a couple of youngsters of the subaltern type; she seemed in the highest spirits, and champagne was already on the table. She pledged Isbel in a glass from the other side of the room. Presently she came over to her, her dark, bold, handsome, gypsy-like face looked very flushed and defiantly gay.
"So this is where you get to!" she began, throwing a single critical glance towards Mrs. Richborough and Judge.
"I'm not the only one, it appears," retaliated Isbel. She laid down her knife and fork, and looked up calmly. "You're having a high old time, obviously."
"Rather! We're making a day of it. Sorry I can't introduce you, but we're all here incog. I'm supposed to be in Regent Street at this blessed minute."
"Bravo! I'm supposed to be in Brighton. We'd better draw up a deed."
Louie laughed immoderately. "What shall we drink it in?" Her eye roved round the table. "What are you drinking? Only Burgundy?…I say…"-she bent to whisper-"you're not having much of a time, are you? Where did you dig them up?"
Mrs. Richborough unluckily overheard.
"Surely I know your face?" she remarked graciously to Louie, who still held on to the edge of the table. "Your name is just hovering on the tip of my tongue."
The girl smiled vaguely, without even looking at her. "One sees so many people. It's going to turn out a quite charming day, I think…Well, ta-ta, Isbel! No manner of use asking you to join us, of course?"
"You see, I can't."
Louie trod lightly back to her impatient squires, while Isbel watched with some amusement Mrs. Richborough's efforts to regain her composure.
"She seems a pleasant girl," remarked Judge.
"Is she a very close friend of yours?" inquired the widow of Isbel, returning, however, to her plate.
"We know each other fairly well."
"What an unfortunate coincidence that she should be lunching here to-day, of all days."
"Why?" asked Judge.
"Miss Loment rather wished to keep her visit private, I fancy. I'm afraid she is inclined to regard it in the light of an escapade."
"Is that really so, Miss Loment?"
"Naturally I have appearances to consider. However, it's no good crying over spilt milk if anyone splits, it won't be Louie."
"Quite sure?" asked Mrs. Richborough, with a smile which was almost a sneer.
"I hope I can trust my own friends to behave with common decency."
Judge looked perplexed. "I hope you're not here against your will?"
"Why should I come, if I hadn't wanted to? I'm a free agent."
"Can't you grasp, Mr. Judge? La tante terrible! Miss Loment is experiencing the fearful joy of being out of school."
"Clever, but unsound, Mrs. Richborough. I was thinking more of public opinion."
"You think you are acting unwisely?" asked Judge, wrinkling his forehead.
"Oh, I know if there's any doubt about it the judgement won't be given in my favour. Lunching in a strange town, with quite unknown people, strikes me as being exactly calculated t lead to a lot of questions being asked. And we know that if a question is uncharitable, the answer to it won't be otherwise. Even if I were to plead altruistic motives, I'm afraid it wouldn't be of any avail."
"Does that imply you're here out of kindness?"
"Perhaps it comes to that in the end. The pleasure of a chaperon is always rather impersonal."
"Of a chaperon, Miss Loment?
"Didn't you know? I'm chaperoning Mrs. Richborough. She made such a strong point of it that really I hadn't the heart to refuse. Otherwise, I didn't mean to come."
Judge's expression was one of absolute amazement.
"Here is some misunderstanding, evidently. Mrs. Richborough was kind enough to offer herself as chaperon to you, on learning that you were so anxious to see the house once more…"
The widow actually coloured, beneath her paint and powder. "Really, I'll never equivocate again as long as I live! Miss Loment seemed so unwilling to join us that there was positively nothing left to do except appeal to her sympathy…I feel an absolute criminal."
"Oh, it's funny, Mrs. Richborough!" said Isbel. "Don't start apologising or you'll spoil the joke."
"But surely, Miss Loment," said Judge, "you didn't for one minute imagine that I desired to fetch you all the way from Brighton merely to act as a companion to another lady? I must have made that clear in my letter."
"Oh, it's a mix-up, and that's all about it. Mrs. Richborough was obliging me, and I was under the impression that I was obliging her. When women start conferring favours on one another there's no end to the complications. To show our thorough disinterestedness, we stick at nothing."
"It must certainly have been a most confusing situation for both of you," remarked Judge, smiling at last "However, the main point is we've got you here, by fair means or foul; and I don't think you need be in the least afraid of tittle-tattle, as we are both highly respectable people. If might suggest a compromise, you had better terminate your dispute of generosity by agreeing to chaperon each other, since in the eyes of the world I am such a dangerous person.?
"Then what are we waiting for?" demanded Isbel cheerfully. "Lunch seems to be at an end."
They stayed for coffee, however, and then, while Judge went outside to prepare the car, Mrs. Richborough led the somewhat unwilling girl upstairs to her room, where for five unpleasant minutes she was forced to inhale an atmosphere almost nauseous with feminine perfume, while witnessing the elder woman's final applications of paint, powder, and salve. Refusing the use of these materials for herself, at the end ot that time she broke away, and went downstairs alone.
She found Judge promenading before the hotel. A rather embarrassed discussion of the weather began.
"Thanks for the letter!" said Isbel, quietly and suddenly.
"It was my hairpin."
"I decided as much; there's no one else it could have belonged to."
"Won't you tell me what was in that note you destroyed?"
"I can't-I can't. Say no more about it."
"Whose idea really was it, that I should come over to-day-yours or hers?"
"Mine, Miss Loment. She has nothing at all to do with the business. I am simply bringing her because you can't go with me alone."
"I'd rather it were anyone else. Who is she? Do you know anything about her?"
"Nothing, I fear, except that she's quite reputable…Don't you like her, then?"
"Not particularly-but we won't pay her the honour of talking about her…What are we to do to-day?
"I thought we could make a desperate effort to get this mystery cleared up, once for all…I fear we must both recognise that things can't go on in the way they're doing. It's unfair to both of us."
Isbel gave him a half-frightened glance. "What's to prevent us from finishing now? Why need we take a still deeper plunge-for that's what it amounts to…or does it? What do you think-shall we really ever get any satisfaction? I'm fearfully uncertain…"
"You place a great responsibility on my shoulders, Miss Loment…To be quite truthful, I feel I have no right to ask you to proceed further. I would not have written you as I did, except that I somehow had it firmly wedged in my head that the uncertainty was causing you great uneasiness…"