Part 13 (1/2)

”I was asleep then; and I' with?” she enquired with unabashed interest

”Oh, nobody that matters! What is it, Lady Barbara? What do you want, Ito me?”

”At the proper ti a little bit tiresome”

There was a short pause; then a crestfallen voice ize”

”Lady Barbara!” he cried

There was only a dull click, a silence and then a brisk nasal voice saying, ”Number, please?”

Eric strode wrathfully back to the coffee-rooirl,” hetheir bills, so he abandoned his cheese and walked upstairs with theardens of Buckingham Palace While the others drank their coffee, he tried to write a very short, very si He had torn up four unsatisfactory drafts when Lord Ettrick threay his cigar and asked whether any one alking towards the Privy Council

”I' one note,” Eric answered

What he was always in danger of forgetting was that Barbara was really only a child; she had begun to speak with a delightful ripple of laughter, and he had driven it fro hurt, so and slapped the sive me_,” he wrote ”_I didn'twhether to send his letter by hand, Eric ascertained that, by posting it, he could be sure of its reaching its destination by the last delivery Then he walked through the Park with Lord Ettrick, left him at the door of the Privy Council Office and returned hoency, he came back to Ryder Street and dressed for dinner His own letters clattered into their wire cage at a quarter past eight, and, before sitting down to dinner, he transferred the telephone to his dining-room The child was unlikely to refuse so open an invitation to ring up and say that all ell

There was no call during dinner, no call as he worked in the s-room with the telephone and lah he lay reading for half-an-hour after his usual tiht a pencilled note (”Surprisingly tidy hand,” Eric co what she's like”), instinct with a new aloofness and restraint ”_After your refreshi+ngly plain hint that I was a nuisance to you, I determined that you should not have occasion to suffer from my importunity You may lunch with us on Saturday, if you like And I shall be very glad indeed to see you, but youthis to please me

I SAY as you THINK: that I have no claiently and tossed the note into a despatch-box before ringing for his secretary He must be age, he found that Barbara had named no hour; which was characteristic of her When he telephoned to the house, there was no anshich--by no great stretch of calumny--was characteristic of the house in which she lived Ninety per cent of the people that he knew lunched at half-past one, excluding a Cabinet Minister, who lunched punctually at a quarter past two, and three Treasury clerks and one novelist who lunched at one; accordingly, at half-past one, he presented himself in Berkeley Square, to be informed by a sedately combative butler that luncheon was at two o'clock but that Barbara was believed to be in her roohts of marble stairs and was shewn into the untidiest room that he had ever seen, filled in equal s of Riviere rubbed shoulders with tattered paper-backs; a cabinet of japanese porcelain was outraged by foolish, intrusive china cats; there was a shelf of Waterford glass with a dynasty of blown-glass pigs, descending froh parent to the thued in a serpentine procession

Fifty kinds of trophy adorned thefrom a West African idol at one end to a pathetic, brown-eyed Teddy Bear at the other, with stiff, conventional photographs and occasional nized his own silver flask--and passed on, with a smile Three small tables were almost buried beneath their load of pink carnations; a box of cigarettes, half-open and half-empty, lay tucked between the cushi+ons in each of three ar was littered with _The Times_, a round milliner's box, two cheque-books and a volume of Ronsard

The butler looked dispassionately at the confusion and withdrew, giving it up as a hopeless task A moment later he returned to inform Eric that her ladyshi+p would be with him immediately Ten minutes later Barbara ca his way through the disorder and exa her books and pictures

”I didn't expect you so early,” she began ”Will you give me a little kiss, or am I still a nuisance?”

”You didn't say any time, so I chanced half-past one,” Eric answered

”If you'd told me to come at two, you'd still have been ten h ”Lady Barbara, your conception of tidiness----”