Millie Splay and the others round the table, with the exception of one person, laughed.  To that one person, Sir Chichester here turned good-humouredly: 

“All right, you can turn your nose up, Joan.  It seems extraordinary to you that I should like to see my name in print.  I can tell you something more extraordinary than that.  The public likes it too.  Just because I am not a public character, every reference to me must be of an exclusively personal kind.  And that’s just the sort of reference which the public eats.  It is much more thrilled by the simple announcement that a Sir Chichester Splay, of whom it has never heard, has bought a new pair of purple socks with white stripes than it would be by a full account of a Cabinet crisis.”

Once more the company laughed at Sir Chichester’s apology for his foible.

Lady Splay turned to Hillyard.

“And who is the ingenious man who discovered this way of keeping the peace at Senga?”

Hillyard suddenly hesitated.

“A great friend of mine,” he answered with his eyes on Millie Splay’s face.  “He was with me at Oxford.  A Captain Luttrell.”

But it was clear almost at once that the name had no associations in Lady Splay’s mind.  She preferred to entertain her friends in the country than to live in town.  She knew little of what gossip might run the streets of London; and since Luttrell was, as yet, like Sir Chichester, in that he was not a public character, there had been no wide-run gossip about Stella Croyle or himself which Millicent Splay was likely to meet.

Hillyard thought at first, that with a woman’s self-control she turned a blank face to him of a set purpose.  But one little movement of hers reassured him.  Her eyes turned towards Joan Whitworth, as though asking whether this Harry Luttrell was a match for her, and she said: 

“You must bring your friend down to see us, when he comes back to England.  We are almost acquainted as it is.”

No!  Millicent Splay did not connect Harry Luttrell with Stella Croyle.  It would have been better if Hillyard, that very night, had enlightened her.  But he was neither a gossip nor a meddler.  It was not possible that he should.

CHAPTER X

THE SUMMONS

It is curious to recollect how smoothly the surface water ran during that last week of peace.  Debates there were, of course, and much argument across the table.  It was recognised that great changes, social, economic, military, would come and great adaptations have to be made.  But, meanwhile, to use the phrase which was soon to be familiar in half a million mouths, people carried on.  The Brown couple, for instance.  Each morning they set out gaily, certain of three or four nice wins; each evening they returned after a day which was “simply awful.”  Harold Jupp was at hand with his unfailing remedy.

“We’ll go jumping in the winter and get it all back easily.  Flat racing’s no good for the poor.  The Lords don’t come jumping.”