Staring round with a vague half-smile at everybody
within nodding distance, Her Serene Highness made
one of her characteristic exits, which Lady Caroline
declared always reminded her of a scrambled egg slipping
off a piece of toast. At the entrance she stopped
for a moment to exchange a word or two with a young
man who had just arrived. From a corner where
he was momentarily hemmed in by a group of tea-consuming
dowagers, Comus recognised the newcomer as Courtenay
Youghal, and began slowly to labour his way towards
him. Youghal was not at the moment the person
whose society he most craved for in the world, but
there was at least the possibility that he might provide
an opportunity for a game of bridge, which was the
dominant desire of the moment. The young politician
was already surrounded by a group of friends and acquaintances,
and was evidently being made the recipient of a salvo
of congratulation— presumably on his recent
performances in the Foreign Office debate, Comus concluded.
But Youghal himself seemed to be announcing the event
with which the congratulations were connected.
Had some dramatic catastrophe overtaken the Government,
Comus wondered. And then, as he pressed nearer,
a chance word, the coupling of two names, told him
the news.
CHAPTER XI
After the momentous lunch at the Corridor Restaurant
Elaine had returned to Manchester Square (where she
was staying with one of her numerous aunts) in a frame
of mind that embraced a tangle of competing emotions.
In the first place she was conscious of a dominant
feeling of relief; in a moment of impetuosity, not
wholly uninfluenced by pique, she had settled the
problem which hours of hard thinking and serious heart-searching
had brought no nearer to solution, and, although she
felt just a little inclined to be scared at the headlong
manner of her final decision, she had now very little
doubt in her own mind that the decision had been the
right one. In fact the wonder seemed rather that
she should have been so long in doubt as to which
of her wooers really enjoyed her honest approval.
She had been in love, these many weeks past with
an imaginary Comus, but now that she had definitely
walked out of her dreamland she saw that nearly all
the qualities that had appealed to her on his behalf
had been absent from, or only fitfully present in,
the character of the real Comus. And now that
she had installed Youghal in the first place of her
affections he had rapidly acquired in her eyes some
of the qualities which ranked highest in her estimation.
Like the proverbial buyer she had the happy feminine
tendency of magnifying the worth of her possession
as soon as she had acquired it. And Courtenay
Youghal gave Elaine some justification for her sense
of having chosen wisely. Above all other things,
selfish and cynical though he might appear at times,
he was unfailingly courteous and considerate towards
her. That was a circumstance which would always
