CHAPTER VI There was the faint sound of a distant door's opening, and there was a glimpse of the old butler. But before he could reach the French window with his announcement, his own colourless presence was masked, wiped out--not as the company had expected by the apparition of a man, but by a tall, lightly-moving young woman with golden-brown eyes, and wearing a golden-brown gown that had touches of wallflower red and gold on the short jacket. There were only wallflowers in the small leaf-green toque, and except for the sable boa in her hand (which so suddenly it was too warm to wear) no single thing about her could at all adequately account for the air of what, for lack of a better term, may be called accessory elegance that pervaded the golden-brown vision, taking the low sunlight on her face and smiling as she stepped through the window. It was no small tribute to the lady had she but known it, that her coming was not received nor even felt as an anti-climax. As she came forward, all about her rose a significant Babel: 'Here's Miss Levering!' 'It's Vida!' 'Oh, how do you _do_!'--the frou-frou of swishing skirts, the scrape of chairs pushed back over stone flags, and the greeting of the host and hostess, cordial to the point of affection--the various handshakings, the discreet winding through the groups of a footman with a fresh teapot, the Bedlington's first attack of barking merged in tail-wagging upon pleased recognition of a friend; and a final settling down again about the tea-table with the air full of scraps of talk and unfinished questions. 'You didn't see anything of my brother and his wife?' asked Lord Borrodaile. 'Oh, yes,' his host suddenly remembered. 'I thought the Freddys were coming by that four-thirty as well as----' 'No--nobody but me.' She threw her many-tailed boa on the back of the chair that Paul Filey had drawn up for her between the hostess and the place where Borrodaile had been sitting. 'There are two more good trains before dinner----' began Lord John. 'Oh, didn't I tell you,' said his wife, as she gave the cup just filled for the new-comer into the nearest of the outstretched hands--'didn't I tell you I had a note from Mrs. Freddy by the afternoon post? They aren't coming.' Out of a little chorus of regret, came Borrodaile's slightly mocking, 'Anything wrong with the precious children?' 'She didn't mention the children--nor much of anything else--just a hurried line.' 'The children were as merry as grigs yesterday,' said Vida, looking at their uncle across the table. 'I went on to the Freddys' after the Royal Academy. No!' she put her cup down suddenly. 'Nobody is to ask me how I like my own picture! The Tunbridge children----' 'That thing Hoyle has done of you,' said Lord Borrodaile, deliberately, 'is a very brilliant and a very misleading performance.' 'Thank you.' Filey and Lord John, in spite of her interdiction, were pursuing the subject of the much-discussed portrait.