Free A Fish Dinner in Memison - Zimiamvian Trilogy 02 by E. R. Eddison Page B

think. You've hardly seen him.'
    'I don't propose to discuss him,' said Lord Anmering, looking at her piercingly through his eye-glass: then fell silent, as if in debate whether or not to speak his mind. 'Look here, my darling,' he said, at last, with an upward flick of the eyebrow letting the eye-glass fall: 'It's just as well to have cards on the table. It has been my serious hope that you would one day marry Hugh Glanford. I'm not going to force it or say any more. But, things being as they are, it is as well to be plain about it.'
    'I should have thought it had been plain enough for some time. Hanging about us all the season: most of last winter, too. People beginning to talk, I should think.'
    'What rubbish.'
    'All the same, it was nice of you to tell me, Father. Have you been plain about it to him too?' 'He approached me some time ago.' 'And you gave him your—?'
    'I wished him luck. But naturally he understands that my girl must decide for herself in a thing like that.'
    'How very kind of him.' Mary began laughing. 'This is delightful: like the ballad:
    'He's teld her father and mither baith,
    As I hear sindry say,
    But he has nae teld the lass her sell,
    Till on her wedding day.'
    Her voice hardened: 'I wish I was twenty-one. Do as I liked, then. Marry the next man that asked me—" 'Mary, Mary—'
    '—So long as it wasn't Hugh.' Mary gave a little gulp and disappeared into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Her father, feet planted wide apart in the middle of her dressing room floor, waited, moodily polishing his eye-glass with a white silk pocket-handkerchief scented with eau de Cologne. In three minutes she was back again, radiantly mistress of herself, with a presence of mischief dimpling so elusively about mouth and eyes in her swimming towards him, that it were easier tell black from green in the rifle-bird's glinting neck, than tell whether in this peace-making she charmingly dispensed pardon or as charmingly sought it. 'Happy birthday?' she said, inclining her brow demurely for him to kiss. 'Must go down now, or people will be arriving.'
    Among the guests now assembling in the drawing-room Lessingham's arrival was with some such unnoted yet precise effect as follows the passing of a light cloud across the sun, or the coming of the sun full out again as the cloud shifts. Mary said, as they shook hands, 'You know Mr. Lessingham, Father? you remember he and Jim were at Eton together.'
    There was frost in Lord Anmering's greeting. ‘ I had forgotten that,' he said. 'When was it I met you last?'
    'About a year ago , sir', said Lessingham. ‘I’ ve been out of England.'
    ‘I think I remember. You've lived abroad a good deal?'
    'Yes, sir: on and off, these last seven years.'
    'What did you come home for?'
    Lessingham's eyes were grey: straight of gaze, but not easily read, and with a smoulder in the depths of them. He answered, 'To settle up some affairs.'
    'And so abroad again?'
    ‘I’ ve not decided yet.'
    'A rolling stone?'
    Lessingham smiled. 'Afraid I am, sir.'
    Jim joined them: 'Did I tell you, uncle, about Lessingham's running across some of your Gurkha porters when he was in India two or three years ago? that had climbed with you and Mr. Freshfield in Sikkim?'
    'You're a climber, then?' Lord Anmering said to Lessingham, looking him up and down: very tall, perhaps six foot three, black-haired, sunburnt but, as his forehead showed, naturally white and clear of skin, and with the look of one able to command both himself and others, as is not often seen a t that age of five and twenty. ‘I’ ve done a little.'
    'A lot,' said Jim. Lessingham shook his head. ‘ In the Himalaya?' said Lord Anmering. ‘ A little, sir.'
    ‘ A little!' said Jim: 'just listen how these mountaineers talk to each other! Twenty-two thousand feet he did once, on—what's the name of it?—one of the cubs of Nanga Parbat. A terrific thing; and pages about it at the time in the Alpine Journal Come,' he said, taking