George, meanwhile, across the table, was also having a little
difficulty in adjusting his faculties to the progress of events. He
had given up trying to imagine why he had been invited to this
dinner, and was now endeavouring to find some theory which would
square with the fact of Billie Dore being at the castle. At
precisely this hour Billie, by rights, should have been putting the
finishing touches on her make-up in a second-floor dressing-room at
the Regal. Yet there she sat, very much at her ease in this
aristocratic company, so quietly and unobtrusively dressed in some
black stuff that at first he had scarcely recognized her. She was
talking to the Bishop. . .
The voice of Keggs at his elbow broke in on his reverie.
"Sherry or 'ock, sir?"
George could not have explained why this reminder of the butler's
presence should have made him feel better, but it did. There was
something solid and tranquilizing about Keggs. He had noticed it
before. For the first time the sensation of having been smitten
over the head with some blunt instrument began to abate. It was as
if Keggs by the mere intonation of his voice had said, "All this
no doubt seems very strange and unusual to you, but feel no alarm!
I am here!"
George began to sit up and take notice. A cloud seemed to have
cleared from his brain. He found himself looking on his
fellow-diners as individuals rather than as a confused mass. The
prophet Daniel, after the initial embarrassment of finding himself
in the society of the lions had passed away, must have experienced
a somewhat similar sensation.
He began to sort these people out and label them. There had been
introductions in the drawing-room, but they had left him with a
bewildered sense of having heard somebody recite a page from
Burke's peerage. Not since that day in the free library in London,
when he had dived into that fascinating volume in order to discover
Maud's identity, had he undergone such a rain of titles. He now
took stock, to ascertain how many of these people he could
identify.
The stock-taking was an absolute failure. Of all those present the
only individuals he could swear to were his own personal little
playmates with whom he had sported in other surroundings. There was
Lord Belpher, for instance, eyeing him with a hostility that could
hardly be called veiled. There was Lord Marshmoreton at the head of
the table, listening glumly to the conversation of a stout woman
with a pearl necklace, but who was that woman? Was it Lady Jane
Allenby or Lady Edith Wade-Beverly or Lady Patricia Fowles? And
who, above all, was the pie-faced fellow with the moustache talking
to Maud?