"Does your ladyship mean that Miss Roseberry is in bed?" he
asked.
"I mean that Miss Roseberry is in her room. I mean that I have
twice tried to persuade Miss Roseberry to dress and come
downstairs, and tried in vain. I mean that what Miss Roseberry
refuses to do for Me, she is not likely to do for You--"
How many more meanings of her own Lady Janet might have gone on
enumerating, it is not easy to calculate. At her third sentence a
sound in the library caught her ear through the incompletely
closed door and suspended the next words on her lips. Horace
heard it also. It was the rustling sound (traveling nearer and
nearer over the library carpet) of a silken dress.
(In the interval while a coming event remains in a state of
uncertainty, what is it the inevitable tendency of every
Englishman under thirty to do? His inevitable tendency is to ask
somebody to bet on the event. He can no more resist it than he
can resist lifting his stick or his umbrella, in the absence of a
gun, and pretending to shoot if a bird flies by him while he is
out for a walk.)
"What will your ladyship bet that this is not Grace?" cried
Horace.
Her ladyship took no notice of the proposal; her attention
remained fixed on the library door.
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