A Damsel in Distress

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?