"

Now I knew why Lady Turnour had glared. Poor woman! I was really sorry
for her--on this, her happy night!

CHAPTER XXIX

"It never rains, but it pours, after dry weather," says Pamela de Nesle.
And so it was for the Turnour family. They had had their run of luck,
and everything determinedly went wrong for them that night.

For her ladyship, there was the dreadful douche of the admiral's
mistake, and the Marquise de Roquemartine's coming to hear of it.
(Wicked little witch, I'm sure she couldn't resist telling the story to
everyone!) For Bertie, the blow of an announcement, before the ball was
over, that Miss Nelson was going to marry the Duc de Divonne (she went
out of the room to get engaged to him). For Sir Samuel, a telegram from
his London solicitors advising him to hurry home and straighten out some
annoying business tangle.

After all, however, I doubt that the telegram ought to be classed among
disasters, as it gave the family a good excuse to escape without delay
from the chateau which they had so much wished to enter.

Lady Turnour had hysterics in her bedroom, having retired early on
account of a "headache." She pretended that her rage was caused by a
rent in her golden train, made by "that clumsy Admiral Gray who came
over with the Frasers, and had the impudence to almost _force_ me to
dance with him--gouty old horror!" But I know it was the rent in her
vanity, not her dress, which made her gurgle, and wail, and choke, until
frightened Sir Samuel patted her on the back, and she stopped short, to
scold him.

Bertie came in, ostensibly to learn his father's plans, but really, I
surmised, to suggest some of his own; and Lady Turnour relieved her
feelings by stirring up evil ones in him. "So sure you were going to get
the girl! Why, you wrote your stepfather the other day, you were
practically engaged," she sneered, delighted that she was not the only
one who had suffered humiliations at the castle.

"If she hadn't seen you, I believe it would have been all right,"
growled Bertie, vicious as a chained dog who has lost his bone. And then
Lady Turnour had hysterics all over again, and Sir Samuel told Bertie
that he was an ungrateful young brute. The three raged together, and I
could not go, because I had to hold sal-volatile under her ladyship's
nose. Lady Turnour said that the marquise was no lidy, and for her part
she was glad she wasn't going to have that cat of a sister in _her_
family. She