Windlesham stood a little aside, watching sympathetically as this fiery little creature flung herself open-armed upon Linnet.
"Lord Windlesham - Miss de Bellefort - my best friend."
A pretty child, he thought - not really pretty but decidedly attractive, with her dark curly hair and her enormous eyes.
He murmured a few tactful nothings and then managed unobtrusively to leave the two friends together.
Jacqueline pounced - in a fashion that Linnet remembered as being characteristic of her.
"Windlesham? Windlesham?
That's the man the papers always say you're going to marry!
Are you, Linnet? Are you?"
Linnet murmured, "Perhaps."
"Darling - I'm so glad!
He looks nice."
"Oh, don't make up your mind about it - I haven't made up my own mind yet."
"Of course not!
Queens always proceed with due deliberation to the choosing of a consort!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Jackie."
"But you are a queen, Linnet! You always were.
Sa Majeste, la reine Linette.
Linette la blonde!
And I - I'm the Queen's confidante!
The trusted Maid of Honour."
"What nonsense you talk, Jackie darling!
Where have you been all this time?
You just disappear. And you never write."
"I hate writing letters.
Where have I been?
Oh, about three parts submerged, darling.
In jobs, you know.
Grim jobs with grim women!"
"Darling, I wish you'd -"
"Take the Queen's bounty?
Well, frankly, darling, that's what I'm here for.
No, not to borrow money.
It's not got to that yet!
But I've come to ask a great big important favour!"
"Go on."
"If you're going to marry the Windlesham man, you'll understand, perhaps."
Linnet looked puzzled for a minute; then her face cleared.
"Jackie, do you mean -"
"Yes, darling, I'm engaged!"
"So that's it!
I thought you were looking particularly alive somehow.
You always do, of course, but even more than usual."
"That's just what I feel like."
"Tell me all about him."
"His name's Simon Doyle.
He's big and square and incredibly simple and boyish and utterly adorable!
He's poor - got no money.
He's what you call 'county' all right - but very impoverished county - a younger son and all that.
His people come from Devonshire.
He loves country and country things.