"
From the doorway a lady with a broad pale patient face said:
"Come, Ann."
"All right! Hallo, Simmons!"
The entering butler replied:
"Hallo, Miss Ann!"
"I've got to go."
"I'm sure we're very sorry."
"Yes."
The door banged faintly, and in the great room rose the busy silence
of those minutes which precede repasts. Suddenly the four men by the
breakfast fable stood back. Lord Valleys had come in.
He approached slowly, reading a blue paper, with his level grey eyes
divided by a little uncharacteristic frown. He had a tanned yet ruddy,
decisively shaped face, with crisp hair and moustache beginning to go
iron-grey--the face of a man who knows his own mind and is contented
with that knowledge. His figure too, well-braced and upright, with the
back of the head carried like a soldier's, confirmed the impression, not
so much of self-sufficiency, as of the sufficiency of his habits of
life and thought. And there was apparent about all his movements that
peculiar unconsciousness of his surroundings which comes to those who
live a great deal in the public eye, have the material machinery of
existence placed exactly to their hands, and never need to consider what
others think of them. Taking his seat, and still perusing the paper,
he at once began to eat what was put before him; then noticing that his
eldest daughter had come in and was sitting down beside him, he said:
"Bore having to go up in such weather!"
"Is it a Cabinet meeting?"
"Yes.
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