Aloud he said, very red, "Oh I say--I beg your pardon"--and then
stood hesitating, and wondering whether he oughtn't to go back to his
bedroom again.
If he had said nothing they would not have noticed he was there,
but when he begged their pardon Rose turned and looked at him as one
looks who is trying to remember, and Frederick looked at him too
without at first quite seeing him.
They didn't seem, thought Briggs, to mind or to be at all
embarrassed. He couldn't be her brother; no brother ever brought that
look into a woman's face. It was very awkward. If they didn't mind,
he did. It upset him to come across his Madonna forgetting herself.
"Is this one of your friends?" Frederick was able after an
instant to ask Rose, who made no attempt to introduce the young man
standing awkwardly in front of them but continued to gaze at him with a
kind of abstracted, radiant goodwill.
"It's Mr. Briggs," said Rose, recognizing him. "This is my
husband," she added.
And Briggs, shaking hands, just had time to think how surprising
it was to have a husband when you were a widow before the gong sounded,
and Lady Caroline would be there in a minute, and he ceased to be able
to think at all, and merely became a thing with its eyes fixed on the
door.
Through the door immediately entered, in what seemed to him an
endless procession, first Mrs.
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