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 could n'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 château 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
