I shook my head.
"Lady Angela," I said, "would you mind if I abstained from expressing any opinion at all?
It is a subject which I feel it is scarcely right for me to discuss." She looked at me with wide-open eyes, a dash of insolence mingled with her surprise.

I do not know what she was about to say, for at that moment the young man with the sombre shooting suit and closely cropped hair paused for a moment on his way out of the breakfast-room.
He glanced at me, and I received a brief impression of an unwholesome-looking person with protuberant eyeballs, thin lashes, and supercilious mouth.
"I trust that the day's entertainment will include something more than a glimpse of Lady Angela," he said, with a low bow.
She raised her eyes.

It seemed to me, who was watching her closely, that she shrank a little back in her seat.

I was sure that she shared my instinctive dislike of the man.
"I think not," she said.

"Perhaps you are expecting me to come down with the lunch and compliment you all upon your prowess." "It would be delightful!" he murmured.
She shook her head.
"There are too many of you, and I am too few," she said lightly.
"Besides, shooting is one of the few sports with which I have no sympathy at all.