“We have another guest whom I think you were not expecting to see and here he is.”
Most of them naturally turned round and then exclaimed,
“Sardos! What a surprise!”
They were nearly all aunts and cousins.
The men, who were either husbands of his relatives or contemporaries of the Duc, looked at him, he thought, with contempt.
‘I hate them too,’ he told himself.
Outwardly he was smiling with the charm he could switch on when it suited him.
It made the elderly of his female relatives invariably speak of him as ‘a delightful boy’.
He paid the older women compliments and he flirted with those who were younger.
By the time they went into the dining room everyone seemed to be in a good humour.
It was only the Duke who was watching Sardos somewhat carefully.
He was aware that he would
