Mammon and Co by E.F. Benson — Read

Toby thought it wise to call at the Links Hotel on the morning following his interview with Lord Comber, to make sure of the result of his interference, while Buck waited and grinned in the garden. They both of them wanted to bet that the worm had kept his word and gone, and both were willing to lay odds on it, and thus no wager was possible. Toby's face was agape with smiles when he came back, and they both laughed for a full minute behind a laurel-bush.

This was satisfactory, everybody was pleased, and it was not the least unlikely that Lord Comber himself at that moment was laughing too. He had heard from Kit the same evening in reply to his telegram that she would start for Aldeburgh (not Stanborough) next morning. All his neat and nasty little embroideries and Dresden china, his violet powder, scent-bottles, manicure brushes, and little vellum-bound indecencies of French verse, had been packed the same evening by his man, and he left Stanborough and the bowing proprietor of the Links Hotel in excellent spirits, with a new number of the Queen. Kit (she really was so clever about those things) had appeared in a gown exactly like one that was to-day given as a novelty in the paper a full three months before, and remarkably well she had looked in it. It was of pale lilac satin -- Ted always knew how dresses were made -- trimmed with point-lace, and straps of narrow black velvet.