The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

SUSY and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided from each other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with tattered school-books.

In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children from their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie's imperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scant time allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what to say.