style, except that it was not a "temperance hotel," for the accommodation of Lady Ayr on a tour of family culture, and she and John, after a short and decisive economical interview with the proprietor, took possession of the largest table in the public drawing-room, ejecting therefrom two nervous spinsters who had been looking forward to playing Patience on it, and spreading their maps of the town over it, read to each other out of guide-books, while Lord Ayr propped himself up dejectedly in a corner, where he hoped to drop asleep unperceived. The troublesome interview with the proprietor had been on the subject of making a deduction from the agreed terms, since they had all dined out. He was finally routed by a short plain statement of the case by Lady Ayr.
"If you can afford to take us in for so much, dinner included," she said, "you can afford to take us in for less without dinner. I think there is no more to be said on the subject. Breakfast, please, at a quarter past eight punctually and I shall require a second candle in my bedroom. I think your terms, which I do not say are excessive, included lights? Thank you!"
Seymour had declined to take part in this guide-book conference, saying with truth that he felt sure it would all be very completely explained to him next day, and let himself out into the streets of the town which were already growing empty of passengers. Above the sky was lucent with many stars, and the moon which had risen an hour before, cleared the house-roofs and shone down into the street with a very white light, making the gas-lamps look red. Last night it had been full, and from the terrace at Winston they had all watched it rise, full-flaring, over the woods below the house. Then he and Nadine had strolled away together, and in that luminous solitude with her, he had felt himself constrained and tongue-tied. He had no longer at command the talk that usually rose so glibly to his lips, that gay, witty, inconsequent gabble that had truthfully represented what went on in his quick discerning brain. His brain now was taken up with one topic only, and it was as hard for him to speak to her of that, as it was for him to speak of anything else. He knew that she had entered into her engagement with him, in the same spirit in which he had proposed to her. They liked each other; each found the other a stimulating companion; by each no doubt the attraction of the other's good looks was felt. She, he was certain, regarded him now as she had regarded him then, while for him the whole situation had undergone so complete a change, that he felt that the very fortress of his identity had been stormed and garrisoned by the besieging host. And what was the host? That tall girl with the white slim hands, who, without intention, had picked up a key and, cursorily, so it seemed, had unlocked his heart, so that it stood open to her. Honestly, he did not know that it was made to unlock: he had thought of it always as some toy Swiss châlet, not meant to be opened. But she had opened it, and gone inside.
The streets grew emptier: lights appeared behind blinds in upper windows, and only an occasional step sounded on the pavements. He had come to an open market place, and from where he paused and stood the western towers of the cathedral rose above the intervening roofs, and aspired whitely into the dark velvet of the night. Hitherto, Seymour would have found nothing particular to say about moonlight, in which he took but the very faintest interest, except that it tended to provoke an untimely loquaciousness in cats. But to-night he found his mind flooded with the most hackneyed and commonplace reflections. It reminded him of Nadine; it was white and chaste and aloof like her ... he wanted her, and he was going to get her, and yet would she really be his in the sense that he was hers? Then for a moment habit asserted itself, and he told himself he was being common, that he was dropping to the level of plain and barbarous Hugh. It was very mortifying, yet he could not keep off that level. He kept on dropping there, as he stared at the moonlit towers of the cathedral, unsatisfied and longing. But it may be doubted whether he would have felt better satisfied, if he had known how earnestly Nadine had tried to drop, or rise, to the moonlit plane, or how sincerely, even with tears, she had deplored her inability to do so. For it was not he whom she had sought to join there.
Chapter VIII
Dodo was seated in her room in Jack's house in town, intermittently arguing with him and Miss Grantham and Edith and Berts, and in intervals looking up as many of her friends as she could remember the names of and asking them to her dance. The month was November, and the dance was for to-day week, which was the first of December, and as far as she had got at present, it appeared that all her friends were in town and that they would all come. Nadine was similarly employed next door, and as they both asked anybody who occurred to them, the same people frequently got asked twice over.
"Which," said Dodo, "is an advantage, as it looks as if we really wanted them very much. Oh, is that Esther? Esther, we are having a dance on December the first, and will you all come? Yes: wasn't it a good idea? That is nice. Of course, delighted if your mother cares to come, too—"
"Then I shan't," said Berts.
"Berts, shut up," said Dodo in a penetrating whisper. "Yes, darling Esther, Berts said something, but I don't know what it was as they are all talking together. Yes, a cotillion. Good-by. Look out Hendrick's Stores, Grantie. But I really won't lead the cotillion with Berts. It is too ridiculous: a man may not lead the cotillion with his grandmother: it comes in the prayer-book."
"Three thousand and seven," said Miss Grantham. "P'd'n't'n."
"Three double-o seven, Padd," said Dodo briskly, "please, miss. I always say, 'please, miss,' and then they are much pleasanter. I used to say 'I'm Princess Waldenech, please, miss,' but they never believed it, and said 'Garn!' But I was: darling Jack, I was! No, my days of leading the cotillion came to an end under William the Fourth. There is nothing so ridiculous as seeing an old thing— No, I'm not the Warwick Hotel? Do I sound like the Warwick Hotel?"
Dodo's face suddenly assumed an expression of seraphic interest.
"It's too entrancing," she whispered. "I'm sure it's a nice man, because he wants to marry me. He says I didn't meet him in the Warwick Hotel this morning. That was forgetful. Yes? Oh, he's rung off: he has jilted me. I wish I had said I was the Warwick Hotel: it was stupid of me. I wonder if you can be married by telephone with a clergyman taking the place of 'please, miss.' Where had we got to? Oh, yes, Hendrick's: three double-o seven, you idiot. I mean, please, miss. What? Thank you, miss. No, Nadine and Berts shall lead it."
"I would sooner lead with Lady Ayr," said Berts. "Nadine always forgets everything—"
"Oh, Hendrick's, is it?" said Dodo. "Yes, Lady Chesterford. I am really, and I want a band for the evening of December the first. No, not a waistband. Music. Yes, send somebody round." Dodo put down the ear-piece.
"Let us strive not to do several things together," she said. "For the moment we will concentrate on the cotillion. Jack dear, why did you suggest I should lead? It has led to so much talking, of which I have had to do the largest part."
"I want you to," he said. "I'll take you to Egypt in the spring, if you will. I won't otherwise."
"Darling, you are too unfair for words. You want to make an ass of me. You want everybody to say 'Look at that silly old grandmama.' I probably shall be a grandmama quite soon, if Nadine is going to marry Seymour in January—'Silly old grandmama,' they will say, 'capering about like a two-year-old.' Because I shall caper: if I lead, I shan't be able to resist kicking up."
Jack came across the room and sat on the table by her.
"Don't you want to, Dodo?" he asked quietly.
"Yes, darling, I should love to. I only wanted pressing. Oh, my beloved Berts, what larks! We'll have hoops, and snowballs, and looking-glass, and wooly-bear—don't you know wooly-bear?—and paper-bags and obstacles, and balance. And then the very next day
