hard hands, and pale straw-coloured hair and brows and eyelashes—had amiably sauntered beside him, and was elucidating for his benefit now, in slow, halting undertones, some unfathomable mystery connected with the varying attitude of two distinct breeds of terriers toward rats. Across the room, just within reach of the flickering ruddy firelight from the hearth, the American guest, Miss Madden, was seated at the piano, playing some low and rather doleful music. Thorpe bent his head, and assumed an air of attention, but in truth he listened to neither the Honourable Balder nor the piano. His thoughts were concentrated jealously upon his own position in this novel setting. He said to himself that it was all right. Old Lady Plowden had seemed to like him from the start. The genial, if somewhat abstracted, motherliness of her welcome had been, indeed, his sheet anchor throughout the evening. She had not once failed to nod her head and smile and twinkle her little kind eyes through their spectacles at him, whenever by word or look he had addressed her. Nor did his original half-suspicion, that this was her manner to people in general, justify itself upon observation. She was civil, even excessively civil, to the other two guests, but these ladies did not get the same eager and intent smile that he could command. He reasoned it out that Plowden must have said something pleasant to his mother about him—perhaps even to the point of explaining that he was to be the architect of their fortunes—but he did not like to ascribe all her hospitable warmth to that. It was dear to him to believe that she liked him on his own merits—and he did believe it, as his softened glance rested upon her where she sat almost facing him in her padded, wicker chair—small, white-haired, rosy-cheeked, her intelligent face radiating a kind of alert placidity which somehow made him feel at home.
He had not been as much at home with the others. The Honourable Balder, of course, didn't count; nobody paid attention to him, and least of all a busy Rubber King. He gave not much more heed to the American—the tall young woman with the red hair and the million and a half of dollars. She was plainly a visitor like himself, not at all identified with the inner life of the household. He fancied, moreover, that she in no way desired to be thus identified. She seemed to carry herself with a deliberate aloofness underlying her surface amiability. Then he had spoken his few words with her, once or twice, he had got this effect of stony reserve close beneath her smile and smooth words. True, this might mean only that she felt herself out of her element, just as he did—but to him, really it did not matter what she felt. A year ago—why, yes, even a fortnight ago—the golden rumour of millions would have shone round her auburn hair in his eyes like a halo. But all that was changed. Calculated in a solidified currency, her reported fortune shrank to a mere three hundred thousand pounds. It was a respectable sum for a woman to have, no doubt, but it did nothing to quicken the cool indifference with which he considered her.
The two other young women were different. They were seated together on a sofa, so placed as regarded his point of view, that he saw only in part the shadowed profiles of the faces they turned toward the piano. Although it was not visible to him, the posture of their shoulders told him that they were listening to the music each holding the other's hand. This tacit embrace was typical in his mind of the way they hung together, these two young women. It had been forced upon his perceptions all the evening, that this fair-haired, beautiful, rather stately Lady Cressage, and the small, swarthy, round-shouldered daughter of the house, peering through her pince-nez from under unduly thick black brows, formed a party of their own. Their politeness toward him had been as identical in all its little shades of distance and reservation as if they had been governed from a single brain-centre. It would be unfair to them to assume from their manner that they disliked him, or were even unfavourably impressed by him. The finesse of that manner was far too delicate a thing to call into use such rough characterizations. It was rather their action as a unit which piqued his interest. He thought he could see that they united upon a common demeanour toward the American girl, although of course they knew her much better than they knew him. It was not even clear to him that there were not traces of this combination in their tone toward Plowden and the Honourable Balder. The bond between them had twisted in it strands of social exclusiveness, and strands of sex sympathy.
He did not analyze all this with much closeness in his thoughts, but the impressions of it were distinct enough to him. He rather enjoyed these impressions than otherwise. Women had not often interested him consecutively to any large degree, either in detail or as a whole. He had formulated, among other loose general notions of them, however, the idea that their failure to stand by one another was one of their gravest weaknesses. This proposition rose suddenly now in his mind, and claimed his attention. It became apparent to him, all at once, that his opinions about women would be henceforth invested with a new importance. He had scarcely before in his life worn evening dress in a domestic circle which included ladies—certainly never in the presence of such certificated and hall-marked ladies as these. His future, however, was to be filled with experiences of this nature. Already, after this briefest of ventures into the new life, he found fresh conceptions of the great subject springing up in his thoughts. In this matter of women sticking together, for example—here before his eyes was one of the prettiest instances of it imaginable. As he looked again at the two figures on the sofa, so markedly unlike in outward aspect, yet knit to each other in such a sisterly bond, he found the spectacle really touching.
Lady Cressage had inclined her classic profile even more toward the piano. Thorpe was not stirred at all by the music, but the spirit of it as it was reflected upon this beautiful facial outline—sensitive, high-spirited, somewhat sad withal—appealed to something in him. He moved forward cautiously, noiselessly, a dozen restricted paces, and halted again at the corner of a table. It was a relief that the Honourable Balder, though he followed along, respected now his obvious wish for silence. But neither Balder nor anyone else could guess that the music said less than nothing to his ears—that it was the face that had beckoned him to advance.
Covertly, with momentary assurances that no one observed him, he studied this face and mused upon it. The white candle-light on the shining wall beyond threw everything into a soft, uniform shadow, this side of the thread of dark tracery which outlined forehead and nose and lips and chin. It seemed to him that the eyes were closed, as in reverie; he could not be sure.
So she would have been a Duchess if her husband had lived! He said to himself that he had never seen before, or imagined, a face which belonged so indubitably beneath a tiara of strawberry leaves in diamonds. The pride and grace and composure, yes, and melancholy, of the great lady—they were all there in their supreme expression. And yet—why, she was no great lady at all. She was the daughter of his old General Kervick—the necessitous and haughtily-humble old military gentleman, with the grey moustache and the premature fur coat, who did what he was told on the Board without a question, for a pitiful three hundred a year. Yes—she was his daughter, and she also was poor. Plowden had said so.
Why had Plowden, by the way, been so keen about relieving her from her father's importunities? He must have had it very much at heart, to have invented the roundabout plan of getting the old gentleman a directorship. But no—there was nothing in that. Why, Plowden had even forgotten that it was he who suggested Kervick's name. It would have been his sister, of course, who was evidently such chums with Lady Cressage, who gave him the hint to help the General to something if he could. And when you came to think of it, these aristocrats and military men and so on, had no other notion of making money save by directorships. Clearly, that was the way of it. Plowden had remembered Kervick's name, when the chance arose to give the old boy a leg up, and then had clean forgotten the circumstance. The episode rather increased his liking for Plowden.
He glanced briefly, under the impulse of his thought, to where the peer sat, or rather sprawled, in a big low chair before the fire. He was so nearly recumbent in it, indeed, that there was nothing to be seen of him but an elbow, and two very trim legs extended to the brass fender. Thorpe's gaze reverted automatically to the face of General Kervick's daughter. He wondered if she knew about the Company, and about him, and about his ability to solidify to any extent her father's financial position. Even more, upon reflection, he wondered whether she was very fond of her father; would she be extremely grateful to one who should render him securely comfortable for life? Miss Madden rose from the piano before Thorpe noted that the music
