style="font-size:15px;"> As for the hostess, she had, for one instant, come as near to passing heavenward as she could without doing it when she discovered the situation. Then she accepted it with true humour. She could afford to. But her daughters, Sheila and Dorothy, suffered acutely, being of this year's output and martyrs to responsibility.
Meanwhile, Selwyn, grimly aware of an accident somewhere, and perfectly conscious of the feelings which must by this time dominate his hostess, was wondering how best to avoid anything that might resemble a situation.
Instead of two or three dozen small tables, scattered among the palms of the winter garden, their hostess had preferred to construct a great oval board around the aquarium. The arrangement made it a little easier for Selwyn and Mrs. Ruthven. He talked to his dinner partner until she began to respond in monosyllables, which closed each subject that he opened and wearied him as much as he was boring her. But Bradley Harmon, the man on her right, evidently had better fortune; and presently Selwyn found himself with nobody to talk to, which came as near to embarrassing him as anything could, and which so enraged his hostess that she struck his partner's name from her lists for ever. People were already glancing at him askance in sly amusement or cold curiosity.
Then he did a thing which endeared him to Mrs. T. West Minster and to her two disconsolate children.
"Mrs. Ruthven," he said, very naturally and pleasantly, "I think perhaps we had better talk for a moment or two—if you don't mind."
She said quietly, "I don't mind," and turned with charming composure. Every eye shifted to them, then obeyed decency or training; and the slightest break in the gay tumult was closed up with chatter and laughter.
"Plucky," said Sandon Craig to his fair neighbour; "but by what chance did our unfortunate hostess do it?"
"She's usually doing it, isn't she? What occupies me," returned his partner, "is how on earth Alixe could have thrown away that adorable man for Jack Ruthven. Why, he is already trying to scramble into Rosamund Fane's lap—the horrid little poodle!—always curled up on the edge of your skirt!"
She stared at Mrs. Ruthven across the crystal reservoir brimming with rose and ivory-tinted water-lilies.
"That girl is marked for destruction," she said slowly; "the gods have done their work already."
But whatever Alixe had been, whatever she now was, she showed to her little world only a pale brunette symmetry—a strange and changeless lustre, varying as little as the moon's phases; and like that burnt-out planet, reflecting any flame that flared until her clear, young beauty seemed pulsating with the promise of hidden fire.
Selwyn, outwardly amiable and formal, was saying in a low voice: "My dinner partner is quite impossible, you see; and I happen to be here as a filler in—commanded to the presence only a few minutes ago. It's a pardonable error; I bear no malice. But I'm sorry for you."
There was a silence; Alixe straightened her slim figure, and turned; but young Innis, who had taken her in, had become confidential with Mrs. Fane. As for Selwyn's partner, she probably divined his conversational designs on her, but she merely turned her bare shoulder a trifle more unmistakably and continued her gossip with Bradley Harmon.
Alixe broke a tiny morsel from her bread, sensible of the tension.
"I suppose," she said, as though reciting to some new acquaintance an amusing bit of gossip—"that we are destined to this sort of thing occasionally and had better get used to it."
"I suppose so."
"Please," she added, after a pause, "aid me a little."
"I will if I can. What am I to say?"
"Have you nothing to say?" she asked, smiling; "it need not be very civil, you know—as long as nobody hears you."
To school his features for the deception of others, to school his voice and manner and at the same time look smilingly into the grave of his youth and hope called for the sort of self-command foreign to his character. Glancing at him under her smoothly fitted mask of amiability, she slowly grew afraid of the situation—but not of her ability to sustain her own part.
They exchanged a few meaningless phrases, then she resolutely took young Innis away from Rosamund Fane, leaving Selwyn to count the bubbles in his wine-glass.
But in a few moments, whether by accident or deliberate design, Rosamund interfered again, and Mrs. Ruthven was confronted with the choice of a squabble for possession of young Innis, of conspicuous silence, or of resuming once more with Selwyn. And she chose the last resort.
"You are living in town?" she asked pleasantly.
"Yes."
"Of course; I forgot. I met a man last night who said you had entered the firm of Neergard & Co."
"I have. Who was the man?"
"You can never guess, Captain Selwyn."
"I don't want to. Who was he?"
"Please don't terminate so abruptly the few subjects we have in reserve. We may be obliged to talk to each other for a number of minutes if Rosamund doesn't let us alone. . . . The man was 'Boots' Lansing."
"'Boots!' Here!"
"Arrived from Manila Sunday. Sans gêne as usual he introduced you as the subject, and told me—oh, dozens of things about you. I suppose he began inquiring for you before he crossed the troopers' gangplank; and somebody sent him to Neergard & Co. Haven't you seen him?"
"No," he said, staring at the brilliant fish, which glided along the crystal tank, goggling their eyes at the lights.
"You—you are living with the Gerards, I believe," she said carelessly.
"For a while."
"Oh, 'Boots' says that he is expecting to take an apartment with you somewhere."
"What! Has 'Boots' resigned?"
"So he says. He told me that you had resigned. I did not understand that; I imagined you were here on leave until I heard about Neergard & Co."
"Do you suppose I could have remained in the service?" he demanded. His voice was dry and almost accentless.
"Why not?" she returned, paling.
"You may answer that question more pleasantly than I can."
She usually avoided champagne; but she had to do something for herself now. As for him, he took what was offered without noticing what he took, and grew whiter and whiter; but a fixed glow gradually appeared and remained on her cheeks; courage, impatience, a sudden anger at the forced conditions steadied her nerves.
"Will you please prove equal to the situation?" she said under her breath, but with a charming smile. "Do you know you are scowling? These people here are ready to laugh; and I'd much prefer that they tear us to rags on suspicion of our over-friendliness."
"Who is that fool woman who is monopolising your partner?"
"Rosamund Fane; she's doing it on purpose. You must try to smile now and then."
"My face is stiff with grinning," he said, "but I'll do what I can for you—"
"Please include yourself, too."
"Oh,
