Toby finished his cigarette when Kit left him, and threw the end over the balcony into the street. It went flirting through the air like a small firework, and he saw it pitch on the shoulder of an immense policeman below, who looked angrily round. And so it was that the discreet Toby withdrew softly into the ballroom.
It was only a little after one, and the dancing was at its height. Everyone who intended to come had done so, and no one yet had thought of going away. From the band in the gallery came the enchanting lilt of the dance music, with its graceful stress and abatement, making it impossible not to dance. The light-hearted intoxication of rhythmic movement entering into the souls of many women whom one would naturally have supposed to have left their dancing days behind them, for reasons over which they had no control, had produced the same sort of effect in them as a warm November day does in the bluebottles who have outlived the summer, and they were deluding themselves into thinking that "June was not over, though past her full." The ballroom was ideally occupied; it was peopled enough, but not overcrowded, and like a whisper underneath the shouting band you could hear thesibilant rustle of skirts, and the "sip-sip" of shoes over the well-polished floor.
Kit and her partner were as well matched and graceful a pair as could be found in London—too well matched, the world said; but the world is never happy unless it is saying something of the sort, and the wiser there, among whom even her bitterest friends put Kit, are accustomed to discount all that is said. To repeat fresh gossip without actually believing or disbelieving it, and to hear it in the same light-hearted spirit makes the world as fresh as a daily paper to someone just arrived from long sea, and Kit's interest in what was said about her was of the most breezily superficial sort. She never intended that it should be ever so distantly possible that she should compromise herself, for she recognised with humble thankfulness how hard she was to compromise. She had done many risky things in her life, and there was safety in their very numbers. People would only say that her conduct with So-and-so had been much riskier, and yet it had come to nothing. Probably, then, this intimacy with Lord Comber was equally innocent. Other people had merely looked over hedges and been accused of stealing horses, while Kit, so to speak, had been found before now with the stolen halter in her hand; and yet her excellent grace in giving it up at the proper moment to the proper owner had got her out of what might have been a scrape to a less accomplished adventurer.
And to-night nobody talked more disagreeably than they had talked scores of times before. Up to a certain point repetition is the soul of wit; at least, the point of a joke grows by dwelling on it, but the repetition in excess is wearisome, and to-night peoplescarcely said more than what a beautiful couple they were.
About this there could scarcely be two opinions. Kit was very tall and slenderly made, and there was a boyish spring and grace about her dancing which gave a peculiar spontaneousness to this pretty performance. Ted Comber, a fresh-faced, handsome youth, had no extra weight on his hands; the two moved with an exquisite unanimity of motion. Amiable indiscretions and a course of life not indicated in the educational curriculum had led the authorities both at Eton and Christ Church to make their parting with him take place sooner than he had himself intended, but, as Kit said in her best manner, "He was only a boy then." He was in years not much more than a boy now; in appearance, especially by artificial light, he was a boy still, and the two numbered scarcely more than fifty years between them.
But balls are not given in order to furnish a hunting-ground for the novelist and reformer, and to-night there were few such present. Indeed, anyone must have had a soul of putty not to have laid criticism aside; not to have forgotten all that had been said before, and all that might be said afterwards, in the enchanting moment. This dance had been on the board some ten minutes when Toby entered; people with winds and what is known, by an elegant periphrasis, as a superfluity of adipose tissue had paused; and for a few minutes there were not more than half a dozen couples on the floor. Kit, secure in the knowledge that no one present except herself and Jack had been to that City dinner a fortnight before, had put on again the same orange chiffon creation as she had worn that night, and she blazedout against the man's dark clothes; she was a flame in his encircling arm. The room was nearly square, and they danced not in straight lines up, across and down, but in one big circle, coming close to the walls only at four points in the middle of the sides of the room; like some beautiful twin star they moved round a centre, revolving also on a private axis of their own. Indeed, the sight of them whirling fast and smoothly in perfect time to the delicious rhythm was so pretty that no one thought of alluding to their private axis at all. Even the Hungarian Ambassador, as sprightly a young man of eighty or thereabouts as you could wish to see, and still accustomed to lead the cotillion, recognised the superiority of the performance. "Decidedly all the rest of us cut a poor figure when those two are dancing," he said with unwonted modesty to Lady Haslemere.
But in a few minutes the room grew crowded again. Recovered couples sprang up like mushrooms on the floor, and the pace slowed. Lord Comber steered as no one else could steer, but checks infinitesimal but infinite could not but occur. It would have been good enough had it not just now been better.
"We'll wait a moment, Ted," said Kit; "perhaps at the end it will be emptier again."
She stopped opposite one of the doors.
"Shall we go on to the balcony?" he asked. "There will be no one there."
"Yes. Oh, there is Mrs. Murchison! Take me to her. I'll follow you in a moment."
Ted swore gently under his breath.
"Oh, leave the Crœsum alone," he said. "Do come now, Kit. This is my last dance with you this evening."
But Kit dropped his arm.
"Fetch Toby," she said under her voice to Lord Comber; "fetch, you understand, and at once. He is over there." Then, without a pause, "So we meet again," she said to Mrs. Murchison. "You were right and I was wrong, for I said, do you remember, that the one way not to meet a person was to go to the same dance. And did you get all those great purchases of yours home safely? You were quite too charitable! What will you do with a hundred and forty fire-screens?—or was it a hundred and forty-one? Miss Murchison, what magnificent pearls you have! They are too beautiful! Now, if I wore pearls like yours, people would say they were not real, and they would be perfectly right."
Miss Murchison was what Kit would have called at first sight an uncomfortable sort of a girl, very pretty, beautiful indeed, but uncomfortable. What she should have said to Kit's praise of her pearls Kit could not have told you, but having made yourself agreeable to anyone, it is that person's business to reply in the same strain. Else, what happens to social and festive meetings? But Miss Murchison looked neither gratified nor embarrassed. Either would have shown a proper spirit.
"They are good," she said shortly.
Kit kept a weather eye open for Toby. She could see him near, and yet far, for the room was full, being reluctantly "fetched" by Lord Comber, who appeared to be expostulating with him. There were still some seconds to elapse before he could get to them, but Kit had determined to introduce him then and there to Miss Murchison. Perhaps her beauty would be more effective than her own arguments.
"It is only quite a little dinner to-morrow," she said to Mrs. Murchison, in order to fill up the time naturally. "You will have to take a sort of pot-luck with us. A kind of 'no fish-knife' dinner."
Better and better. This was a promising beginning to the intimacy Mrs. Murchison craved. It was nothing, she said to herself, to be asked to a big dinner; the pot-luck dinner was far more to her taste.
"Well, I think that's perfectly charming of you, Lady Conybeare," she said. "If there's one thing I amfolleabout, it's those quiet little dinners, and one gets so little of them. Be it ever so humble, there's nothing like dining quietly with your friends."
Kit's face dimpled with merriment.
"That's so sweet of you," she said. "Oh, here's Toby. Toby, let me introduce you to Mrs. Murchison. Oh, what's your name?—I always forget. It begins with Evelyn. Anyhow, he is Conybeare's brother, you know, Mrs. Murchison."
Mrs. Murchison did not know, but she was very happy to do so. Also the informality was charming. But her happiness had a momentary eclipse. She knew that a man was introduced to a woman, and not the other way about, but might not some other rule hold when the case was between a plain miss and the brother of a Marquis? English precedence seemed to her a fearful and wonderful thing. But Kit relieved her of her difficulty.
"And Miss Murchison, Toby," she said. "Charmed to have seen you again. Till 8.30 to-morrow;" and she smiled and retreated with Ted.
Blushing honours were raining thick on the enchanted lady. "One thing leads to another," she said to herself, and here was the brother of LordConybeare endorsing the happy meeting of this afternoon.
Then aloud:
"Very pleased to make your acquaintance," she said, for the phrase was ineradicable. She had searched in vain for a cisatlantic equivalent, but could not get hold of one. Like the snake in spring, she had cast off the slough of many of her transatlanticisms, but "very pleased" was deeply engrained, and appeared involuntarily and inevitably.
But Toby's inflammable eye had caught thefilia pulchrior.
"My sister-in-law tells me you are dining with her to-morrow," he said genially. "That is delightful."
He paused a moment, and racked his brain for another suitable remark; but, finding none, he turned abruptly to Miss Murchison.
"May I have the pleasure?" he asked. "We shall just have time for a turn before this is over."
"Of course you may, Lord Evelyn," said her mother precipitately.
Miss Murchison paused for a moment without replying, and Toby, though naturally modest, told himself that her mother's ready acceptance for her justified the pause.
"Delighted," she said.
Toby might be described as a good, useful dancer, but no more. People who persist in describing one thing in terms suitable to another speak of the poetry and the melody of motion, and the dancing Toby had no more poetry or melody in his motion than a motor car or a street piano. The tide of couples, as inexplicable in its ebb and flow as deep sea-currents, had gone down again, and they had a fairlyfree floor. But before they had made the circuit of the room twice Kit and Lord Comber reappeared, and Kit heaved a thankful sister-in-law's sigh.
"Toby is dancing with the Murchison girl," she said; "and she hardly ever dances. Now——"
And they glided off on to the floor.
"A design of yours?" asked Ted.
"Yes, all my own.Ego fecit, as Mrs. Murchison says. She has millions. If Jack were dead and I was a man, I should try to marry her myself. Simply millions, Ted. Don't you wish you had?"
"Certainly; but I am very content dancing with you. I prefer it."
"That is silly," said Kit. "No sane man really prefers dancing with—with anyone, to having millions."
"Why try the cynicalrôle? Do you really believe that, Kit?"
"Yes, and I hate compliments. Compliments should always be insincere, and I'm sure you mean what you say. If they are sincere they are unnecessary. Oh, it's stopping. What a bore! Six bars more. Quicker—quicker!"
The coda gathered up the dreamy threads of the valse into a vivid ever-quickening pattern of sound, and came to an end with a great blare. The industrious and heated Toby wiped his forehead.
"That was delicious," he said. "Won't you have an ice or something, Miss Murchison? I say, it is sw—stewing hot, isn't it?"
Lily took his arm.
"Yes, do give me an ice," she said. "Who is that dancing with Lady Conybeare?"
Toby looked round.
"I don't see them," he said. "But I expect it'sTed Comber. Kit usually dances with him. They are supposed to be the best dancers in London. Oh yes, I see them. It is Comber."
"Do you know him?"
"Yes, in the sort of way one knows fifty thousand people. We always say 'Hulloa' to each other, and then we've finished, don't you know."
"You don't like him, apparently."
"I particularly dislike him," said Toby, in a voice that was cheerful and had the real ring of sincerity.
"Why?"
"Don't know. He doesn't do any of the things he ought. He doesn't shoot, or ride, or play games. He stays at country houses, you see, and sits with the women in the drawing-room, or walks with them, and bicycles with them in the afternoon. Not my sort."
Lily glanced at his ugly, pleasant face.
"I quite agree with you," she said. "I hate men to sit on chairs and look beautiful. He was introduced to me just now, though I did not catch his name, and I felt he knew what my dress was made of, and how it was made, and what it cost."
"Oh, he knows all that sort of thing," said Toby. "You should hear him and Kit talking chiffon together. And you dislike that sort of inspection?"
"Intensely. But most women apparently don't."
"No: isn't it funny! So many women don't seem to know a man when they see him. Certainly Comber is very popular with them. But a man ought to be liked by men."
Miss Murchison smiled. Toby had got two ices and was sitting opposite her, devouring his in large mouthfuls, as if it had been porridge. She had been brought up in the country and the open air, amonghorses and dogs, and other nice wholesome things, and this mode of life in London, as she saw it, under her mother's marchings and manœuvres to storm the smart set, seemed to her at times to be little short of insane. If you were not putting on a dress, you were taking it off, and all this simply to sit on a chair in the Park, to say half a dozen words to half a dozen people, to lunch at one house, to dine at another, and dance at a third. All that was only incidental in life seemed to her to be turned into its business; everything was topsy-turvy. She understood well enough that if you lived in the midst of your best friends, it would be delightful to see them there three times a day, in these pretty well-dressed settings, but to go to a house simply in order to have been there was inexplicable. Mrs. Murchison had given a ball only a few weeks before at her house in Grosvenor Square, about which even after the lapse of days people had scarcely ceased talking. Royalty had been there, and Mrs. Murchison, in the true republican spirit, had entertained them royally. Her cotillion presents had been really marvellous; there had been so many flowers that it was scarcely possible to breathe, and so many people that it was quite impossible to dance. But as success to Mrs. Murchison's and many other minds was measured by your crowd and your extravagance, she had been ecstatically satisfied, and had sent across to her husband several elegantly written accounts of the festivity clipped from society papers. The evening had been to her, as it were, a sort of signed certificate of her social standing. But to Lily the ball had been more nearly a nightmare than a certificate: neither she nor her mother knew by sight half the people who came, and certainly half the people who camedid not know them by sight. The whole thing seemed to her vulgar, wickedly wasteful, and totally unenjoyable.
There are those, and her mother was one, who would cheerfully be asphyxiated in a sufficiently exalted crowd. To be found dead among a heap of Duchesses would be to her what to a soldier is death in the forefront of the battle. A mob of fashionable people had eaten and drunk at her expense, listened to her band and marvelled at her orchids. She had also to a high degree that excellent though slightly barbarous virtue which is called hospitality. She liked to feed people. But the human soul, as poets are unanimous in telling us, is ever aspiring upwards, and this point reached, Mrs. Murchison, as has been already stated, desired more. Her tastes became childlike again; she yearned for simple little dinners with the mystic few, those dinners which never even appeared in the papers, and were followed by no ball, perhaps not even by a "few people." Cold roast beef or bits of common bacon on skewers are sometimes served in the middle of banquets. Mrs. Murchison longed for her bits of bacon in suitable company. It was very nice to have the Prince asking after your dachshund's cough, but she had got past that.
These things passed vaguely through Miss Murchison's mind, as she and Toby ate their ices. He was like a whiff of fresh air, she thought, to one who had been breathing a close and vitiated atmosphere. He did not ask her where she had been last night, and where she had dined to-day, and who was in the Park in the morning. He seemed to be as little of the world which danced and capered in the next room, chattering volubly about itself, asshe was herself. On that point she would like information.
"Do you like London?" she asked, at length, and then thought herself inane for saying that. It sounded like one of thebanalitésshe found so desperately stupid.
But Toby understood. He had just finished his ice, and with his spoon he made a comprehensive circle in the air. "This sort of thing, do you mean?" he asked. "All these fine people?"
"Yes, just that. All these fine people."
"It seems to me perfectly idiotic," he replied.
"Then why do you come?"
"Why? Oh, because there are a lot of people I really do like—real friends of mine, you understand, whom I see in this way. And they come for the same reason, I suppose."
Lily looked at him a moment out of her big dark eyes, and then nodded gravely.
"Yes, that makes all the difference," she said. "If you have a lot of friends here, there is a reason for coming. But——" and she stopped loyally.
Toby guessed what was on the end of her tongue, and with a certain instinct of delicacy changed the subject, or rather led it away from what he imagined was in her mind.
"I know what you mean," he said, "and everyone finds it a bore at times. One goes to a party hoping to see a particular person, and the particular person is not there. Really, I often wish I was never in London at all. But, you see, I am private secretary to my cousin Pangbourne, and while they are in office and the House is sitting I have to be in town. What would happen to the British Constitution if I wasn't, I don't dare to think."
Miss Murchison laughed.
"That must be interesting, though," she said. "I should love to be in the middle of the wheels. I notice in England that a sudden hush always comes over a room whenever a politician enters. Somebody describes the English as a race of shopkeepers. It is a very bad definition; they are much more a race of politicians. The shopkeepers come from America."
Toby shook his head.
"I wish I could notice a hush whenever I came into a room," he said. "I should feel as if I was making a mark. But I don't."
"But it is interesting, is it not?" asked Miss Murchison—"being secretary to a Minister, I mean."
Toby considered.
"Last week," he said, "I looked over the bills for the flowers in Hyde Park. They were immense, so I hope you approve of the flowers. I also checked the food of the ducks in St. James's Park, so I hope you do not think they are looking thin. Those ducks are the bane of my existence. Since then I have done nothing. My cousin comes into the secretaries' room every morning to see that we are working. He invariably finds us playing cricket with the fire-shovel. I am usually in."
"That also is interesting," said Miss Murchison. "I love games. Oh, there's my mother! I think she is looking for me."
"But I may have this dance?" asked Toby.
"I am sure she would allow me," said the girl; and as they both thought of her mother's feverish acceptance for her of the last, their eyes met.
"Let us go," said Toby gravely; and he gave her his arm back into the ballroom.
Miss Murchison, when she left half an hour later with her mother, was conscious of having enjoyed herself much more than she usually did at such parties. For the most part they seemed to her sad and strange forms of amusement. She danced with a certain number of young men, who admired her pearls or her profile. It is true that both were admirable, especially her profile. But to talk to them was like talking to order through a telephone; it seemed impossible to get beyond thebanalitésof the day. She was labelled, as she knew, as the heiress of the year; and it was as difficult to forget that as to forget that other people remembered it. No doubt when she got to know people more intimately it would be different; but these first weeks of débutancy could not, she thought, be considered amusing.
But Toby had been a most delightful change. Here was an ordinary human young man, who did not seem to be merely a weary automaton for going from one party to another. He was fairly stupid—an unutterable relief; for if there was one mode of conversation she detested, it was cheap epigram; and he was quite sensible and natural, a relief more unutterable.
Her mother drove home with her in a state of elation. The mystic innermost shrine was going to be unlocked at last.
"Lady Conybeare said that simply no one was coming to-morrow night," she said. "We shall be six or eight only. Lord Comber, I think, is coming, and Lord Evelyn. It will be quite an arcanum. She said she would wear only a tea-gown—I should say a tea-gown only. Sochic. We will have a little tea-gownparty before the end of the season, dear. You and Lord Evelyn quite hobnailed together. Did you enjoy yourself, Lily?"
"Yes, very much."
"So glad, darling. I saw no pearls so good as yours. Wear them to-morrow, dear. Lady Conybeare said she adored pearls. 'Ah, Margerita!'" And Mrs. Murchison hummed a bar or two of Siebel's song in a variety of keys. "And the evening after we go to see 'Tristram and Isolde,'" she continued. "It is a gala night, and Jean de Risky plays Tristram. How lucky we were to get the box next the royal box! I hope it won't be very hot, for I hear that everybody stops to the end in 'Tristram.' There is a Leitmotif—or is it Liebstod?—at the end, which is quite marvellous, I am told. However, we can go late. I hope it will be in Italian. Italian is the only language for singing. I remember when I was a girl I used to sing 'La donna è nobile.' I forget who wrote it; those Italian names are so alike. And what did you talk to Lord Evelyn about, dear? Was he amusing? We might ask him to our box on Thursday to see 'Tristram.'"
"I don't think he cares about Wagner," said Lily; "indeed, he told me so."
"How very unfashionable! We all like Wagner now. Personally I think it is quite enchanting; but it always sends me fast asleep, though I enjoy it very much until. But there is a great sameness in the operas; they are like those novels I used to read by Mrs. Austen—'Sense and Sensibleness,' and all the rest of them about Bath and other watering-places. I thought them very tedious; but I was told one must read them. Or was it Sir George Eliot who wrote them? Dear me, how stupid of me! SirGeorge was there to-night, and I never once thought of telling him how much I enjoyed his charming novels!"
"George Eliot was a woman," remarked Lily, leaning back in her corner, tremulous with heroically-repressed amusement.
"You may be right, dear; but it isn't a common name for a woman. Of course, there's George Sand. But if you are right, how lucky I did not speak about his novels to Sir George! He would not have liked being mistaken for someone else. Some of those literary men are so sensitive."
"But, you see, he did not write any of those novels," said Lily, with a sudden little spasm of laughter.
"No, dear, that is just what I was saying. How you catch one up! My dearest, I am so glad you enjoyed yourself this evening. Sometimes I have thought you looked a little bored and tired. Really, London is charming! So muchjeu d'espritabout it, is there not? And to-morrow we dine at Lady Conybeare's! How pleasant, and what a wonderful dress she had on this evening! She made me feel quite a dodo—I should say a dowdy."
Lily broke into a sudden peal of laughter, and her mother beamed good-humouredly.
"Laughing again at your poor mother," she said, patting her hand. "You are always laughing, Lily; you are a perfectfille de joie. Dear me! I'm always saying the wrong word. Here we are, darling. Get out very carefully, because my dress is all over."
Lily stepped out into a perfect mob of powdered footmen who lined the steps of the Murchison mansion. Mrs. Murchison, when she took her house, gave what she calledbête noireto a celebrated firmof London decorators (meaning, it is to be supposed,carte blanche) to make it as elegant and refined as money could. The result was an impression of extraordinary opulence; and the eminent firm of decorators, wise in their generation, had pleased Mrs. Murchison very well. Not the smallest part of her gratification was the immense sum she had to pay them. Money meant almost nothing to her, but it meant a good deal to other people; and to be able to say truthfully that one ceiling had cost a couple of thousand pounds was a solid cause of self-congratulation. Indeed, the contemplation of the cheque she had drawn pleased her nearly as much as what the cheque had accomplished.
She paused a moment in the hall, while one footman took off her cloak and handed it to another, and looked contentedly round on the stamped leather and the old oak, the Louis XIV. chairs, the Nankin ware, and the Persian rugs; and her mind went back for a second to the days of pitch-pine and horsehair, and in her excellent heart there rose a sudden thrill of thankfulness. Lily was already on the stairs, and her mother's eye followed her, and rested there so long that the third footman had closed the door, and stood to attention, waiting for her to move. And one hair of Lily's head was dearer to her than all the old oak and the opulence and the powdered footmen. She gave a heavy sigh, all mother.
"Put the lights out, William," she said, "or is it Thomas?"
Mr. Alington had not been present at the ball at the Hungarian Embassy, although Kit had taken the trouble to get him an invitation. By the evening mail had come a long report from his Australian manager, and as the report required considerable digestion, he, as always, put business before pleasure, especially since he did not dance, and devoted the evening to digesting it. It was all a report should be, concise, clear, and full, and since he had hitherto known very little, technically speaking, about his new venture, it demanded long and solitary consideration. There was a very careful map sent with it, drawn to scale, with the reef where found marked in red, where conjectured in yellow.
West Australian mining at this time was but in its infancy. A few reports only had reached England about unexplored goldfields of extraordinary richness, and, as is incident to first reports, they had gained but slender credence. But Mr. Alington had only just come back from Queensland; he had seen gold-bearing quartz, he had made a few tentative experiments to prove the richness of the ore, and had subsequently bought a very large number of claims at a comparatively low cost. Some of these he fully expected would turn out to be worthless, or scarcely worth the working; others he soberly believed wouldbe found to be very rich. And when he opened his manager's report on the night of the Hungarian ball, he had no more certain information about them.
The manager advised, consonantly with Alington's own desire, that a group of five mines should be started, which together embraced all his claims. In number one (see map) there was, as Alington would recollect, a very rich vein of gold, which had now been traced in bore-holes through numbers four and five. Numbers two and three were outliers from the direct line of this vein, but in both a good deal of outcrop gold might be profitably worked. All, so said the manager, were, as far as could be at present seen, well worth working, for the two on which the deeper vein did not lie had gold in smaller veins close to the surface, which could be got at with comparatively little cost. It was not yet known whether there was any deeper vein in them.
Then followed a good deal of technical advice. The main difficulty, as Mr. Alington would remember, was water, and they must be prepared for heavy expenses in this item. But otherwise the property could not be better. Of the specimens sent at random for examination, those from numbers one, four, and five were very rich, and the yield appeared to be not less than five ounces to the ton. This was very high, but such were the results. The reef from which they were taken was five feet thick. Then followed some discussion as to processes; there was certainly much to be said for cyanide, but he would not recommend corrosion. It was tediously long, and there was some talk of prohibiting women from being employed in it. Certainly the white lead produced by it would bring it under the head of dangeroustrades. In numbers two and three the ore was very refractory, and it was curious to find a vein so difficult in the matter of gold extraction close by the vein of one, four, and five. Hitherto, in spite of repeated experiments, they had only been able to recover 20 per cent. of the gold it contained. But a new process was being tried in certain mines in the Rand—the Bülow, was it not?—perhaps Mr. Alington would go into it and cable results. The worst of these chemical processes was that they were so expensive.
Mr. Alington looked more than ever like a butler of superior benevolence, as he sat at his table by a green-shaded reading-lamp, and made himself master of this excellent report. As he read, he inscribed from time to time neat little notes in pencil on the margin of the page, and from time to time jotted down some figures on his blotting-pad. His rooms, above a gunmaker's in St. James's Street—a temporary premise only—were admirably furnished for the wants of a business man of refined tastes and simple desires. A large revolving bookcase full of works of reference stood at his elbow, and a telephone was on the table before him. He was something of a connoisseur in pictures, and in his house on the Sussex Downs, to which he was extensively adding, he had a really fine collection of English masters. But the London fogs and corrosive smoke spelled death to pigments, and here in his modest quarters in London he had only prints. But these were truly admirable. Reynolds' Lady Crosby undulated over the fireplace; Lady Hamilton smiled irresistibly on him from under her crown of vine leaves if he looked at the opposite wall; by her sat Marie Antoinette in an old-gold frame of Frenchwork, and Mrs. Siddons was a first state with the coveted blotted edge.
But to-night Mr. Alington had no eye for these enchanting ladies; he sat long and studiously with the report in front of him, his broad, intelligent face alert with his work. From time to time he reached out a firm, plump hand to take a cigarette from a silver box which stood by his telephone, but often he sat with it unlit for ten minutes or so, absorbed in the page; or, again, he would put it down still only half smoked, as he made one of his little calculations, forget about it, and reach his hand out absently for another. In this way before midnight there were some half-dozen in his ash-tray scarcely touched. A spirit-case and a siphon stood on a tray to his right, and an hour before he had mixed himself a mild whisky-and-soda, which he had not yet tasted.
The silver bell of his Sèvres clock had already struck one when he took up the report, folded it carefully, and put it back in its registered envelope. The map, however, he spread out on the table in front of him, and continued to study it very attentively for ten minutes more. That, too, he then put in the envelope, and, leaning back in his chair, lit a cigarette in earnest and smoked it through. He was a little short-sighted, and for reading, particularly at night, he wore gold-rimmed spectacles, which gave him a scholastic, almost a theologian aspect. But these had long ago been pushed up on his forehead; the theologian had evidently some great matter in debate.
At length he rose, still slowly, and stood for a moment in profound thought. Then, with a sudden briskness, as of a man who had made up his mind,he took the envelope, and, putting it into a drawer in his knee-hole table, turned the key upon it.
"It will be one of the very biggest deals," he remarked to himself.
A grand piano by Bechstein stood at the other side of the room, and Bach's St. Matthew Passion Music was open upon it. Mr. Alington took it up and turned over the pages with a loving reverence. He paused a moment, and hummed in his beautiful tenor voice the recitative of "And Peter went out," and then, lighting the candles, played a few crescendo chords, and plunged into the intricacies of the great double chorus of the lightnings and thunders. The sonorous and terrible fugue grew and grew under his deft hands, rising from crescendo to crescendo with its maddened, tumultuous ground-bass. A pause of a bar, and with a great burst he attacked the second part. He sang the air of "the bottomless pit" with full voice, while his hands quivered mistily in the frenzied chromatic accompaniment. The appalling terrors of the music possessed him; he seemed like a man demented. In the last six bars he doubled the bass as if written for pedals, and with the tierce de Picardy finished in a crashing chord.
Mr. Alington pushed his rather scanty hair back from his forehead and gave a great sigh full of reverential awe, the sigh of a religious artist. He was a true musician, and his own admirable performance of the wonderful text moved him; it smelled of the flames. Then after a moment he turned to the last chorus, the most perfect piece of pathos ever translated into sound, and played it through with all the reticence and sobriety of his utmost art. The wailing cadences, the simple phrases, touched him profoundly. Unlike Mrs. Murchison, he did not considerhimself bound to worship Wagner, although the operas did not sound to him the least alike. He would have told you that he thought him artistically immoral, that he violated the canons of music, as binding, so he considered, on musicians as is the moral code on a civilized society. "A brilliant savage," he said once of that master; "but I know I am unfashionable."
He sat for a long minute perfectly still when he had finished the chorus, as absorbed in the thought of it as he had been in the mines half an hour before. Unaffected moisture stood in the man's eye; his face was that of a stout and rapturous saint in a stained-glass window contemplating some beatific vision. He was alone, and perfectly honest with himself. At length he shut the piano very softly, as if afraid of disturbing the exquisite sweetness and melancholy beauty of the music by any other sound, and, candle in hand, went to his bedroom. An admirable reproduction of Holman Hunt's "Lux Mundi" hung over his fireplace; the "Triumph of the Innocents" was directly above his anchorite-looking bed. They were favourite pictures of his, not only for their subject, but for the genuineness of their feeling. They seemed to him to have grasped something of the simplicity of the real pre-Raphaelite school—something of its soberness, its constant love of form, its childlike straightforwardness. There was an old oakprie-dieuby his bedside, with several well-thumbed books of devotion on it, and he knelt there a full ten minutes before he got into bed. He was thankful for many things—his health, his wealth, his perseverance, his brains, his power of appreciating beautiful things; and he prayed for their long continuance and well-being fervently.
Mr. Alington was a sound sleeper and an early riser, and neither his new and dizzy schemes nor the pathos of the Passion Music kept him awake. He had various appointments in the City on the following morning, and was going to lunch with Lord Conybeare at White's. Jack was not there when he arrived, and he had to solace his waiting moments with the inspection of the room set aside for the reception of strangers. It was furnished with a table, on which stood an empty inkstand and a carafe of stale-looking water, two horsehair chairs, a weighing-machine, and a row of hat pegs hung up inside a shelfless bookcase. He hoped, however, that he would not in the future have to confine himself to the stranger's room when he made an appointment there, since Jack had put him up for the membership of the club, got Tom Abbotsworthy to second him, and had induced a large number of members to append their noble names to his candidature.
Jack came in before long, looking as he always looked, even in the most broiling weather—perfectly cool, unharassed, and ill to quarrel with. He never seemed to get either hot or dirty, even in the underground; smuts passed him by, and settled on the noses of his less fortunate neighbours.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "Let us have lunch at once. You have not been here long, I hope."
"Only a few moments," said Alington; "and I fancy I was here before my time."
"A fine habit," murmured Jack. "How punctual we should be between us!"
They entered the dining-room, which was rather empty, and took their seat at a small table a little removed from other lunchers.
"I did not see you last night at the Embassy," said Jack. "I thought you were sure to be there. Kit told me she had an invitation sent you, and busy men like you always seem to have time for everything."
"One has all the time there is," said Alington; "and I meant to go. But the mail brought me news—important news from Australia."
"Indeed? Good news, I hope."
"Excellent news. We shall very soon require your services."
"Ah! What will you drink?"
"Thanks, I never touch wine at lunch. A little water, please. I am a bit of an ascetic in certain ways. Yes, the news was excellent. I shall get out a prospectus at once, and float the companies. Out of the five mines, the same reef, a very rich one, runs through three. The other two are outliers from this reef, but there appears to be a good deal of surface gold. They ought to begin paying at once almost. I propose making two groups out of these five mines—one comprising the outliers, the other three the main reef. Or we might amalgamate them later. I strongly recommend your purchasing these outliers in large quantities. That, at least, is what I intend to do myself."
Jack laughed.
"It is easy to recommend my making large purchases," he said; "and I wonder if I could run up a bill for them. But circumstances over which I have long ceased to have any control——"
Mr. Alington held up his large white hand.
"You will not need to cover," he said. "Pay the first call, or, at most, the first two calls. I assure you that that will be all that is necessary. UnlessI am much more mistaken than I have ever been in my life, the price will rise very soon and very considerably. You must remember that you draw a salary as a director. If you wish, I will advance that for this year."
"That would be very convenient," observed Jack with truth and candour.
"The first call will be half a crown," continued Alington. "A thousand pounds will thus enable you to command eight thousand shares."
"It is a long time since I have had eight thousand anythings," remarked Jack; "Of course, I don't count debts. I never count debts. But what will happen to me if the shares do not go up?"
"The shares will go up," said Alington dryly. "I should advise you to put yourself entirely in my hands about this. I simply cannot be wrong. As a director, you are bound to hold shares. I recommend you to put the greater part of them into these two outlying mines."
"I ask nothing better than to be guided by you," said Jack. "Many thanks for the hint."
Mr. Alington waved the thanks away, as if they were disproportionately large to the favour bestowed.
"And I should like to have a meeting of the directors on Tuesday," he said, "if that will suit you and Lord Abbotsworthy. I am going to see him this afternoon. I propose to employ my own brokers, men whom I have dealt with for years."
By degrees the room filled up, and, as the tables near them had begun to be occupied, they dismissed for the present the subject of the mines. Jack was more than content to leave his own financial venture in Alington's hands, for he felt convinced that he was playing fair with him. Habitually somewhatcynical, he would have thought twice about going bail for his most intimate acquaintance; but he believed that Alington, as he himself candidly said, was acting for his own interests in making it worth a Marquis's while to join the board. About Alington's ability he had found no two opinions; extensive inquiries showed him that on all hands he was considered the shrewdest of the shrewd. The market had already got hints about the new issue, and was waiting with some impatience for the publication of its prospectus. And the interest extended far beyond the professional operators; the British public, as Alington had said, were nearly ripe to go mad on the subject of Australian gold, and he had chosen his moment well.
The "quiet dinner, simply nobody," to which Kit had invited the gratified Mrs. Murchison and her daughter the night before had grown like a rolling snowball during the hours of the Hungarian ball. If you are having a quiet dinner, one more does not make any difference or change the character of the entertainment, and there had been many such. Among others, Kit had met Alice Haslemere in the Park next morning, and the latter had made an appealad misericordiamto her.
"I am bidden to meet a Serene Transparency or a Transparent Serenity of some sort to-night," she had said. "Who? Oh, some second-class little royalty made in Germany, and I don't intend to go, and have said so. I gave an excuse, Kit; I gave you as my excuse, because you are a sort of privileged person, and even royalty lets you do as you choose. How do you manage it, dear? I wish you would tell me. Anyhow, I said that you asked me to dine to-night six weeks ago. You see, I owe you one over that disingenuous way you treated me about Jack and the baccarat. So you did ask me, didn't you?"
Kit slowed down; she was riding a white bicycle picked out with crimson.
"Seven weeks ago, Alice," she said; "and if youhad forgotten I should never have forgiven you. Quite quietly, you know; and so we are quits. Lady Conybeare's dinner," she said with some ceremony, "will be served as usual at eight-thirty."
They were both riding the wrong side of the road, and Lady Haslemere cast an offended look at her father's coachman, who did not recognise her, and made way for the carriage.
"I knew it was an old, old engagement," she said, with feeling. "And who is coming? I forget; it is so long since you told me."
"Murchisonmère et fille," said Kit; "and thefilleis going to marry Toby. You just see. Also Ted and Toby and the baccarat man. Jack is very thick with him just now, and my ladyship smells money. Oh, Alice, we might play baccarat again to-night; I was thinking that it would be rather tiresome having to play gooseberry to Toby all the evening, but a hand at cards would help to pass the time, would it not? Let's see, baccarat is the game where you have to try and get nine, isn't it? How pleasant! There are some other people coming, too, and there will probably be more before evening. I notice that when there are dinners for Transparencies people ask me to ask them. I am a sort of refuge from royalty."
"Yes, and how transparent!" remarked Lady Haslemere.
"Isn't it? and what a bad joke! But wear a tea-gown, Alice, because I told Mrs. M. to do so. Yes, we'll play detectives on the Alington this evening. I hope he'll cheat again. It must be so amusing to be a real detective. I think I shall become one if all else fails. And most things have failed."
"To see if shopping takes so long, and whetherthe club accounts for late hours," quoted Lady Haslemere, with a touch of regret. "But, Kit, what a blessing it is that one does not feel bound to watch one's husband! Haslemere is so safe, you know; one might as well watch St. Paul's Cathedral to see if it flirted with St. Mary Magdalene's. It would bore me to death watching him. Only once have I seen him at all excited."
"Who was the happy lady?" asked Kit, with interest.
"It wasn't a lady at all—not even me. It was a wire puzzle, and he said it was mathematically impossible, and woke me up about three in the morning to tell me so. He was really quite feverish about it. But in demonstrating to me how impossible it was he accidentally did it, upon which he became perfectly normal, and we lived happily ever afterwards."
They turned into the road north of the Serpentine by the Achilles statue, and quickened their pace.
"One always does live happily ever afterwards," said Kit thoughtfully. "Truth is quite as strange as fiction. There's the old Duchess—what a cat! And just look at her wig all sideways! But I am also thankful that one's husband is not a detective. Jack would make such a bad one. I should be ashamed of him."
"I suppose he would. He is clever," said Alice, "and criminals are so short-sighted. They make the obvious mistakes. But Jack would make a ripping criminal."
"That is just it. As a detective Jack would overlook the obvious things because they are so obvious. Consequently, he would never find out anything, because criminals always make stupid mistakes, notclever ones. Jack never found out that the mine man cheated at baccarat, for instance. Oh, I forgot, you guessed that. Look, there's Ted. How badly he rides!"
"And he never finds out about Ted," remarked Lady Haslemere, with extreme dryness.
"Never. You see, there's nothing to find out. I always tell him what a darling Ted is, and so he never thinks he is a darling. I'm very fond of Ted, but—but—— After all, frankness pays better than anything else, especially when you have nothing to conceal."
Lady Haslemere considered the proposition for a moment, but found nothing to say about it.
"How is the mine man?" she asked abruptly.
"Green bay-trees. So he must be wicked. A few nights ago, when he dined with us, I asked him to sing after dinner, and he sang a sort of evening hymn in four sharps. Don't you know the kind? He has a really beautiful voice, and it nearly made me cry, I felt so regretful for something I had forgotten. Now, that shows he must be wicked. Good people only make me yawn, because they try and adapt themselves to me and talk about worldly things. And it is only wicked people who sing hymns with real feeling, who make me want to cry. Luckily, they are rare."
"And the mines?" asked Alice.
"Well, Jack is excited about the mines, like Haslemere with the wire puzzle, and when Jack is excited it means a good deal. He told me that if things went decently we should be solvent again—it sounds like a chemical—in fact, the mines are playing up. For to make Jack and me solvent, Alice, means a lot."
They had reached the Serpentine, and Kit dismounted and rested by the rails. It was a typically fine June day. The sky was cloudless, the trees were comparatively green, large wood-pigeons wandered fatly about, and childlike old gentlemen were sailing miniature yachts across the water.
"What a pity one is not a person of simple pleasures!" remarked Lady Haslemere. "There is an old gentleman there who takes more delight in his silly little boat than you do in the prospect of solvency, or Haslemere even in a new wire puzzle. How happy he must be and how dull! I think dulness is really synonymous with happiness. Think of cows! You never found an absorbing cow, nor an unhappy one. The old gentleman has eaten a good breakfast; he will eat a good lunch. And he has probably got a balance at his bank."
"It's all stomach," said Kit regretfully—"all except the balance, I mean."
"Yes, that's what it comes to. So we shall play detectives to-night, Kit."
Kit started; she was absorbed in the toy yacht.
"Detectives? Oh, certainly," she replied. "But I almost wish we were wrong about the whole concern."
"The mine man cheated," said Alice, with decision. "I was thinking of asking Tom whether he saw."
"Oh, don't do that," said Kit. "We don't want a scandal. Look!"
A squall shattered the reflections in the calm water, and the old gentleman's toy yacht bowed to it and skimmed off like a swallow.
"Oh, how nice!" cried Kit, who was rapidly taking the colour of her surroundings. "Alice, shallwe save up our money and buy a little toy yacht? Think how happy we should be!"
"If you are going to play the milkmaid, Kit," said Alice severely, "I shall go home. I won't play milkmaid for anybody. Playing gooseberry to Toby is nothing to it."
Kit sighed.
"Dear old gentleman!" she said. "Alice, I would give anything to be an old gentleman with white whiskers and a silly little yacht. Yes, I know, it is an impossible dream. About the baccarat, what were you saying?"
"I have things to say, if you will be so kind as to attend. Try to forget about your white whiskers, Kit."
"Yes, I will. There were no such white whiskers."
"Last night," said Lady Haslemere, "I lost two hundred and forty pounds and sixpence."
"How sixpence? What small stakes you must have been playing! Was it the game where you try to get nine?"
"Yes," said Alice, "and I lost the sixpence because I dropped it on the floor. I don't know how I got it, and I don't know what happened to it."
"Like Melchisedech," put in Kit.
"Exactly. Anyhow, I dropped it, and it just shows what extraordinary people people are. We all took candles and grovelled on the ground looking for that sixpence. Losing it annoyed me more than I can say. I didn't care so much about the rest."
"I should have cared much more," said Kit very fervently. "But you are quite right. And it explains to a certain extent how a very rich man like Mr. Alington can cheat over a few shillings."
"I dreamed about the sixpence too," said Alice. "I thought my salvation depended on it."
Kit did not reply at once.
"That seems inexpensive," she said at length. "I would go as far as that. Look at the yacht—oh, I forgot, I mustn't look at the yacht. Alice, I believe these mines are a big affair. Jack got up this morning at nine in order to be in the City by half-past eight, and it takes a lot to make him as punctual as that. Are you going to take a hand in them?"
"I want to, but Tom says no. He says he has more opportunity of judging, or something tedious, and will make enough for us both. He is willing to invest for me, but that is no fun."
"That is so like Jack," said Kit. "He wants me to have nothing to do with the mines. He expects to make enough for two, which is absurd, considering that nobody can possibly make enough for one. But I shall call myself Miss de Rougemont, spinster, care of the Daily Chronicle, or something, and so invest."
"Have you got a little nest-egg, dear?" asked Alice sympathetically. "How nice! I always have, but the stupid cards ate a big piece of the yolk last night."
"I know; they do. But, on the other hand, they fill it up again. I expect most women have nest-eggs of some sort. It may be money, or virtue, or vice, or secrets. Well, I'm going to drop mine slap into the Australian goldfields."
"I intend to be cautious," said Lady Haslemere. "But just to spite Tom I shall risk something. Tom was most tiresome and interfering. He says women know nothing about business. A lot he knows himself!If I had to pick out one man eminently unfitted to be director of anything, it would be Tom."
"I can't have Jack left out in the cold like that," said Kit.
"They are a pretty pair. Tom's honest; that is all that can be said for him."
Kit screamed with laughter.
"I bet you that Jack is as honest as Tom," she said. "But that is just the way with your family, dear. They all think that they have a monopoly of the cardinal virtues, just as Mr. Leiter thought he could have a corner in corn. But, seriously, I do hope and trust that Alington's mines are sound. Think how the Radical papers would shout if something—well, if something untoward happened. Salaries, you know! Supposing the British public dropped a lot of money and there was an inquiry? Personally, I think Jack is rash to be chairman. He is paid for his name—he knows that perfectly well; but directors are supposed to be dimly responsible. And his boss cheats at baccarat! Also I think he shouldn't have a salary as director; that doesn't look well."
"That will surely be periphrased in the accounts, won't it?" asked Alice.
"I hope so; periphrasis covers a multitude of cheques."
They had got round to Hyde Park Corner again, and rode slowly through the gate into the roaring street. Kit's eye brightened at the sight of life; she forgot about her dream of white whiskers.
"I think gold-mines are an excellent form of gambling," remarked Alice. "You can play directly after breakfast. Now, one can't play cards directly after breakfast. I tried the other day, but itwas a hopeless failure. Even naturals looked horrid by daylight."
"Gold-mines are a tonic," said Kit "You take them after breakfast like Easton's syrup, and they pick you up wonderfully. You should see how brisk Jack is getting in the morning."
"Well,au revoir, dear. Half-past eight, isn't it? May Tom come too?"
"Oh yes, and Haslemere if you like," said Kit, turning up Park Lane.
"I don't like," called out Alice shrilly, going straight on.
Kit giggled at intervals all the way home.
Mrs. Murchison's cup of happiness was very full that evening. Though the quiet little dinner had grown about eighteen, yet everyone was of Kit's own particular set, and it was what Kit called a "Christian dinner"—that is to say, everyone called each other by their Christian names. "So much nicer than a heathen dinner," she said to Mrs. Murchison. "You may meet cannibals there."
Mrs. Murchison herself was taken in by Tom Abbotsworthy, and it is doubtful which of them enjoyed their conversation most. She was enchanted to find herself with him, and her own remarks were really memorable.
"I just adore English society," she said over the first mouthfuls of soup. "Our brightest talkers in America cannot be compared with the ordinary clubmen in London. And the dinners, how charming!"
"You find people amusing?" asked Tom.
"Yes, and the substantiality of it. Not only the viands and the drinks, but the really improving conversation—the—thetout à fait."
Tom had the greatest of all social gifts—gravity.
"You think people have lesstout à faitin America?" he asked.
"There's none of it; and now I come to think of it, I meantout ensemble. How quick of you to see what I meant! But that's just it. My heart—and I told Mr. Murchison so the first time I saw him—is English. My head may be American, but my heart is English. Those were my words,ipse dixit."
"Very remarkable," said Tom.
"The air of dignity," continued Mrs. Murchison (soup always thawed her), "and the simile of tastes which I find in England! The wealth without ostensity—I should say ostentiousness! The solid comfort and no gimcrackiness!"
"I am afraid you will find plenty of gimcrackiness if you go to the suburbs," said Tom.
"I haven't yet projected any trips to the suburbs," said Mrs. Murchison with some dignity.
"Of course not. The proper definition of suburbs is the place to which one does not go. They are merely a negative geographical expression."
"Well, I'm an Anglophobe," said Mrs. Murchison with conviction; "and I believe nothing against England, not even its suburbs. But what would you say, Lord Abbotsworthy, was the main tendency of the upper classes in England?"
Tom was slightly puzzled.
"Tendency in what line?" he asked.
"By tendency I mean the direction in which they are advancing?"
"We are advancing towards America," he replied, after a moment's thought. "That is where our fiction goes, and that is whence our inventions come."
Mrs. Murchison dropped a large truffle off her fork, and remained a moment with it poised.
"I guess that's deep," she said. "I shall cable that to Mr. Murchison."
Tom wondered silently whether Mr. Murchison would be as much puzzled by it as he was himself; but his wife proceeded to elucidate.
"The fictions are the inventions, you mean," she said. "The one goes to where the other comes from. The oneness of the two countries, in fact. The brightest thing I've heard this summer," she observed.
Tom was lost in contemplation at the thought of the deep gloom in which all else that Mrs. Murchison had heard this summer must be involved, and he was grateful when that lady, after a reflective pause on his dazzling remark, changed the subject.
"What a lovely man Lord Evelyn is!" she said.
"Lord Evelyn? Oh, Toby! Yes, he's an excellent fellow."
"By lovely, I do not refer to his personal appearance," said Mrs. Murchison, "for that is homely. But by lovely I refer to his happy and amiable disposition."
"You have hit him off completely," said Tom. "Happy and amiable is just what Toby is."
Mrs. Murchison's mind went off for a moment on a maternal excursion at the sight of Lily and Toby, who were talking eagerly together, but came quickly back again.
"And the vivacity at present depicted in his face is considerable," went on Mrs. Murchison in a burst of analytic intuition. "I just adore vivacity. Vivacity without screaming, Lord Abbotsworthy, is what I just adore. Mr. Murchison is very vivacious; but to hear him when he is being vivacious, why,—you'dthink he had the chicken-pox—I should say whooping-cough."
"That must be very alarming until you are used to it," said Tom.
"It is that. And the choking fit which sometimes ensues on his hilarity—why, I have seen times and again his life hung by a hair, like the sword of Demosthenes at Belshazzar's feast."
Mrs. Murchison delivered herself of this surprising allusion with the most touching confidence. She liked a well-turned sentence, and repeated it softly to herself.
"Such anxieties are inseparable from the union of the married life," said Tom in a voice that trembled slightly.
Kit from the other side of the table had just burst out into a loud meaningless laugh, and he suspected that she had overheard.
"That's what I say," answered Mrs. Murchison; "and that's what the Prayer-Book says. The joys and the sorrows; the opportunities and the importunities."
This was slightly cryptic, but it was probable that importunity was to be taken as the opposite of opportunity. Tom chanced it, though he did not seem to remember anything in the Prayer-book which suggested the widest parallel to Mrs. Murchison's quotation. She went ahead in such a surprising manner in conversation that it was really difficult to keep up. She positively scoured the plains of thought.
"You find the opportunities, I am sure, much more numerous than the importunities," he said, faint, yet pursuing. "Yes, champagne."
"And that's just beautifully put, Lord Abbotsworthy," said Mrs. Murchison.
The tide of conversation changed, and set to opposite sides. Toby and Lily alone refused to obey the action of the tide, as if they were a rebel moon, which demanded a system of its own, refusing allegiance elsewhere, and continued to talk, regardless of the isolated unit they left on each side of them. Mrs. Murchison, who liked the agreeable hovering of the mind over first one subject and then another, which reminded her, she said, of the way in which the puma birds in the Southern States sucked honey from various flowers without alighting, was instantly involved in a sort of double-barrelled conversation with Lord Comber about the check system of baggage, and the relative position of women in England and the United States of America.
As dinner went on conversation became louder and more desultory. No one listened particularly to what anyone else was saying; the tendency for everyone to talk at once (this may have been the tendency of the upper classes which Mrs. Murchison had inquired about) became more marked, and the inimitable atmosphere of laughter was abroad. At Kit's house everyone always left the dining-room together as soon as cigarettes were handed round, for her excellent social sense told her that when people were getting on well (and at her house they always did), it was absurd for a party to go through the refrigerating process of isolation of the sexes, and waste time in thawing again. Besides, she considered it obsolete for men to sit over wine; nobody ever drank now, it was only in England that so absurd a form was kept up.
Some of the party were going on to a vague elsewhere, and Mrs. Murchison's eye caught Lily's soonafter ten. She was most anxious on this first occasion not to outstay her welcome.
"It's been just too charming, Lady Conybeare," she said; "but Lily and I must go. We've got to go here and there, on and on till morning."
Kit rose. Her plan was prospering, for Lily and Toby were still talking together, and she felt particularly pleased with herself and everybody else.
"Too unkind of you to go," she said; "and if you don't come to see us again very soon, now that you know the way, I shan't forgive you. Send me a line any day and come to lunch. I am almost always in for lunch. And has Toby been making himself pleasant, Miss Murchison? He can when he likes. I saw him shaking with laughter at something you were telling him at dinner, and I longed to shout across the table and ask what it was. Good-night! Too tiresome that you have to go! Conybeare and I are going to be very domestic this evening, and not set one foot out, but sit and play cat's-cradle together when the others have gone. Mind, I only let you go under the distinct understanding that you will come back very soon, unless we've bored you both beyond forgiveness."
Jack went down with them to the front-door, and Kit as far as the head of the stairs, where she kissed her hand and looked regretfully after them, with her head a little on one side. As she expected, Mrs. Murchison gave one backward glance as she went out, and Kit kissed her hand again, smiling. Then, as soon as the front-door closed, she hurried back in a brisk business-like manner to join the others.