"Phew!" muttered jack in disgust. "Ivor will have enough. If Polly casts him off, she will deserve to suffer for it all her life long. She will lose one of the best men living."
[CHAPTER XXIII]
IN VIEW OF CAPTAIN PEIRCE
"IN this brilliant assemblage of rank and fashion, though lightened by the fire of genius and radiant with feminine charms, there is for me but one star of greatest magnitude, before which all lesser orbs fade into insignificance."
So spoke Captain Peirce in the ears of Polly Keene, and he felt that he had expressed himself with the utmost elegance. Gentlemen in those days were prone to more flowing speech than they are in these, and such speeches did not necessarily mean much. Ninety years later, the grandson or great-grandson of Captain Peirce would merely drag his moustache and mutter, "Awfully pretty girl!" But the two modes of expression, though rather unlike, probably implied and imply much the same in the end.
Captain Peirce did not pull his moustache. It was not the fashion, and he had none to pull. He bent a little nearer to Polly; and that was the moment when Jack's glance followed Molly's.
Polly did not seem to repulse him. She did not even exert herself to turn her head away. She had so much of this sort of thing. One flowery speech more or less made very little difference. Had it not been for the pressure put upon her by Mrs. Bryce, Polly would not have imagined that Captain Peirce meant anything seriously. She stood in one of her most graceful attitudes, toying with a fan; and the light from innumerable wax candles fell upon her fair round arms.
"Can you by any chance divine who that star of greatest magnitude may be, sweet Polly?"
This was audacious, and Captain Peirce fully expected a rebuff in consequence.
It did not come so soon as he expected. A thrill ran through Polly, almost amounting to a shiver. She was instantaneously carried back, as a few minutes earlier Molly had been, bridging at a leap four long slow years.