It was a feast full of good things, but its spirit was not able to bear transition. The company scattered quickly when it was over to the opera or theater or to the rest of a quiet evening at home, for at the end enthusiasm of any kind has a chilling effect on the feelings. None of the party understood this result, and yet all were, in their way, affected by the sudden fall of mental temperature. Mr. Denning went to his library and took out his private ledger, a penitential sort of reading which he relished after moods of any kind of enjoyment. Mrs. Denning selected Ethel Rawdon for her text of disillusion. She “thought Ethel had been a little jealous of Dora’s dress,” and Dora said, “It was one of her surprises, and Ethel thought she ought to know everything.” “You are too obedient to Ethel,” continued Mrs. Denning and Dora looked with a charming demureness at her lover, and said, “She had to be obedient to some one wiser than herself,” and so slipped her hand into Basil’s hand. And he understood the promise, and with a look of passionate affection raised the little jeweled pledge and kissed it.
Perhaps no one was more affected by this chill, critical after-hour than Miss Bayard and Ethel. Mostyn accompanied them home, but he was depressed, and his courtesy had the air of an obligation. He said he had a sudden headache, and was not sorry when the ladies bid him “good night” on the threshold. Indeed, he felt that he must have refused any invitation to lengthen out the hours with them or anybody. He wanted one thing, and he wanted that with all his soul—solitude, that he might fill it with images of Dora, and with passionate promises that either by fair means or by foul, by right or by wrong, he would win the bewitching woman for his wife.
CHAPTER IV
“WHAT do you think of the evening, Aunt Ruth?” Ethel was in her aunt’s room, comfortably wrapped in a pink kimono, when she asked this question.
“What do you think of it, Ethel?”
“I am not sure.”
“The dinner was well served.”
“Yes. Who was the little dark man you talked with, aunt?”
“He was a Mr. Marriot, a banker, and a friend of Bryce Denning’s. He is a fresh addition to society, I think. He had the word ‘gold’ always on his lips; and he believes in it as good men believe in God. The general conversation annoyed him; he could not understand men being entertained by it.”