The Quixanos, as Reuben had told him, were sephardim, for whose claim to birth he had the greatest respect. But as for that red-headed young man, her brother—there were no marks of breeding about him!
Bertie was puzzled, as the stranger is so often puzzled, by the violent contrasts which exist among Jews, even in the case of members of the same family.
Judith was standing some way off, where Bertie stood observing her, while two or three men wrote their names on her dancing-card.
She was one of the few people of her race who look well in a crowd or at a distance. The charms of person which a Jew or Jewess may possess are not usually such as will bear the test of being regarded as a whole.
Some quite commonplace English girls and men who were here to-night looked positively beautiful as they moved about among the ill-made sons and daughters of Shem, whose interesting faces gain so infinitely on a nearer view, even where it is a case of genuine good-looks.
Bertie waited a minute till the men had moved off, then advanced to Miss Quixano and humbly asked for two dances. Judith gave them to him with a smile. He was a poor creature, certainly, but he was Reuben’s friend, and she knew that, in one way at least, Reuben thought well of him: he was one of the few Gentiles of her acquaintance whom he had not stigmatized as an “outsider.”
Moreover Bertie’s little air of deference was a pleasant change from the rather patronizing attitude of the young men of her set, whose number was very limited, and who were aggressively conscious of commanding the market.
Bertie, his dances secured, moved off regretfully. He would have liked to sue for further favours, but his sense of decorum restrained him. Had he but known it, he might without exciting notice have claimed a third, at least, of the dances on Judith’s card. Hard flirtation was the order of the day, and the chaperons, who were few in number, gossiped comfortably together, while their charges sat out half the night with the same partner.
Rose fell upon Bertie at this point, and fired him off like a gun at one or two partnerless damsels; while Judith, her partner in her wake, moved over to the doorway, where Adelaide was standing with Caroline Cardozo.
It was eleven o’clock and Reuben had not come. Judith had, it must be owned, changed her position with a view to consulting the hall-clock, and perhaps Adelaide had some inkling of this, for she said very loudly to her companion: