“She is very lovely,” Lady Henge said with an irrepressible sigh. “It is a very unusual type of loveliness,” at which Perior looked away from Camelia and back at his companion. “He is very fond of her,” Lady Henge added—a little tearfully, Perior suspected.
“He has taken it seriously for quite a while, I believe.”
“Oh yes, yes indeed,” Lady Henge, conscious of having herself made the only barrier to an earlier declaration, spoke a little vaguely. “Arthur’s wife will have many responsibilities,” she went on; “I think that—if she accepts Arthur—Miss Paton will prove equal to them.” The “if she accepts Arthur” Perior thought rather noble, “and her gaiety will be good for him, he needs such sunshine. I must not be so selfish as to think that I could give it him. And then—with all her gaiety,” here a recrudescence of the vein of urgency crept once more into Lady Henge’s voice, “she has depths, Mr. Perior—great depths, has she not? Neither Arthur nor I take life lightly, you know,” and Lady Henge held him with a waiting pause of silence.
“Yes, I know you don’t,” he said, and then found himself forced to add, “there are many possibilities in Camelia.”
At all events, he might have said much more. Again he looked across at Camelia as he spoke, and again her eyes met his. She rose abruptly, and crossed the room.
“Lady Henge,” she said, standing before her guest in an attitude of delicate request, “won’t you play for us? We all want to hear you—and not as mere interpreter, you know—one of your own compositions, please.”
If there were a vulnerable spot in Lady Henge’s indisputable array of virtues it was a touching egotism in regard to her musical capabilities. She fancied herself the pioneer of a new school, and hoped for a rather shallow smattering of form and polyphony to more than atone by an immense amount of feeling. She smiled now, drawing off her gloves immediately, even while saying, with the diffidence of a master—
“I am afraid my poèmes symphoniques are not quite on the after-dinner level, my dear. You know I can’t promise a comfortable accompaniment to conversation.”
“Don’t degrade us by the implication,” smiled Camelia; “we are at least appreciative.”
“My music is emotionally exhaustive,” said Lady Henge, shaking her head and rising massively. “In my humbler way I have tried to do for the abstract what Wagner did for the concrete. I do not depict the sea, but the psychological sensations the sea arouses in us.” Lady Henge was moving towards the piano, her very back, with its serene, brocaded breadth, imposing by its air of large self-confidence a hush upon the babble of drawing-room flippancy.