The tall dark man who was turning over the leaves of a magazine at the end of the room, looked up as she entered and gazed at her for a moment in silence. Their eyes met; for an instant he seemed to hesitate. Then he rose and walked slowly towards her.
"You must let me introduce myself, Miss Van Vorst," he said, and his voice was like his movements, very deliberate, yet it was clear-cut and pleasant in tone. "My name is Gerard. Mrs. Van Antwerp told me I should have the pleasure of taking you in to dinner."
He spoke so quietly and naturally, and seemed to accept the situation with such absolute indifference, that whatever awkwardness it might have contained for a young girl nervous over her first dinner, was instantly removed. Elizabeth felt grateful, and yet perversely a little piqued that this grave, dark man should place her at a disadvantage, that he should be perfectly at home and know exactly what to do, when she was nervous and flustered. But that kind Providence which had endowed Elizabeth with so many good gifts had given her among others a power to cover inward perturbation with a brave show of self-possession.
"I'm terribly early," she was able to say now, quite lightly and easily, though still with that uncomfortable beating of the heart. "My aunts are very old-fashioned, and insist on punctuality as one of the cardinal virtues."
"In which they are quite right, I think," said Mr. Gerard, smiling. "But when you know Mrs. Van Antwerp well, you will have learned that it is the one virtue in which she is utterly lacking."
"I—I don't know her very well," Elizabeth admitted, regretting somewhat that she could not assert the contrary. "I have never even been here before," she added, glancing about the room, whose stateliness was a little overpowering.
"Really! Then wouldn't you—a—like to come into the conservatory and look at the flowers?" suggested Mr. Gerard, who seemed to have charged himself with the duties of host. "Oh, you needn't wait for Mrs. Van Antwerp," he added, smiling, as Elizabeth hesitated. "I know the time when she went to dress, and can assert with confidence that she won't be down for another half-hour."
So Elizabeth found herself led, somewhat against her will, into the famous conservatory, of whose beauties she had often heard; but with which, it must be confessed, she was less occupied than with the man by her side, at whom she cast furtive glances from beneath her long lashes. He was tall—decidedly taller than herself, though she was a tall woman, and rather broadly built than otherwise. His dark, smooth-shaven face, which had lighted up pleasantly when he smiled, was in repose rather heavy and impassive, with an ugly, square chin, that seemed to indicate an indomitable will, of a kind to pursue tenaciously whatever he might desire. In contradiction to this, his eyes, except when a passing gleam of interest or amusement brightened their sombre depths, had a weary indifferent look, as if there were nothing in the world, on the whole, worth desiring.
"And this is the man," thought Elizabeth, "whom I am expected to amuse. He doesn't look as if it would be an easy task. But no doubt Mrs. Bobby has given him the same charge about me, and he is trying, conscientiously, to obey. That's why he's taken me in here to show me the sights, the way they do to the country visitors." Her heart leaped rebelliously at the thought, even while she was saying aloud mechanically: "'What a fine azalea!' I wonder if I look like a countrified production. My gown isn't, at least; but then—he wouldn't appreciate that fact. It probably would be the same to him, if it came out of the Ark; he isn't the sort of man to notice, one way or the other. I don't believe he cares for women—no, nor they for him. He's not at all good-looking, and he must be—thirty-five"—she ventured another glance. "Oh, that, at least. His hair is quite gray on the temples. 'Yes, those orchids are beautiful. I never saw anything like them.' I must do my duty and admire properly; he thinks me very unsophisticated, no doubt. I don't think I like him. Did Mrs. Bobby think it would amuse me to—amuse him? But perhaps he is thinking the same thing about me." And she stole another glance at his face, but could not read, in his half-closed eyes and unmoved expression, any indication of his real feelings.
They had made the round of the conservatory, when suddenly he stopped. "Don't you—want a flower for your gown," he asked. He looked about him reflectively. "Let me see," he said. "You would like it to be white." Elizabeth wondered how he knew that. After a moment's hesitation, he chose a white rose and gave it to her. She fastened it carefully in her gown, where its green leaves formed the only touch of color.