"Don't go," Mrs. Bobby entreated, holding her hand, "I really haven't seen anything of you."
"I must go, thank you," Elizabeth said, quietly. "William,"—this was the gardener, who on state occasions officiated as coachman—"will be furious if he is kept waiting."
She felt a sudden eagerness to be gone, and Mrs. Bobby admitted the force of her excuse and parted with her reluctantly. Both Bobby and Gerard escorted her into the hall, but it was Gerard who placed her in the carriage, and yet, as he did so, said not a word further of seeing her again.
"He probably doesn't wish to," thought Elizabeth, "now that he has done his duty to the last." The reflection was the only unpleasant one that she brought away from an otherwise successful evening.
Gerard sauntered back into the drawing-room, and stood leaning against the mantel-piece, gazing with thoughtful eyes into the fire, while, as it leaped and flickered, and sent out glowing tongues of flame, a woman's face looked up at him framed in her shimmering hair, and the magic of the fire-music still rang in his ear, mingled with the more passionate strains of Tristan, the deeper tragedy of Liebestod.
He had been standing thus a long time when Mrs. Bobby came and stood beside him. The other guests had left and Bobby had gone off to his den.
"Well," she said tentatively, glancing up smiling into his face, "well, Julian, what did you think of her?"
He started and looked at her blankly for a moment. "Think of—whom, Eleanor?" he asked.
"You know whom I mean—Elizabeth Van Vorst."
Gerard's eyes wandered back to the fire, where they rested for a moment absently. "I think," he said at last slowly, and as if weighing his words with more than his wonted deliberation, "I think there's too much red in her hair."