Trevithick stood in the background and watched her with honest eyes of wonder and pity. She was smoothing the pink silk of her gown, while her eyes watched the fire as if she saw something very happy in it. Her skin was waxen white, and her features sharpened, but the brilliant eyes kept their beauty, and her little old hands, covered with rings, were delicately shaped. Her hair was half-white through the original black, and very oddly her pink bonnet, with its wreath of roses inside, sat on the streaked hair and over the white face. She had thrown off a large sable cloak on to the back of her chair.
Trevithick watched her with wonder and pity.
Sylvia now broke in on Miss Spencer's half-mad mood. She touched one of the hands tenderly. Trevithick, as he noticed it, thought that it was the first time he had seen Sylvia's face really soft; and wonderfully the new expression completed the girl's beauty. So she will look, he thought, some day, when she is in love, like—like Pamela. But Pamela's serious face was hidden from him now with a fire-screen she held in her hand. He had noticed of late that she seldom looked at him, nor was he displeased. He knew the secret she was afraid to reveal.
"We are all going to the Vandaleur affair, Miss Spencer," Sylvia was saying. "It will be on the thirtieth. There are to be great doings—acres of marquees for the diners, and the winter garden lit by electricity, and I don't know what besides."
Miss Spencer came back to every-day life with a start.
"To the Vandaleur affair, child! Why, who is going to take you?"
"Papa, of course. He loves a little outing, though he won't admit it. He says he'd rather stay at home and have a quiet night's work at his book, and get some hot tea ready for us by the time we come home."
"Why shouldn't I take you?" said the old lady. "I'm hardly old enough for a chaperon, of course, still I've the carriage, and I'd enjoy the function. I haven't been at one since the time Tom Charteris was master of the hounds. How long ago is that?"