"Theatrical!" said May in a low indignant voice.
"You don't suppose he's really fainting, my dear, do you? Oh, I've seen him do the same sort of thing once before!"
An impulse carried May's eyes towards Miss Quisanté; the old lady was smiling composedly and sniffing her bottle. Her demeanour was in strong contrast to Mrs. Gellatly's almost tearful excitement.
"He couldn't, he couldn't!" May moaned in horror.
If the untrue suspicion entertained by Lady Richard and possibly shared by Miss Quisanté (the old lady's face was a riddle) spread at all to anybody else, the fault lay entirely at the sufferer's own door. He knew too well how real the attack had been; when the ladies mingled with the men to take tea and coffee, he was still suffering from its after-effects. But he treated the occurrence in so hopelessly wrong a way; he minced and smirked over it; he would not own to a straightforward physical illness, but preferred to hint at and even take credit for an exaggerated sensibility, as though he enhanced his own eloquence by pointing to the extraordinary exhaustion it produced. He must needs bring the frailty of his body to the front, not as an apology, but as an added claim to interest and a new title by which to win soft words, admiring looks, and sympathetic pressings from pretty hands. Who could blame Lady Richard for murmuring, "There, my dear, now you see!"? Who could wonder that Aunt Maria looked cynically indifferent? Was it strange that a good many people, without going to the length of declaring that the orator had suffered nothing at all, yet were inclined to think that he knew better than to waste, and quite well how to improve, the opportunity that a trifling fatigue or a passing touch of faintness gave him? "Knows how to fetch the women, doesn't he?" said somebody with a laugh. To be accused of that knowledge is not a passport to the admiration of men.
Before May Gaston came near Quisanté himself, Jimmy Benyon seized on her and introduced her to Aunt Maria. In reply to politely expressed phrases of concern the old lady's shrewd eyes twinkled.
"Sandro'll soon come round, if they let him alone," she said.
The words were consistent with either view of the occurrence, but the tone inclined them to the side of uncharitableness.
"Is he liable to such attacks?" May asked.
"He's always been rather sickly," Miss Quisanté admitted grudgingly.