“Nonsense!” he answered, abruptly. “You don’t call yourself free, do you, in those diamonds and those absurd shoes?”
He turned again to the garden and breathed in the scent of the roses, with head thrown back. To Lady Muriel’s joy Rupert Helsingham returned at this moment, followed by a footman.
“Lord Blair will see you at once,” he said.
The girl gave a sigh of relief which she hoped Mr. Lane would observe; but in this she was disappointed, for, with a nod to her partner and a good-natured bow to herself, he strode away.
“A very odd fellow,” remarked Helsingham, when they were alone once more. “His manners are atrocious; but what can one expect from a man who spends his life in the desert?”
“What makes him live there?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Being a crank, I suppose. He’s studying Bedouin manners and customs, or something. He’s a great Arabic scholar.”
“He made me feel rather uncomfortable,” she said, as she rose from her chair and laid her fingers on her partner’s arm.
“Yes, he’s boorish,” he replied, smoothing his sleek, dark hair with his disengaged hand.
“It isn’t that, quite,” she corrected him, her eyebrows puckering. “But he made me feel that I was of no importance whatsoever, and, being a woman, I resented it. He brushed me aside, like the sentry.”