"May I hope that Miss Hildreth still keeps a place for me in her remembrance, although it is so long since we last met?"
And now surely, if ever, Patricia earned for herself the character so freely bestowed upon her, of petulance and inconstancy. She raised her head a trifle haughtily as she replied, and so managed as not to see Mr. Tremain's outstretched hand, while her words fell cold and cutting:
"Can Mr. Tremain expect any woman to remember ten years back and own to it?"
Then she laughed, a cool, well-trained little defiant laugh, and turned nonchalantly to a tall, dark, foreign-looking man, who alone of all her court had refused to fall back as Philip approached her. The slight was a direct one, but if it told, the hurt was invisible to the world, for Mr. Tremain, smiling a little more indulgently, answered her no less coolly:
"That Miss Hildreth should remember the number of years since we met is answer sufficient, and too great an honour."
Then he bowed again, and turned away, and the crowd of eager satellites moved up closer and filled the gap; only Miss James remarked the wave of angry colour that swept across Patricia's face, and for an instant dyed it crimson.
Meantime, Mr. Tremain moved quietly back, and stationed himself where, half-hidden by the heavy falling portières, he could study unseen the face and form of the woman on whom for ten long years he had bestowed the greatest love of his life.
It was with keenest eyes of disapproval that he noted each change in her, changes that to him seemed indicative only of the interior alteration that had come over her, and that while it gave her the polished brilliancy of a costly gem, he felt was gained only by some corresponding loss of heart.
Miss Hildreth was dressed in white, without a spot of colour save for the large bouquet of Parma violets that lay unheeded on her lap. Her costume, though simple in the extreme, yet bore evidence, even to Philip, of its costliness, and reminded him sadly, with its soft silken folds and filmy laces, of the dress in which he had last seen her. Evidently these baubles of fashion had not lost their charm to Patricia. Mr. Tremain in his character of critic saw only artificiality in each little curl that formed the coronal of soft, dusky hair, crowning the small delicate head; he read worldliness in each guarded laugh, each well-modulated tone; he descried vanity and pride in the very gestures of her hands—those little hands that had once rested so trustingly in his, and on which he had showered so many hot, youthful kisses. He noted every turn of her head, every line of her sweet face, every movement of the slim upright form, and to him it seemed as though a cold hard imperceptible coating of worldly artifice and selfishness wrapped her around and about, as hard and keen and impregnable as any corslet of triply-tried steel, from which all shafts of remembrance, affection, compassion, or naturalness, glanced off harmless, not leaving even a dent behind upon the polished surface.
This, then, was Patricia after ten long years? This was the woman of his love. This was the wilful Patty for whom Esther Newbold had pleaded so generously, and towards whom his heart had become as wax in the fire of tender remembrance. This was the reality of his vision; he had come from the presence of that spiritual Patty face to face with the real Patricia, and so coming his heart and soul had been moved with love and compassion towards her; he had yearned to make all right between them, to forget the past, to knit together the broken skein of their two lives, to be, in fact, magnanimous and generous, to hold out the hand of forgiveness and reconciliation, and to welcome in return a heart-broken, remorseful, penitent Patricia, who should fall upon his heart with glad gratitude, while she owned herself vanquished and grateful for the immensity of his goodness and patronage.