Indeed no lyrical effusion would seem exaggerated if dedicated to Rosemary Fowkes. She was one of those women on whom Nature seemed to have showered every one of her most precious gifts. There are few words that could adequately express the peculiar character of her beauty. She was tall, and her figure was superb; but there are many tall, beautifully built women. She had hair the colour of horse-chestnuts when first they fall out of their prickly green cases, and her skin was as delicately transparent as egg-shell china; but Rosemary's charm did not lie in the colour of her hair or the quality of her skin. It lay in something more undefinable. Perhaps it was in her eyes. Surely, surely it was in her eyes. People were wont to say they were "haunting," like the eyes of a pixie or of a fairy. They were not blue, nor were they green or grey, but they were all three at times, according as Rosemary was pleased or amused or thoughtful; and when she was pleased or amused she would screw up those pixie eyes of hers, and three adorable little lines that were not wrinkles would form on each side of her nose, like those on the nose of a lion cub.
Her chestnut-coloured hair lay in luscious waves over her forehead and round her perfectly shaped little head, and when she smiled her small white teeth would gleam through her full, parted lips.
Eschewing the fantastic pierrot costumes of the hour, Rosemary Fowkes was dressed in a magnificent Venetian gown of the fifteenth century, the rich crimson folds of which set off her stately figure as well as the radiant colouring of her skin and hair. She wore a peculiarly shaped velvet cap, the wings of which fastened under her chin, thus accentuating the perfect oval of the face and the exquisite contour of forehead and cheeks.
"A woman so beautiful has no right to be clever," General Naniescu remarked with an affected sigh. "It is not fair to the rest of her sex."
"Miss Fowkes is certainly very gifted," Lady Orange remarked drily, her enthusiasm apparently being less keen on the subject of Rosemary than that of Miss Fairfax.
"And who is the happy man," M. de Kervoisin put in his dry, ironic tone, "with whom the enchantress is dancing?"
"Peter Blakeney," Miss Fairfax replied curtly.
"Qui ça, Peter Blakeney?"
"Peter Blakeney, Peter Blakeney! He does not know who is Peter Blakeney!" Lady Orange exclaimed, and for this supreme moment she departed from her habitual vagueness of attitude, whilst her glance became more markedly astonished than before.
Two or three young people who sat at the back of the box tittered audibly, and gazed at General Naniescu as if he were indeed an extraordinary specimen lately presented to the Zoo.