“I should not have permitted her to appear had this been a dancing-party,” she explained. “But it is so quiet, and I am unable to manage without her.
“She is quite like a daughter to me,” she went on, thoroughly believing her own enthusiastic speeches, and feeling a maternal pride swell her bosom. A tear or so lightly brushed away by her lace handkerchief would have added to the effect, but tears come and go at will, not at the command of those who would summon or dismiss them.
Miss Turquand sat so tranquil in appearance, and bore the masked battery of curious eyes so calmly, that some people who listened with amazement were indignant. Lady Quaintree’s companion did not seem conscious that anything unusual had happened. Two or three times she glanced through the veil of silken lashes which fringed her translucent gray eyes at Captain Desfrayne, but it was a glance swift as lightning, not betraying the most transient glimpse of the strange, mingled feelings of resentment and lively interest aroused in her heart by the claim made upon her in behalf of the handsome young officer.
Captain Desfrayne carefully avoided looking at his beautiful charge. He seemed to be profoundly indifferent on the subject of Mr. Vere Gardiner’s whims and fancies, and neither approached Miss Turquand nor evinced the slightest desire to become acquainted with her.
Frank Amberley and Lady Quaintree thought this strange, but neither showed that they were in any way conscious of Captain Desfrayne’s cold indifference toward the young girl.
Paul Desfrayne found some people among the crowd whom he knew, and was introduced to some others by his hostess, or by Frank Amberley, so he ought not to have experienced the profound sense of ennui and oppression which made him long to be anywhere but in this brilliant throng.
Lady Quaintree at last seized an opportunity of questioning her nephew on the subject of the mysterious old man, and in a few words he gave her as much information as he thought advisable.
“How extraordinary!” she said. “What a very romantic case! I have no objection to his leaving a fine fortune to my dear little girl, but I think he should not have hampered her with such disagreeable conditions. He seems to have been remarkably eccentric.”
“I knew scarcely anything of him,” Mr. Amberley replied. “I think, certainly, it was an odd thing for him to lay such an embargo on the liberty of two young people, and I doubt not but the expression of his wishes will most probably be the means of hindering them from——”
He abruptly paused. His aunt looked searchingly at him, anxious to learn his secret thoughts, for more reasons than one.