The attention of the resplendent creature in pink satin and white lace was turned smilingly on this young man, who stepped eagerly forward, and offered her his arm; otherwise she must have seen Captain Desfrayne, who gazed at her as people are supposed to stare at specters.
A few muttered, half-broken words escaped Paul Desfrayne’s lips, and he looked hurriedly about, with the air of an animal at bay. Then, swiftly turning, as the two gay, laughing and flirting apparitions came up the hall, he threw aside a crimson velvet portière, and plunged recklessly into a room close at hand.
It was a moderate-sized sitting-room, flooded with a soft, pure light, and deliciously cool in contrast to the heated salons above.
Paul Desfrayne was about to congratulate himself on the retired nook into which he had managed to tumble; but almost at the instant when he entered, he heard a silvery, musical voice, sounding so as to evidence that the person who owned it was rapidly approaching from a conservatory opening on the room—the voice of his mother, speaking in animated conversation.
It was impossible to retreat, though he would gladly have avoided even his idolized mother at that moment. Nay, she was just then the last being he desired to see.
She would naturally be surprised to meet him here, for until this evening he had scarcely known anything of Lord or Lady Quaintree.
The clustered lights above the doorway, half-hidden as they were by climbing exotics trained in prodigal profusion about slender columns, shed their glowing beams upon an animated face and superbly handsome figure, as Mrs. Desfrayne appeared, arrayed, as was her wont, with faultless taste. Her companion was Lord Quaintree, the famous judge—a tall, noble old Englishman.
“I am free to confess, my lord,” she was saying, “that I do not at all approve of the presence of these singing-women at reunions such as this of to-night. They are very well in their proper places, these people.” It would be impossible to give any idea of the insolent disdain with which these words were uttered. “But they ought not to be allowed to mix with——”
She suddenly paused, as she caught sight of Paul, and, in her amazement, stood still, gazing upon him with an expression of blank astonishment. Half-angry with herself for being so surprised, she felt that she was accidentally placed in an almost ludicrous position for the moment; yet she could not as much as speak a word.
Captain Desfrayne, for his part, could not have uttered one syllable if his life had depended on it. He had never, in all his days, felt so completely at a nonplus—so forlorn, so distracted, as he did at this instant. A terrible scene he knew was at hand, and he could not tell what might be the result.