"I'm sure I'll see things here that never could be found in Paris," she replied carelessly.
The words were trifling, but the voice, so beautifully modulated, thrilled Lloyd; it was so sympathetic of quality, to use a phrase that can but slightly suggest the subtle charm it seeks to express; the very inflection was replete with individuality—it was a voice, an accent altogether new to his experience. He lifted his eyes wistfully toward the group.
The sunlight struck with refulgent radiance on the dense white linen attire of the two younger ladies; they were expanding their white parasols, of embroidered linen like their dresses, this being the fad of the hour, and in the intense light thus focussed the contour and tints of their faces were asserted with a distinctness which the momentary glimpse could scarcely have given otherwise. Both were evidently very young, eighteen or twenty years of age; one was all fair blonde prettiness, with roseate cheeks, and soft pink lips, with blue eyes and golden hair. The face of the other was exquisitely fair, but had no trace of roses, though her delicate lips were of a carmine red; her soft redundant hair was of a pale, lustreless brown; her eyes, of a luminous dark grey hue, were long rather than large, with long dense black eyelashes and black arched eyebrows, and as they caught his glance a deep gravity fell upon them. They held a look of recognition in that momentous gaze. The laugh died out of her face—it was a look as if from another world, another sphere of existence; she might have been a being of another order of creation, so different she was from aught else that he had ever seen; her eyes seemed immortal, like the eyes of a spirit; they searched the depths of his soul—in that moment he knew that she saw him as he was.
It was only for a moment, however; an inappreciable interval of time—the next, she was all smiling ridicule of the Street Fair, of herself and her friends for stooping to glean amusement and excitement in such humble and inadequate wise.
The tread of their white shoes carried them swiftly down the steps of the verandah, and with the younger of the two men they took the lead, while their chaperon followed with Jardine, one of her gloved hands holding the back breadths of her black taffeta skirt to one side, and impressing the calico dames of Persimmon Cove, gazing after her, with their first idea of the possibility of the survival into middle life of the comely, the graceful, and the elegant.
As the group disappeared, or rather as their presence among the ever-shifting crowd was only to be discerned by the glister of the sun upon the white parasols, Lloyd's attention returned so reluctantly to the interests of the present that he had a sense as if he had suffered a lapse of consciousness or was but awakened from the bewilderments of a dream. A vague forlornness waited on the moment. But as his eyes suddenly encountered Haxon's a full realisation of the exigencies of the situation took hold upon him. Haxon's round face was dully red; all the blood had rushed to his head and was pounding at his temples; he was in sudden wrath, and the drops of perspiration stood on his forehead and bedewed his upper lip; his neck looked thick and swollen and bulged in folds above his decent white collar that gave imminent signs of wilting. His small brown eyes flashed and he looked at Lloyd with a rancour that imputed a share of blame.
"Well,—here's a go!" he said, indignantly.
Once more Lloyd spurred up his jaded resources.
"What?—when?—how?" he asked, as if surprised.
"You know you heard them jays——" Haxon paused, fairly sputtering in his indignation, "guying me an' the Royal Navy an' the whole biz. Whyn't you speak up?"