“You have come down, after all?” she said, making room on the settee beside her. “This is my new friend, Miss Marlowe, your grace,” she added, addressing a stout and dignified-looking lady near her, the Duchess of Grantham.
Her grace surveyed Doris through a pair of gold eye-glasses, and inclined her head with ducal condescension, and Lady Despard introduced several other persons in the circle.
“We are going to Florence together,” said Lady Despard, “though why Florence I haven’t the slightest idea; it’s a whim of my doctor’s. I don’t feel the slightest bit ill, but he says I am, and he ought to know, I suppose.”
The room, which had seemed to Doris quite full when she entered, appeared to get still fuller. People came, exchanged a few words with Lady Despard, took a cup of tea, strolled about and talked with one or the other, or listened to some one who sang or played, and then wandered out. Everybody appeared either languidly indifferent or horribly bored. Doris, as she leaned back, half-hidden by Lady Despard’s elaborate tea-gown on one side and the voluminous folds of a plush curtain on the other, looked on at the crowd, and listened to the hum and buzz of voices, half in a dream.
Every now and then she heard some well-known name mentioned, and discovered that the people around her were not only persons of rank, but men and women famous in the world of music and letters.
Suddenly she heard a name spoken that made her heart leap, and caused her to shrink still further back.
“What has become of Cecil Neville?” asked the duchess.
Lady Despard shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m sure I don’t know. Oh, yes, I do. I had forgotten. He has gone down to stay with his uncle, the Marquis of Stoyle, you know.”
“Poor Cecil,” commiserated the duchess, with a faint smile. “How he must suffer!”