He rose and raised his hat, and she looked at him, at first with the vagueness of sheer amazement, then with a start of recognition, and with her fair face all crimson for one instant, and, the next, pale, she said, in a suppressed voice, as if she were afraid of being overheard:
"Drake!"
He looked at her with a curious smile, as if something in the tone of her voice, in her sudden pallor following upon her; blush, were significant, and had told himself something.
"Well, Luce," he said; "and what brings you here?"
CHAPTER VI.
The girl who, with changing color, stood gazing at Lord Drake Selbie might have stepped out of one of Marcus Stone's pictures. She was as fair as a piece of biscuit china. Her hair was golden, and, strange to say in these latter days, naturally so. It was, indeed, like the fleece of gold itself under her fashionable yachting hat. Her eyes, widely opened, with that curious look of surprise and fear, were hazel—a deep hazel, which men, until they knew her, accepted as an indication of Lady Lucille's depth of feeling. She was slightly built, but graceful, with the grace of the fashionable modiste.
She was the product of the marriage of Art and Fashion of this fin-de-siècle age. Other ages have given us wit, beauty allied with esprit, dignity of demeanor, and a nobility of principle; this end of the nineteenth century has bestowed upon us—Lady Lucille Turfleigh.
It is in its way a marvelous product. It is very beautiful, with the delicate beauty of excessive culture and effete luxury. It has the subtle charm of the exotic, of the tall and graceful arum, whose spotless whiteness cannot bear a single breath of the keen east wind.
It is charming, bewitching; it looks all purity and spirituality; it seems to breathe poetry and a Higher Culture. It goes through life like a rose leaf floating upon a placid stream. It is precious to look at, pleasant to live with, and it has only one defect—it has no heart.