'Holloa, Phil! Don't go away.'
As he turned back towards the drawing-room, he cried out—
'It's only this instant, Jack, I remembered how very awkward it was of me to come here with you at this hour. You have, of course, so much to say and hear after your absence—'
The sight of my fair cousin cut short his speech, as she stood near the door with her hand out to receive him. As O'Grady took her taper fingers within his own, there was an air of cold distance in his manner that actually offended me. Bowing deeply, he said a few brief words in a tone of gravity and stiffness quite unusual with him; and then, turning to Grammont, he shook the Count's hand with a warmth and cordiality most markedly different. I only dared to glance at Julia; but as I did so I could mark an expression of haughty displeasure that settled on her brow, while her heightened colour made her turn away towards the window.
I was myself so much annoyed by the manner in which O'Grady had received advances which I had never seen made to any one before, that I was silent. Even Grammont saw the awkwardness of all parties so much in need of his intervention that he at once opened the whole negotiation of the ball to O'Grady, describing with a Frenchman's volubility and sarcasm the stratagems and devices which were employed to obtain invitations, the triumph of the successful, the despairing malice of the unfortunate—heightening his narrative by the mystery of the fair hostess, who, herself unknown and unheard of till now, was at this moment at the pinnacle of fashion, dictating the laws and distributing the honours of the beau monde to the greatest sovereigns of Europe.
'She is very beautiful, no doubt?' asked O'Grady.
'Oui, pas mal,' said Grammont, with that all-explaining shrug of the shoulders by which a foreigner conveys so much.
'Very rich, perhaps?'
'Millionaire!' said the Frenchman, in a tone of exultation that bespoke his full acquiescence in that surmise at least.
'And her rank?'