Seeing no chair, Carson seated himself next to Abinger on the floor—"two bad, dissolute men, cheek by jowl," said Mrs. Gruyère to herself.
"Not very," he said apologetically, smiling at them all with his unusual eyes. "Not so rich as Abinger. He says he has two pounds a week for life. But we think he exaggerates."
Mrs. Portal and Mrs. Capron began to laugh, and Mrs. Lace to wonder how they could wear such nice boots on such small incomes. But Mrs. Gruyère, thoroughly disgusted with the contemptible tone of the conversation, was about to rise and leave the scene, when there came a general exodus from the drawing-room, preceded by Portal and a girl, who was laughing in her throat like a bird about to begin a song.
It was Poppy.
The two bad men looked up.
She was amazingly arrayed in a gown that was a poem composed in France—silky, creamy muslin, curving from throat to hip, and from hip to foot in sleek full folds like the draperies of a statue. Some unwonted emotion had brought a faint spot of colour to the high-pitched bones of her cheeks, and the pupils of her eyes were so large they seemed to fill her eyes with darkness. She wore a wide hat of pastel-blue straw, wreathed with silken poppies of an ashen shade, and round her neck was slung a great rope of blue-and-green Egyptian scarabei, which had cost her the whole price of one of her plays, and which repaid her now by adding in some mysterious way to her glowing personality.
Clem Portal rose, and, under cover of general conversation, said swiftly to her:
"If Mrs. Gruyère puts you to the question—you paint—charming little water-colours. You are going to do my miniature."
Poppy stood there, smiling at her through the spraying veils of her hair. Her glowing loveliness had the effect of making the other women in the verandah seem colourless. Even Mary Capron's classical beauty was dimmed.
Carson felt the old dream stir. He gave her a long, long look. As for Abinger, the expression of utter astonishment and bewilderment had passed from his face; he was smiling.