Indeed, Lady H——’s singing has virtually wound up the evening. Few would care to sing after her, and now the rooms are beginning to look deserted.
‘Always a laggard, Paul,’ says his aunt, who, having bidden good-bye to her principal guests, has left the rest to her daughter. ‘But I suppose something of it must be put down to to-night.’ She smiles at Crosby, whom she has known since he was a little boy. ‘You should have been here earlier, you two; she sang even better in the beginning of the evening. It was “Allan Water,” and you know how that would suit her voice. But now that you have come so late, you must stay a little later and have supper with Josephine and me.’
She talks on to them in her cultivated yet somewhat hard voice, rising now and then to say good-bye to someone, until the rooms are quite cleared and her daughter is able to join them.
Josephine Prior comes across the polished floor of the music-room to where they are sitting in a curtained recess; she is as tall as her mother, and as fair, and a little harder. Miss Prior is undoubtedly the handsomest girl in Dublin this season (now all but over), and has been for the past two or three. Tall, distinguée and with irreproachable manners, there are very few who can outdo her. She sweeps up to them now, her pretty silken skirts falling gracefully around her, and her mother, rising, motions her into her own seat, that next to Wyndham’s, while she sinks into a chair on Crosby’s left.
It had been a settled thing with Mrs. Prior for years that Josephine, her only child, should marry Paul Wyndham, who, though only a barrister, is still a very rising one, and heir to his grand-uncle, Lord Shangarry. To know Josephine a countess! There lay all the hope, all the ambition, of Mrs. Prior’s life, and the fact that old Lord Shangarry shared her hopes about this matter naturally led to the idea that in time it must be accomplished. If Paul were to offend his uncle, then—well, then, the title would be his indeed; but the enormous income now attached to it, not being entailed, could be left as Lord Shangarry wished. Few people fly in the face of Providence where thousands a year are concerned, and Mrs. Prior depended upon Wyndham’s common-sense to secure him as a husband for her daughter. As for Wyndham, though up to this not a syllable has passed between him and Josephine to bind him to her in any way, he has of late brought himself to believe that a marriage with her, considering the stakes, is not out of the question. She is a handsome girl, too, and as a countess would look the part.
Now, as she seats herself beside him, he again acknowledges the beauty of her chiselled nose and chin. But——yes; there is a but. All at once it occurs to him that beauty is very seldom to be found in perfect features. The really artistic face has always one feature quite beyond the bounds of art. Strange that it had not occurred to him before! Still, Josephine is undoubtedly handsome.
Josephine’s voice is like her mother’s—clear and very hard. She is talking now.
‘Do you know we were down in your part of the world the other day?’ says she. ‘We were lunching with dear Lady Millbank, and then went on to your cottage. We wanted to get some flowers. You know how mean Lady Millbank is about her roses, so we decided on saying nothing to her, and trusting to your place. But when we got there’—with an elephantine attempt at playfulness—‘the cupboard was bare, at all events to us, because we could not get in.’
‘Yes, so odd!’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘We rang, and rang, and rang, but no one came for quite a long time. At last your housekeeper appeared, a most disagreeable person, my dear Paul. She was, indeed, almost rude, and said she had your orders to admit nobody.’
She looks back at Wyndham, who looks back at her with an immovable countenance.