Rufus Holt was dapper in stature, but of an expansive personality. Although crinkled around the eyes and slightly bald, he had the spontaneity of eternal youth. From first glance, he directed toward Dolores a sort of friendly homage.
“I like the way you acknowledge an introduction,” he confided during their first five minutes. “The exaggerated delight with which most everybody takes most everybody else for granted is absurd, isn’t it? Without a word, Miss Trent, you’ve done a rather remarkable thing—given a lawyer a brand-new thought.”
Dolores was pleased that he so quickly found something about her to like. She expanded under his persiflage.
“I never learned ‘manners’ in any school,” she deprecated, “but I’ve tried to teach myself by behaving like the people I admire.”
“Well, give up! I don’t think you could act the least bit like anybody else if you tried, any more than——” The mirth lines around Holt’s eyes uncrinkled as, silently, he appreciated her in the mist-gray gown. “A dove just couldn’t waddle like a goose,” he finished. “Don’t let anybody change your first bow. It is perfect—no undue cordiality about it, any more than undue hauteur. You do it gravely, simply, hopefully. Just now you gave me one quick, enquiring glance to see whether you were glad to meet me, before you committed yourself by saying so. I’ll take a bet you don’t know my name.”
Dolores looked embarrassed. “That wouldn’t be a fair bet. You see, Mrs. Cabot told me beforehand.”
“Honest, too! What are your faults?” He laughed.
Catherine returned to them from an aside with Bradish. If the governess looked a mauve-and-rose-breasted dove to the facile-tongued attorney, madame was a bird of Paradise in her topaz velvet and high-massed, glinting, silver-gold hair. And her evening manner matched the brilliancy of her attire.
“Latest reports from the front are that John will be down—well, when John is down,” she announced. “Things never happen in this house, even food, until John is down.”
“It is gossip on the Street that some bricks of his Wall have caved in,” Holt offered. “He never in his life kept a woman waiting unless obliged to. You see, Miss Trent, we men who know John Cabot like to brag about him. We consider him the best example extant of the fairness of the unfair sex.”