Verelst crooked his arm. "However much I tried to deceive, I got grey before I could."
"What are you laughing at?" Mrs. Austen with her tireless smile enquired of Paliser, who, after speaking to the girls, had said something to Cantillon.
"Somersaults being a specialty of his, I was telling him that now is the time for a triple one."
Paliser turned to Margaret. She had said nothing. She was very pale. Mute, white, blonde, she was a vision.
At table, Verelst, addressing him, asked: "How is your father?"
"Thank you. Enjoying his usual poor health." He turned again to Margaret. "No one could mistake my father for an auctioneer. He has so few admirations. But he knew your father and admired him greatly."
Margaret made no reply. She was thinking of the land of Splendours and Terrors, where the princess sat in chains. Margaret envied her. Over the hill the true knight was hastening and Margaret knew, as we all know, what happened then. It is a very pretty story, but it can be equally sad to a sorrowing girl who has no true knight, or who had one, and who found that he was neither knightly nor true.
Paliser misconstrued her silence. About her eyes and mouth was an expression that is displayed by those who have suffered from some long malady or from some perilous constraint. That also he misconstrued. He had been told she had washed her hands of Lennox and had washed them with the soap of indifference, which is the most effective of all. He was not credulous but he had believed it. The idea that her throat was choked and her heart a haunt of regret, did not occur to this subtle young man. He attributed both her silence and her expression to neuralgia. The latter did not disturb him. But her loveliness did. It inundated him. The gallery of his memory was hung with fair faces. Her face exceeded them all.
The dinner proceeded. Presently, Kate Schermerhorn called over at him. "Who was the damsel I saw you making up to in the Park the other day?"
Paliser turned to her. "I have forgotten."