"Eh?—What? The Amhersts and Mrs. Ansell? You must excuse me then, I'm afraid—but Westy shall take you. Westy, my boy, it's an ill-wind.... I want you to show this young lady our roses." And Mr. Gaines, with mingled reluctance and satisfaction, turned away to receive the most important guests of the day.
It had not needed his father's summons to draw the expert Westy to Miss Brent: he was already gravitating toward her, with the nonchalance bred of cosmopolitan successes, but with a directness of aim due also to his larger opportunities of comparison.
"The roses will do," he explained, as he guided her through the increasing circle of guests about his mother; and in answer to Justine's glance of enquiry: "To get you away, I mean. They're not much in themselves, you know; but everything of the governor's always begins with a capital letter."
"Oh, but these roses deserve to," Justine exclaimed, as they paused under the evergreen archway at the farther end of the lawn.
"I don't know—not if you've been in England," Westy murmured, watching furtively for the impression produced, on one who had presumably not, by the great blush of colour massed against its dusky background of clipped evergreens.
Justine smiled. "I have been—but I've been in the slums since; in horrible places that the least of those flowers would have lighted up like a lamp."
Westy's guarded glance imprudently softened. "It's the beastliest kind of a shame, your ever having had to do such work——"
"Oh, had to?" she flashed back at him disconcertingly. "It was my choice, you know: there was a time when I couldn't live without it. Philanthropy is one of the subtlest forms of self-indulgence."
Westy met this with a vague laugh. If a chap who was as knowing as the devil did, once in a way, indulge himself in the luxury of talking recklessly to a girl with exceptional eyes, it was rather upsetting to discover in those eyes no consciousness of the risk he had taken!
"But I am rather tired of it now," she continued, and his look grew guarded again. After all, they were all the same—except in that particular matter of the eyes. At the thought, he risked another look, hung on the sharp edge of betrayal, and was snatched back, not by the manly instinct of self-preservation, but by some imp of mockery lurking in the depths that lured him.