She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through her lashes; but he remained imperturbable.
“Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can’t get away till the end of the week; and those big parties bore me.”
“Ah, so they do me,” she exclaimed.
“Then why go?”
“It’s part of the business—you forget! And besides, if I didn’t, I should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs.”
“That’s almost as bad as marrying Dillworth,” he agreed, and they both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.
She glanced at the clock.
“Dear me! I must be off. It’s after five.”
She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror while she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her outline—as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her artificiality.
He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.