There was fortunately a company assembled for dinner when John Derringham descended to the restaurant and again joined his fiancée—who never dined alone if she could help it, and reveled in gay parties for every meal, with plenty of brilliant lights and the chatter of other groups near at hand. Wherever she went, from Carlsbad to Cairo, in the best restaurant you could always find her amidst her many friends, feasting every night. And now the party consisted of some of her compatriots, a Russian Prince, and an Italian Marchese. She looked superbly beautiful; anger had lent a sparkle to her eyes and a flush to her cheeks; no rouge was needed to-night, and she could scintillate to her heart's content. She flashed words occasionally at John Derringham, and he knew, and was horribly conscious all the time, that once he would have found her most brilliant, but that now it was exactly as when he had looked at the X-ray photograph of his own broken ankle, where the sole thing which made a reality was the skeleton substructure. He could only seem to see Cecilia Cricklander's vulgar soul---the pink and white perfection of her body had melted into nothingness.
He found himself listening for some of her parrot-utterances, as a detached spectator, and taking a sort of ugly pleasure in recognizing which were the phrases of Arabella. The man upon her left hand was intelligent, and was gazing at her with the rapt attention beauty always commands, and she was uttering her finest platitudes.
And once John Derringham leant back in his chair, when no one was observing him, and laughed aloud. The supreme mockery of it all! And in five weeks from this night this woman would be his wife!
His wife! Ye gods!
They had no tête-à-tête words before the party broke up, and had hardly exchanged a sentence when, as the last guest was saying farewell, Arabella, too, retired from the sitting-room.
So they were alone.
"Cecilia," he said, coming up quite close to her, "we started rather badly to-night—at least let us be friends." And he held out his hand. "Believe me, I wish to do all that I can to please you, but I am afraid I make a very indifferent sort of lover. Forgive me,"
"Oh, you are well enough, I suppose," she said. "No man values what he has won—it is only the winning of it that is any fun. I understand the feeling myself. Don't let us talk heroics."
John Derringham smiled.
"Certainly not," he said.