It was easy enough to gobble oysters soused in vinegar and red pepper, with huge slices of bread and butter, and a bottle of stout, as her brother Fred was wont to enjoy them at supper on Saturday nights. Or they could be pulled about in the mincing fashion in which his fiancée, that genteel Mabel Cawber, treated them, with little finger daintily curved, and the first and the thumb only in use! but before she, Katherine Bush, swallowed one, she would ascertain exactly how they were eaten in Lord Algy's world! No good out of this trip should be wasted.
As dinner advanced, he began to make more ardent love to her—and the champagne elevated both their spirits. He reproached her for her hardness in not having allowed him to play the part of maid, after all. She was a capricious little darling, but surely did not mean to go on being unkind?
No; she did not—but she had suddenly realised, while dressing, that some of her garments were not fine enough for the situation, and must be kept out of sight!
She did not tell him this, however, but continued to enact the rôle of condescending queen, while quietly she watched him as a cat watches a mouse.
She loved the way his hair was brushed—how different from Charlie Prodgers!—she loved the finely cut back of his head. She was perfectly aware that he showed outwardly every mark of breeding in his weak, handsome face, and lean well-drilled figure. These things pleased her—especially the breeding; it was so very far from what she ever saw at Bindon's Green!
Lord Algy had the easy, pleasant manner of his kind, with a strong personal attraction, amply balancing absence of brain for general purposes, and he was versed in every art for the cajoling of women.
The dinner grew more and more agreeable, until when coffee and liqueurs came, Katherine Bush felt exalted into a strange heaven. She had analysed almost all emotions in the abstract, but not their possible effects upon herself. She found the ones she was experiencing now peculiarly delightful! To be twenty-two and in love for the first time in life, with an extremely delectable specimen of manhood—to be free as air—answerable to no one—untroubled by backward or forward thoughts, unworried by tormenting speculations as to whether the affair was right or wrong—wise or unwise—This was a state of things which made the cup worth drinking, and Katherine Bush knew it.
No possibility of bitter dregs to follow the last sip entered her calculations.
The imp gods laughed, no doubt, and Lord Algy's blue eyes were full of passionate delight!
Thus with all things couleur de rose, Katherine Bush began her brief honeymoon.