Elaine whispered something to her mother, Mrs. Milner whispered something to Mrs. Robinson, and they all looked at Miss La Chêne in a certain way. Mandeville had gone out on the veranda for a smoke, and she had no friend here.
“You needn’t wait,” said Mrs. Robinson, in a tone she had never used before.
V
There were two things the matter with Mandeville Ryder, and neither of them was fatal. He was too young, and he was spoiled. He was a handsome fellow, the only son of a well-to-do father; and he was so much run after and so much flattered that he had acquired a manner and an outlook lamentably toploftical. At heart, however, he was wholly honest, generous, and chivalrous.
On the morning after the dance, he went off to the city, resolved not to come back to his sister’s house, and not to think any more of Miss La Chêne; but even before lunch time he had resolved that he would go back. He was a conceited ass, he told himself, and a girl like Miss La Chêne was too good for any man.
So back he went, arriving a little before the dinner hour. Perhaps he was a little too consciously heroic in his determination to show the greatest deference toward Miss La Chêne; but he soon got over that, for he had no chance to display his heroism.
All the sparkle and gayety had gone from the poor girl. When he began to speak to her, she answered him with a hurried little nervous smile, and flitted away. He couldn’t even catch her eye. She fairly clung to Mrs. Robinson, hiding in the[Pg 199] shadow of that regal lady. She was so pale, so subdued, so startlingly changed from the charming little creature of the evening before, that Mandeville was worried.
It never occurred to him that he was responsible for this lamentable change, and he went ahead, making a sufficiently unpleasant situation worse and worse by his well meant efforts. At the dinner table he tried to bring the pale and downcast Miss La Chêne into the conversation, and wondered at her very brief answers and her flat, small voice. He knew that she could talk.
“I’ll try a dance with you, Elaine,” he said to his niece, benevolently, after dinner.
“No, thank you, Mandy,” said she, with a very peculiar smile.