The Colonel, who was speaking to George, stopped suddenly, as if the thought that moved his words had been suddenly frozen in his brain, while his furrowed face turned at once to that dead greenish grey which, on sallow faces, is the ghastly sign of some strong and horrible emotion. Following the direction of his eyes with a swift glance, George saw that it was the Indian woman who had excited this feeling, and that this time the Colonel’s disgust was more than a reminder—it was a recognition. Lauriston’s first impulse was to call to Sundran, to make her turn, to confront the one with the other, and tear down at one rough blow the mystery which was beginning to wind itself about one side of his life. But the expression on his old friend’s face was too horrible; it was an agony, a terror; for the Colonel’s sake George dared not interfere. Lord Florencecourt, after the first moment, recovered enough self-possession to make a step further back among the plants, as if to admire one of them. But it was plain to his companion that he was merely seeking a stand-point from which he could observe the woman without being seen by her. And as George watched his face under cover of idle remarks about the flowers, he saw that further scrutiny was bringing about in the Colonel’s mind not relief, but certainty.
As soon as Sundran had withdrawn, Lord Florencecourt advanced to take his leave: but as he did so the door opened, and Lady Millard, accompanied by two of her daughters, was ushered in, and he was detained with or without his will by pretty chattering Charlotte. It was not their first visit; but they were so charmed with the picturesque little bride that they could not keep long away from her; Ella in particular finding a fascination in George’s wife, which was perhaps less extraordinary than the interest Nouna took in the plain abrupt-mannered girl. To Lord Florencecourt, who, in spite of his forced semi-civility, succeeded very ill in masking his intense dislike to young Mrs. Lauriston, the fuss his nieces made with the girl was nothing short of disgusting. Thus when he said, noticing an unmistakable fragrance prevailing over the perfumes of sandalwood and attar of roses:
“I observe that you let your husband smoke, Mrs. Lauriston.”
Nouna waved her hand towards a little engraved gold cigarette case, beside which a tiny lamp was burning, and answered with a bubbling laugh:
“How can I stop him when I set the example?”
The ladies were enraptured; they begged her to smoke to show them how she did it, and Nouna, with a sly, mock-frightened glance from under her eyelashes at Lord Florencecourt, whose expression of rigid disapproval did not escape her, said, addressing him in the half-aggrieved, half-deferential air of the man invaded by an elderly female in a smoking-carriage:
“I hope you don’t object to smoking, sir!”
He did: every line of his face said so. But he could do nothing but smile galvanically, assure her he thought it charming, and hand her the cigarette-case with all the easy grace with which a man travelling first-class produces a third-class ticket.
“You will have to lock up Henry’s cigars from Charlotte and Cicely before long, Effie,” said he to his sister-in-law in a dry aside.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Horace,” she replied easily.