He spoke somewhat stiffly, because he had to choose his words, feeling rather guilty. Lord Florencecourt broke in brusquely:
“All d——d nonsense! Jibes at love only take root in a young man to grow into intrigues. There’s an end of the matter; don’t refer to it again.”
They were at their destination. Lord Florencecourt sprang from the hansom first, out of temper for the evening; Lauriston followed very soberly.
Sir Henry’s town house was one of the big mansions of Grosvenor Square. It had a large dome-like arch over the entrance, and was painted a violent staring white, which made the smoke-begrimed houses on either side, with their rusty iron lamp-frames and antiquated extinguishers, quite a refreshing sight. The interior was furnished handsomely, in the prevailing upholsterer’s taste, without any distinguishing features; for Lady Millard, though she still cherished certain luxurious and unconventional notions which in her native country she would have indulged, was too much bound down by the prejudices of her present rank, to dare to infringe ever so little on the rules which governed the rest of her order. So that while she inwardly knew an indiarubber plant by itself in a bilious or livid earthenware vase to be an abomination, she had an indiarubber plant in a bilious yellow vase in front of her middle dining-room window, because the Countess of Redscar had one in a livid blue vase in hers. And in spite of her feeling that to strew a litter of natural flowers over a dinner-table, to fade and wither before one’s eyes in the heated air, is stupid, inconvenient, and ugly, she yielded to that, as she did to every passing fashion set by her higher-born neighbours.
She followed a more sensible English fashion in having two most beautiful girls among her children. Cicely and Charlotte, the two eldest, were tall, fair as lilies, limpid-eyed, small-mouthed, innocent, sweet and rather silly. Dressed as they were on this evening in white muslin dresses, which looked to masculine eyes as if they might have been made by the wearers themselves, though they were in reality a triumph of a Bond Street milliner, they made the dull minutes before dinner interesting by their mere physical loveliness. Unfortunately for her, fortunately perhaps for them, the youngest of the three girls was a foil, not an addition to the family beauty. Small, sallow, and plain, Ella Millard did not attempt to make up for her deficiency in good looks by any special attraction of manner. To most people she seemed shy, abrupt, and almost repellent; such a contrast, as everybody said, to her charming and amiable sisters. But with the minority for whom fools, however beautiful, have no charm, Ella was the favourite; and George Lauriston, an habitué of the house, had got into the habit of making straight for the chair by her side at every opportunity, with the distinct conviction that she was an awfully nice girl.
On this occasion he took in to dinner the second sister, Charlotte, and he found that her placid, amiable face and wearisome gabble about the Opera, the Academy, and Marion Crawford’s new novel—(Charlotte prided herself on having plenty to say)—irritated him to a degree he had never before thought himself capable of reaching.
When the gentlemen entered the drawing-room after dinner, George Lauriston, seeing Ella in a corner by herself, made at once for the seat by her side. She made way for him almost without looking up, as if she had expected him.
“How cross you looked at dinner,” she said; “I was glad you took Charlotte in and not me.”
“No, you were not. If I had taken you I should not have been cross.”
“That is quite true. Charlotte is sweet-tempered and will put up with a man’s moods; I should have turned my back upon you and let you sulk.”