The Duchess glanced towards Kathryn, but fortunately the puzzled fret of the girl’s forehead was even at the moment melting into a smile as a young man of much attraction descended upon her with smiles of his own and carried her into the Tango or Fox Trot or Antelope Galop, whichsoever it chanced to be.
“If she were really aware of it that would be ‘the worst’ for other people—for us probably. She could look out from under her lashes to sufficient purpose to call what she wanted and take and keep it. As she is not aware, it will make things less easy for herself—under the circumstances.”
“The circumstance of being Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ daughter is not an agreeable one,” said Lady Lothwell.
“It might give some adventurous boys ideas when they had time to realize all it means. Do you know I am rather sorry for her myself. I shouldn’t be surprised if she were rather a dear little thing. She looks tender and cuddle-some. Perhaps she is like the heroine of a sentimental novel I read the other day. Her chief slave said of her ‘She walks into a man’s heart through his eyes and sits down there and makes a warm place which will never get cold again.‘ Rather nice, I thought.”
The Duchess thought it rather nice also.
“‘Never get cold again,‘” she repeated. “What a heavenly thing to happen to a pair of creatures—if—” she paused and regarded Robin, who at the other side of the room was trying to decide some parlous question of dances to which there was more than one claimant. She was sweetly puckering her brow over her card and round her were youthful male faces looking eager and even a trifle tense with repressed anxiety for the victory of the moment.
“Oh!” Lady Lothwell laughed. “As Kitty says ‘There’s something about her’ and it’s not mere eyelashes. You have let loose a germ among us, mamma my sweet, and you can’t do anything with a germ when you have let it loose. To quote Kitty again, ‘Look at George!’”
The music which came from the bower behind which the musicians were hidden seemed to gain thrill and wildness as the hours went on. As the rooms grew warmer the flowers breathed out more reaching scent. Now and again Robin paused for a moment to listen to strange delightful chords and to inhale passing waves of something like mignonette and lilies, and apple blossoms in the sun. She thought there must be some flower which was like all three in one. The rushing stream was carrying her with it as it went—one of the happy petals on its surface. Could it ever cast her aside and leave her on the shore again? While the violins went singing on and the thousand wax candles shone on the faint or vivid colours which mingled into a sort of lovely haze, it did not seem possible that a thing so enchanting and so real could have an end at all. All the other things in her life seemed less real tonight.
In the conservatory there was a marble fountain which had long years ago been brought from a palace garden in Rome. It was not as large as it was beautiful and it had been placed among palms and tropic ferns whose leaves and fronds it splashed merrily among and kept deliciously cool and wet-looking. There was a quite intoxicating hot-house perfume of warm damp moss and massed flowers and it was the kind of corner any young man would feel it necessary to gravitate towards with a partner.