Harold watched Lord Innisfail shaking hands with Miss Avon at the side of the billiard table, while his father bent down to make another stroke. When the stroke was played he saw his father straighten himself and look toward Miss Avon.
The look was a long one and an interested one. Then the girl disappeared with Lady Innisfail, and the look that Lord Fotheringay cast at his son was a short one, but it was quite as intelligible to that soft as the long look at Miss Avon had been to him.
Harold went slowly and in a singularly contemplative mood to his bedroom, whence he emerged in a space, wearing a smoking-jacket and carrying a pipe and tobacco pouch.
The smoking-jackets that glowed through the hall towards the last hour of the day at Castle Innisfail were a dream of beauty.
Lady Innisfail had given orders to have a variety of sandwiches and other delicacies brought to the hall for those of her guests who had attended the festivities at Ballycruiskeen; and when Harold found his way downstairs, he perceived in a moment that only a few of the feeble ones of the house-party—the fishermen who had touches of rheumatism and the young women who cherished their complexions—were absent from the hall.
He also noticed that his father was seated by the side of Beatrice Avon and that he was succeeding in making himself interesting to her.
He knew that his father generally succeeded in making himself interesting to women.
In another part of the hall Lady Innisfail was succeeding in making herself interesting to some of the men. She also was accustomed to meet with success in this direction. She was describing to such as had contrived to escape the walk to Ballycruiskeen, the inexhaustibly romantic charm of the scene on the Curragh while the natives were dancing, and the descriptions certainly were not deficient in colour.
The men listened to her with such an aspect of being enthralled, she felt certain that they were full of regret that they had failed to witness the dance. It so happened, however, that the result of her account of the scene was to lead those of her audience who had remained at the Castle, to congratulate themselves upon a lucky escape.
And all this time, Harold noticed that his father was making himself interesting to Beatrice Avon.