“First, let’s safely run the gantlet of the lorgnons.”
When the party was assembled and past the grenadiers who jealously guard the sacred inner bulwarks, Crabb was glad to relinquish his companion to another, while he sought seclusion behind a bank of azaleas to watch the moving dancers. So she really was somebody. He began, for a moment, to doubt the testimony of the vagrant glances and the guilty parasol. Could he have been mistaken? Had she really forgotten the parasol after all? The situation was brutal enough for her and he was quite prepared to respect her delicacy. What he did resent was the way in which she had done it. She had taken to cover angrily and stood at bay with all her woman’s weapons sharpened. The curl of lip and narrowed eye bespoke a degree of disdain quite out of proportion to the offense. But he made a rapid resolution not to seek her or meet her eye. If his was the fault, it was the only reparation he could offer her.
As he whirled around the room with his little bud, he caught a glimpse of her upon the opposite side and so maneuvered that he would come no nearer. When he had guided his partner to a seat, it did not take him long to gratify a very natural curiosity.
“Will you tell me,” he asked, “who—no, don’t look now—the girl in the black spangly dress is?”
“Who? Where?” asked Miss Cheston. “Patricia, you mean? Of course! Miss Wharton, my cousin. Haven’t you met her?”
“Er—no! She’s good-looking.”
“Isn’t she? And the dearest creature—but rather cold and the least bit prim.”
“Pri—Oh, really!”
“Yes! We’re Quakers, you know. She belongs to the older set. Perhaps that’s why she seems a trifle cold and—er—conventional.”