And they? What does middle-age feel, looking upon youth, eager-eyed, buoyant, flushed with the first glow from that unknown about to dawn?
Oh, it was a charming evening. The girl showed she thought it so and smiled, and the men smiled too, as they joined Harriet in making her the young centre. Perhaps there was a tender something in the smiles. Was it for their own gone youth?
One, a Major Rathbone, stayed after the others left. He sat building little breastworks on the centre-table out of matches taken from the bronze stand by the lamp, and as he talked he looked over every now and then at Harriet on the other side.
In the soberer reaction following the breaking up of the group, Alexina, too, found time to look at Harriet. It was an Aunt Harriet that she had never seen before. The colour was richly dyeing this Harriet’s cheeks, and the jewel pendant at her throat rose and trembled and fell, and her white lids fell, too, though she had laughed when her eyes met laughter and something else in the brown eyes of the Major fixed on her.
It was of Mr. Marriot Bland the Major was speaking, his smooth, brown hand caressing his clean-shaven chin.
“So cruelly confident are you cold Dianas,” he was saying. “Now, even a Penelope must hold out the lure of her web to an old suitor, but you Dianas—”
Alexina laughed. She had jumped promptly into a liking for this lean, brown man with the keen, humorous eyes and the deliberate yet quick movements, and now absorbed in her thoughts, was unconscious of her steadfast gaze fixed on him, until he suddenly brought his eyes to bear on hers with humorous inquiry.
“Well?” he inquired.
Now Alexina, being fair, showed blushes most embarrassingly, but she could laugh too.
“What’s the conclusion?” he demanded; “or would it be wiser not to press inquiry?”