She smiled brilliantly as Thorpe approached her, and he was made to feel himself the guest of the evening,—a sensation he shared with every one in the room.
“I have not seen you for three days and seven hours,” she said. “How are all your flirtations getting on?”
“All my what?”
“Dominga Earle is making frantic eyes at you,” indicating, with a rapid motion of her pupils, a tall slender Mexican who undulated like a snake and whose large black fan and eyes were never idle. “’Lupie Hathaway is looking coldly expectant; and Nina Randolph, who was wholly animated a moment ago, is now quite listless. Not that you are to feel particularly flattered; you are merely something new. Turn over the pages,—Dominga is going to sing,—and I am convinced that she will surpass herself.”
Mrs. Earle was swaying on the piano stool. Her black eyes flashed a welcome to Thorpe, as he moved obediently to her side. Then she threw back her head, raised her eyebrows, dilated her nostrils, and in a ringing contralto sang a Spanish love-song. Thorpe could not understand a word of it, but inferred that it was passionate from the accompaniment of glance which played between himself and a tall blonde man leaning over the piano.
When the song and its encore finished, she was immediately surrounded, and Thorpe slipped away. Miss Randolph was barricaded. He went over to Miss Hathaway, who sat between Hastings and another officer, looking impartially at each. They were dismissed in a manner which made them feel the honour of her caprice.
“That was good of you,” said Thorpe, sinking into a chair opposite her. “It is rarely that one can get a word with you, merely a glance over three feet of shoulder.”
Miss Hathaway made no reply. It was one of her idiosyncrasies never to take the slightest notice of a compliment. She was looking very handsome, although her attire, as ever, suggested a cold disregard of the looking-glass. Thorpe, who was beginning to understand her, did not feel snubbed, but fell to wondering what sort of a time Hastings would have of it when he proposed.
She regarded him meditatively for a moment, then remarked; “You are absent-minded to-night, and that makes you look rather stupid.”
Again Thorpe was not disconcerted. Speeches of this sort from Miss Hathaway were to be hailed as signs of favour. If she did not like a man, she did not talk to him at all. He might sit opposite her throughout the night, and she would not part her lips.