“That was rather neat.” She swept him a curtsey, diligently practised before the psyche mirror; her spine was limbering.
“If I were really your brother I suppose I should have offered you my congratulations before this. Let us imagine I was off hunting Indians and only returned in time for the ball. . . . Eustace is a lucky dog!”
He was staring very hard at Gita, who in her gown of gold tissue and high-piled white wig above those black eyes and lashes that he had thought of more than once, seemed to him almost fantastically lovely. The sort of girl, he imagined, who, had she lived in a remoter era than the one she had conjured up tonight, would have had men besieging her tower and riding to battle with her ribbon on their lances.
“Thanks. Doesn’t he look the real thing? He padded out his governor’s uniform so that he would look portly and important.”
“He certainly looks older,” said Pelham, regarding Bylant critically, “but as determined as Fate.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Gita sharply.
“Oh—the expression’s gone. He’s no longer looking at you; he’s meditating another glass of punch.”
“You must have one, yourself. Come with me and I’ll ladle it out for you. And introduce you to the other girls.”
“But I don’t dance.”
“Then you can sit out with me. I don’t dance, either.”