Miss Bargarny poured the tea, and when she passed his cup, roguishly quoted a couplet from one of his poems; lines that had no reference to tea—God knows, he had never written about tea—but which tripped from her tongue so gracefully that they had the effect of sounding apropos. He blushed slightly and bowed again; and shortly after, when all the cups had been handed about and he had drained his own, seemed to recover his poise, for he addressed a few remarks to Lady Hunsdon, at whose right he sat. Anne, who was seated some distance from the table could not even hear his voice, but Lady Hunsdon received such as he ventured upon with so much empressement, that he manifestly rose in courage; in a few moments he was extending his attention to Lady Mary Denbigh, who leaned forward with an exalted expression shaded by ringlets, raising her imperceptible bosom with an eloquent sigh. By this time Lord Hunsdon was talking into Anne’s ear and she could hear nothing of the conversation opposite, although now and again she caught a syllable from a low toneless voice. But his first agony was passed as well as her own, and she endeavoured to forget him in her swain’s comments upon the political news arrived with the packet that afternoon. When tea was over and Miss Bargarny, who cultivated liveliness of manner, had engaged the poet in a discussion upon the relative merits of Shelley and Nathaniel P. Willis—astonishingly original on her part, mild to the outposts of indifference on his—Anne followed Hunsdon to the other side of the room to look over an album of his mother’s, just unpacked. It contained calotypes of the most distinguished men and women of the day, and Anne, who had barely seen a daguerreotype before, and never a presentment of the famous people of her time, became so absorbed that she forgot the poet to whose spirit hers had been wedded these five years, and whose visible part had sickened the very depths of her being. Lord Hunsdon had the pleasure of watching her kindling eyes as he told her personal details of each of his friends, and when Anne cried out that she was living in a bit of contemporary history, he too flushed, and felt that his suit prospered. But Anne was thinking as little of him as of Warner, and so intent was she upon the ugly striking physiognomy of the author of “Venetia,” with his Byronic curls and flowing collar, that she was hardly aware that Lord Hunsdon’s attentions had been claimed by his mother; who skilfully transferred him to the side of Lady Mary.
A moment later she turned abruptly and met the eyes of Warner. He was sitting apart, and he was staring at her. It was not meeting his eyes so suddenly that turned her hands to ice and made them shake as she returned to the album, but the eyes themselves that looked out from the ruin of his face. She had expected them to be sneering, lascivious, bold, anything but what they were: the most spiritual and at the same time the most tormented eyes that had ever been set in the face of a mortal. She caught her breath. What could it mean? No man could live the life he had lived—Lady Mary, who had a fine turn for gossip, had told her all that Lord Hunsdon had left unsaid—and keep his soul unspotted. It was marvellous, incredible. She recalled confusedly something Hunsdon had said about his having a beautiful character—well, that was originally, not after years of degradation. Besides, Hunsdon was a fanatical enthusiast.
At this point she became aware that Warner was standing beside her, but as she glanced up in a surprise that restored her self-possession, he had averted his eyes, and embarrassment had claimed him again. She was too much of a woman not to rush to the rescue.
“At this point she became aware that Warner was standing beside her”
“I have never seen anything so interesting!” she exclaimed with great animation, “I am sure you will agree with me, although of course you have met all these great people. Is not this process a vast improvement upon the daguerreotype? And I am told they expect to do better still. Have you read ‘Venetia’? Do you remember that Disraeli makes Lord Cadurcis—Byron—assert that Shakespeare did not write his own plays? Fancy!”
“I never for a moment supposed that he did,” replied Warner, evidently grasping at a subject upon which he felt at home. “Nor did Byron. Nor, I fancy, will a good many others, when they begin to think for themselves—or study the Elizabethan era. I have never read any of Disraeli’s novels. Do you think them worth reading?”
He was looking at her now, still with that expression of a saint at the stake, but obviously inattentive to her literary opinions. Before she could answer he said abruptly:
“What a fine walker you are! I have never seen a woman walk as you do. It is not the custom here, and even in England the ladies seemed far too elegant to do more than stroll through a park.”