Lady Bridgminster rose with an impatient jerk of her shoulders. As she stood there in the dim light, so long and narrow, draped, rather than dressed like ordinary women, she looked extraordinarily distinguished and handsome. Ordham’s æsthetic sense stirred, and he put out his hand and took hers.
“We will pay those bills, somehow,” he said. “I got a thousand from Bridg, and Hines, who has been adding up, finds that I overestimated my indebtedness. I will bring you two hundred this afternoon, and if ever I do marry riches, be sure that you and the boys shall have all you want.”
A dark red tide rose to Lady Bridgminster’s hair. She stooped impulsively and kissed her son. “You are a dear generous boy!” she exclaimed. “And we are all cats! cats! Every one of us.”
And leaving her son puzzled as much by her unusual demonstration as by that cryptic arraignment of her sex, she swept her long draperies out of the room.
Ordham dined that evening in the beautiful house, which, under artificial light, looked more than ever a palace evoked by the stroke of a wand for a fairy princess to dwell in. The princess wore misty robes of white, with green leaves in her hair, her ethereal loveliness rendered almost nebulous by her mother’s substantial gown of black jet, and the five big footmen in dark green plush. The dinner might have been sent over from Bignon’s. Certainly these Americans knew how to spend their money. Their very newness inspired them to aim at effects that never would enter the old indifferent heads of the homogeneous races.
Mabel had almost nothing to say. She made no effort whatever, but Mrs. Cutting, accustomed all her life to lead in conversation, as well as to keep it from flagging, entertained the guest so conscientiously that he hardly had time to feel snubbed by the young beauty. Mrs. Cutting’s talk rarely bored him, for she had a wide range of subjects and never clung too long to any one of them, after the fashion of some Americans, and he at least found time to realize that he could not have stood the same amount of chatter from a miss of one season. Mabel’s new reticence became her, the more particularly as when she did speak it was to the point; and it was more and more apparent that she was not the charming little goose he had thought her in Munich. But he was taken aback, as they left the dining room, to receive a polite good night from the young lady, who floated down the long line of rooms and disappeared.
Mrs. Cutting bit her lip and tapped her fan in manifest annoyance as she led the way to the front drawing-room. “Mabel has a slight headache,” she said apologetically. “She always droops a little in warm weather. She wants to return to the country; but I shall continue to be very frank with you, Mr. Ordham—I am most anxious that you should know one another.”
“It looks as if the less she knows me the better she may like me.” Ordham spoke with some humour; he was piqued but not angry. “However, I shall always be grateful to you for letting me look at her.”
“Ah! You do think my chick a beauty?” There was a little break in Mrs. Cutting’s cultivated voice, but she did not lift her eyes to Ordham’s.
“I have never seen a girl half as beautiful.”