Many young people were invited to Ordham. If he could not sit beside them at table, he could play tennis and croquet with them, loiter about the park and in the woods with girls almost as pretty as his wife, sit with them in the picturesque ruin of the original castle, occupied by generations of Ordhams before the tidal wave of the Renaissance reached England. There was also music, private theatricals, tableaux, and not too much dancing, which he detested. There were other young men, not all of them mad on the subject of sport, and always some brilliant figure from the artistic world like Wilde, then the idol of all the clever young brains in the empire. Altogether, he thought, as he strolled through the great rooms of his castle to-night, he felt that life was quite enchanting and only hoped that he would not grow fat.
He paused beside Mabel, who immediately turned her shoulder upon her little court and looked up at him with a brilliant smile. She was too well-bred to display her adoration in public, but at least she might pretend that he was an illustrious guest. She wore her favourite shimmering green, with lilies in her girdle. Her golden hair shone like nebulæ against a dull piece of green tapestry, thrown over the back of a tall chair by an unerring æsthete.
“Are you bored, Jackie darling?” she whispered.
“Of course not. How can you ask such a thing? No one is bored. It is quite astonishing how you and the respective maters manage. Even the men that have been out all day seem to have got hold of the right women and look almost awake.”
“Lady Pat says that English women are much more amusing than they used to be, and I adore them, myself. How wonderful it all is, and the most, most, most wonderful is that I have a husband, although I am only nineteen, whom all these distinguished and worldly people admire.”
This speech struck him as obscurely pathetic, consequently its flattery missed the mark. He looked down upon her kindly. “Don’t overdo it,” he whispered. “I must go now and talk to that old lady with her wig on one side. Fortunately she is rather amusing, or I might resent being her host.”
“Do you mean the duchess—your grandmother?” asked Mabel, wonderingly. Why were English people so odd sometimes?
“I believe she is. I only remembered for the moment that she often makes me laugh.”
Mabel stood watching him as he bent with his formal manner and charming smile over the old lady of whom she stood in some awe, for there was no more caustic tongue in England than the old duchess’s, and she lost no opportunity of informing the Cuttings that they were the first Americans she had ever met. But it was her husband’s careless words that held Mabel’s puzzled attention. She understood her own departures from the truth, because they were deliberate and inevitable; but it was difficult for the direct and businesslike American mind to comprehend the casual—or affected?—lie when the truth would have been far less trouble. Ordham, unless driven to the wall—when he lied as coolly as if it were a sort of royal prerogative—thought no one worth a deliberate fabrication. But he had an instinctive dislike of the obvious, and all the little affectations of his class. He was sometimes audaciously candid, but he rarely thought in a straight line. The wit of the day said of him, several years later, that whereas all the English were liars, the Scotch more liars, and the Irish most liars, Bridgminster was the only man he had ever met who could lie with the simplicity of a savage, the grace of an artist, and the blandness of an Oriental. Therefore when his opportunity came would he prove himself the greatest diplomatist in Europe.
At eleven o’clock he stood watching the charming procession of women in their flashing jewels and trailing gowns filing down the long gallery, candle in hand, when Mabel passed him.