All the world could very quickly see that she was absorbed by young Baxter and had no thoughts for any one but him. She had no desire to snatch other young men from their triumphant but fighting captors. She was of a true, generous heart; she would do any one a good turn, laugh with any one, play with any one, sympathize with any one.
She was not only the most beautiful, she was also the best-liked girl in the place.
Perhaps because of her retired, cloistered, Trenchard up-bringing she was, in spite of two years finishing in Paris, innocent and pure of heart. She thought that she knew everything about life, and her courage and her frankness carried her through many situations before which less unsophisticated women would have quailed.
It was not that she credited every one with noble characters; she thought many people foolish and weak and sentimental, but she did believe that every one was fundamentally good at heart and intended to make of life a fine thing. Her close companionship with Bunny caused her for the first time to wonder whether there was not another world—"underground somewhere"—of which she knew nothing whatever. It was not that he told her anything or introduced her to men who would tell her. He had, one must in charity to him believe, at this time at any rate, a real desire to respect her innocence; but always behind the things they did and said was this implication that he knew so much more of life than she. Henry had often implied that same knowledge, but she laughed at him. He might know things that he would not tell her, but he was essentially, absolutely of her own world. But Bunny was different. She was a modern girl, belonging to the generation in which, at last, women were to know as much, to see as much, as men. She must know.
"What do you mean, Bunny?"
"Oh, nothing . . . nothing that you need know."
"But I want to know. I'm not a child——"
"Rot. . . . Come and dance." She did dance, furiously, ferociously. The Diamond Palace—a glass-domed building at the foot of the woods, just above the sea, was the place where Cladgate danced. The negro band, its teeth gleaming with gold, its fingers glittering with diamond rings, stamped and shrieked, banged cymbals, clashed tins, thumped at drums, yelled and then suddenly murmured like animals creeping back, reluctantly, into the fastnesses of their jungles, and all the good British citizens and citizenesses of Cladgate wandered round and round with solemn ecstatic faces, their bodies pressed close together, sweat gathering upon their brows; beyond the glass roof the walks were dark and silent and the sea crept in and out over the tiny pebbles, leaving a thin white pattern far down the deserted beach.
"What do you mean, Bunny?" asked Millie.
"Oh, you'll find out soon enough," he answered her.