Yet society compelled her to appear like other people, and she found herself listening to Desmond, who lisped away in his usual fashion of things in general: the debates in the House last night, the envious screen of the ladies' gallery, la crosse at Hurlingham, polo, tent-pegging, and lemon-slicing at Lillie Bridge, the coaching club and the teams, Colonel Rakes' greys, Bayswater's roans, the Scottish Duke of Chatelherault's snow-whites, the matching of wheelers and leaders; of this party and that rout; who were and were not at the Chiswick Garden Fete.
One circumstance pleased her. Nothing in the well-bred and impassive manner of Desmond, though he hung over her and tugged his long fair moustache, could have led anyone to suppose that he had actually made her a proposal the other morning, and as to his sister's intended 'fiasco,' for such they both deemed it, the subject was not even hinted at; and now, as he moved on to speak to some one else, a gloved hand was laid on her arm, and Clare found herself beside Evelyn Desmond.
She was perhaps about thirty, yet she had more experience of the world than Clare could ever have won in a lifetime. In girlhood she had been handsome; but her beauty—if real beauty she ever possessed—was already gone; bloom at least had departed. She was fair, blue-eyed, and not unlike her brother, with a proportionately tall figure, and a face rather aristocratic in contour, but with a keener, sharper, more haughty and defiant expression.
One of the three suites of diamonds that Clare had seen was sparkling on her brow and bosom. She was attired in violet velvet, with priceless point lace, cut in the extreme mode: her neck and shoulders were bare, and her dress cut so absurdly low behind as to show rather too much of a certainly fair and snow-white back.
Clare's chief objection to her, apart from the disparity of years, was that the Honourable Evelyn had the unpleasant reputation of having done more than one very fast thing in her life, though no one could precisely say what they were; and though she was the daughter of a peer and a sister of a major in the Guards, all men had a cool, insouciant, and even flippant or half 'chaffing' mode of addressing her, that they would never have dared to adopt to a girl like Clare Collingwood.
'Your papa has told you about—you know what, Clare?' said Miss Desmond, looking not in the slightest degree abashed, though lowering her tone, certainly.
'Yes,' said Clare, curtly and wearily.
'We must be better friends than ever, Clare.'
Miss Collingwood fanned herself in silence, so Evelyn spoke again:
'I suppose you know when the—the event takes place?'