"What is the song?" Guilford inquired, looking in, then drawing back softly and dropping the curtain that screened the doorway.
"Caro Mio Ben!"
"A love song?"
I smiled.
"Well, rather!"
Then somebody crowded up and separated Guilford and me. I stood there listening to the lovely Italian words, and wondering if the night were in truth bewitched. Guilford, under the impulse induced by a white tissue gown and big red roses, had suffered an unusual heart-action already and had spent half an hour whispering things in my ear which made me feel embarrassed and ashamed. The only thing which can possibly make a lifelong engagement endurable is the brotherly attitude assumed by the lover in his late teens.
"Come in," he said, elbowing his way back to me through the chattering throng of the autumn's débutantes, after a few minutes. "I hear the violins beginning to groan—and say—haven't they got everybody worth having here to-night?"
"I don't—know," I replied vaguely, looking up and down the length of the room that we were entering.
"But—there's Mrs. Walker, and there are the Chester girls, and Dan Hunter, just back from Africa—and—"
"Certainly they've got a fine selection of Oldburgh's solid, rolled-gold ornaments," I commented dryly, as my eyes searched the other side of the room.