“Have you seen any good acting, Madam?” Greville came across to the chair beside her, while the other men drowsed or talked foxes.
“Why, I’ve been to the play a few times, sir, here and there, not to say I know anything about it. I saw Mrs. Siddons play Lady Macbeth. Lord, how awful! My flesh did creep on my bones when she came in with the candle, gliding like a ghost all in white. Like so!”
She caught up a vase for the candle and moved slowly toward him with dead eyes turned inward on some horror, the head thrown back, mouth open, jaw a little dropped, clenched hands drawn back, a ghastly terror creeping about her. He stared spellbound. Wonderful—not sleep, but Fear incarnate, frozen in the bonds of sleep. She passed Sir Harry and tripped against his extended foot, and all but fell, recovering herself with a laugh.
“I near broke the vase that time!” says she laughing, and called it “vawse.” “I declare, Sir Harry, if I had, ’twas your fault. Why don’t you go to bed if you must stretch out like that!”
It waked them up, and presently Sir Harry began to troll a hunting chorus, and the men bore him company, and she took herself off laughing still and waving her hand at the door.
But when Greville sat in his room by the fine bursting flaming fire of beech logs he could think of nothing else. Her beauty; that was enough alone. Her voice, her posturing! Dim thoughts rolled and shaped in his mind.
“I wonder what Hamilton would think of her!” (For so he called his twenty-year older uncle. They were friends more than uncle and nephew from the beginning.) “All the Aphrodites come to life with a touch of the Medusa, and a strong dash of Euphrosyne. And what else, I wonder!”
He could not settle it and went to sleep on that.
CHAPTER II
THE ACQUAINTANCE RIPENS
During the next few days Greville watched her with ever-growing interest, and diagnosed her with the cool precision but discriminating admiration which he brought to his cabinets of rarities. It was easy to understand why and how Sir Harry had picked her up and easy also to judge that her lease of his affections (if they could be so called) would be brief and terminable on the resolve of the principal party. Sir Harry would have the submission of a whipped dog, and try as she would (and she tried her best by fits and starts) the girl could not crawl to his feet. She was too full of abounding animal energy, not to speak of force of character, to be tame, and, like most women of the uneducated classes, saw no reason for controlling her tongue. Out it all came with a burst when she was moved either to anger or pleasure.