Sir Randolph Fisticuffs laughs.
“You ought to join the Woman’s Volunteer Corps,” he observes sarcastically.
“Ought I?” She opens her grey eyes wide. “As it happens, I joined it a year ago.”
“The devil you did!” he exclaims in a surprised tone. “So you are a Hector D’Estrangeite, eh?”
“I am,” she answers proudly.
The music has recommenced; a dreamy waltz is sounding through the room; every one has begun dancing again. Only the dowagers are at rest. Not a man appears unoccupied. Yes, one is, though. It is the young Duke of Ravensdale himself.
He is leaning against a bank of moss and roses apparently watching the busy throng. There is a far-away look in his eyes, however, which tells that his thoughts have flown beyond the giddy pastime of the hour. He is thinking of his friend’s latest triumph, and what will be the outcome of it all. For Evelyn Ravensdale’s heart has gone out to Hector D’Estrange, and he loves him with that devoted, admiring love which some men have been known to inspire in others.
“Just look at the duke,” whispers Lady Tabbycat to her friend Mrs. Moreton Savage; “one would think there wasn’t a pretty girl in the room, or a heart aching for him, by the way he stands there doing nothing and saying nothing. I can’t think what makes him so shy and reserved. He was all fire just now when he was telling us of Hector D’Estrange’s triumph; and now just look at him, my dear.”
Mrs. Moreton Savage does look at him, but she is just as far from making him out as her friend Lady Tabbycat is. Mrs. Moreton Savage is a dame whose mind has never soared beyond the fitting on of a dress, the making of matches, and the desirability of knowing all the best people in society. She has worked assiduously with those aims in view, and has the satisfaction of knowing that she has been more or less successful. Such a thought as the condition of society, and the people in the past, present, and future, has never entered her brain. She is quite content that things should go on exactly as they are, that there should be immense riches on one side, intense misery and poverty on the other. Such problems as the relation of man and woman in this world, and the terrible evils arising out of the false position of the sexes, has never troubled her. She has no wish to see mankind perfected, or to place Society on a higher level and basis than it is. There is just this difference, therefore, between herself and the man whom she and Lady Tabbycat are discussing, and that is that he does. Often and often have the young duke and Hector D’Estrange discussed these problems together in their early morning rides or cosy after-dinner chats. It is Hector D’Estrange who has converted him to his present way of thinking. He had come into his property a sufficiently self-conceited, spoilt young man; with the world at his feet, men and women angling for his favours, as many will do to the highborn and the rich. He had never paused to wonder what he should do with his money, and position, and power. He was preparing himself to enjoy life in the only way which up till then he had viewed as possible, when a fateful chance threw him in the path of Hector D’Estrange.
Men wondered at the change in the young Duke of Ravensdale. It was such a sudden one; they could not make it out; it mystified them altogether. Some put it down to love, and wondered who was the lucky one.