"Of course," echoed Susan; "why shouldn't he be there? Everybody was there."
"But everybody couldn't waltz or sit out with Madame Provana all the evening, as I heard he did," remarked a middle-aged matron, fixing Susan with her long-handled eyeglass.
"Why shouldn't they waltz? They are cousins, and have always been pals, and they waltz divinely. To watch them is to understand what Shakespeare meant by the poetry of motion. Everything Vera does is a poem. Every frock she wears shows that she is a poet's daughter. And now they are married, and are going to be utterly happy," concluded Susie with conviction.
The world in general does not relish that idea of idyllic happiness—especially in the case of multi-millionaires. It is consoling—when one is not a millionaire—to think of some small counterbalance to that overweening good luck, some little rift within the lute.
A cynic, as cold and sour as the aspic he was eating, shrugged his shoulders.
"If I had a daughter I was fond of, I don't think I would trust the chances of her happiness to Claude Rutherford," he said quietly.
"Claude is quite adorable," said a fourteen-stone widow, whose opulent shoulders and triple necklaces had been the central point of the public gaze at the theatre that evening.
"Much too adorable to make one woman happy. A man of that kind has to spread himself. It must be diffused light, not the concentrated glow of the domestic hearth," said the cynic, smiling at the bubbles in his glass.
Everybody found something to say about Vera and her husband. Certainly their behaviour since Provana's death had been exemplary. They had never been seen about together, at home or abroad. The house in Portland Place had been closed, and the widow had lived in Italy, a recluse, seeing no one. Half the time had been spent by Claude Rutherford in Africa, hunting big game with a famous sportsman. The other half in well-known studios in Antwerp and Paris. He had thrown off his lazy, dilettante habits, and had gone in for art with a curious renewal of energy. The man was altered somehow. His old acquaintance discovered a change in him: a change for the better, most likely, though they did not all think so.
And now he had attained the summit of mortal bliss, as possible to a man of nine-and-thirty, who had wasted the morning of life. He had won a lovely woman whom he was supposed to adore, and whose wealth ought to be inexhaustible.