Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

Something there was in the radiant face, pale, but full of light and life, in which the eye of an expert read auguries of evil; but to the elegant mob circulating through those sumptuous rooms Mrs. Rutherford was still beautiful with the bloom of health. Her pallor was of a transparent fairness, more brilliant than other women's carnations. The popular American painter had made one of his most startling hits, two years before, by his exquisite rendering of that rare beauty, the alabaster pallor, the dreaming eyes, blue-grey, or blue with a touch of green. He had caught her "mermaid look"; and his most fervent admirers, looking at the portrait in the Academy crowd, declared that the colour in those mysterious eyes changed as they looked. The portrait was the sensation of the year. Her eyes changed, and she seemed to be moving out of the canvas, said the superior critics; and the herd went about parroting them. She had her far-away look to-night, as she stood near the doorway in the Rubens room, the first of the long suite; and though she had a gracious greeting for everybody, those who admired her most had a strange fancy that she was only the lovely semblance or outer shell of a woman, whose actual self was worlds away.

There was nothing dreamy or far-away about Claude Rutherford to-night. He was a man whose nature it was to live only in the present, and to live every moment of his life. To-night, in these splendid surroundings, in this crowd of the noble and the celebrated, he felt as one who has conquered Fate, and has the world at his feet. He was a universal favourite. The hearts of women softened at his smile; and even men liked him for his careless gaiety.

"Always jolly and friendly, and without a scrap of side."

That was what they said of him. To have the spending of the Provana millions and to be without side, seemed a virtue above all praise. People liked him better than his ethereal wife. She was charming, but elusive. That other-world look of hers repelled would-be admirers, and even chilled her friends.

The Amphletts had arrived at the villa on a long visit, just in time for Vera's first party; and Lady Susan was floating about the rooms in an ecstasy of admiration. She had never seen them in Mario Provana's time, and though she had been invited by Vera more than once in the last three years, this was her first visit.

Her tiresome husband had preferred Northamptonshire, and she had not been modern enough to leave him; and now he had been only lured a thousand miles from the Pytchley by the promise of hunting on the Campagna.

"At last Vera is in her proper environment," Lady Susan told a young attache, who had been among the intimates in London. "She was out of her proper setting in Portland Place. Nothing less beautiful than this palace is in harmony with her irresistible charm. Other women have beauty, don't you know; Mrs. Bellenden, par exemple."

"Mrs. Bellenden is an eye-opener," murmured the diplomat.

"Yes, I know what you are thinking, the handsomest woman in Europe, and all that kind of thing; but utterly without charm. Even we women admire her, just as we admire a huge La France rose, or a golden pheasant, or a bunch of grapes as big as plovers' eggs, with the purple bloom upon them; the perfection of physical beauty. But the light behind the painted window, the secret, the charm is not in it. Beauty and to spare, but nothing more."