She was in white from head to foot, and her gown was made of some dead-white fabric which combined the solidity of satin with the soft suppleness of gauze. The bodice was rather short-waisted, and the young lady wore a broad satin belt clasped with a diamond buckle, which flashed with many coloured gleams in the moonlight, as she passed to and fro; and whereas most young women at that time displayed a prodigious length of arm broken only by a narrow shoulder-strap, this young lady wore large puffed sleeves which recalled the portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence. The large puffed sleeves became common enough a year later, but they were unknown in Wiltshire when Mrs. Mornington gave her dance. The damsel's silky black hair was coiled with artistic simplicity at the back of the prettily shaped head, while a cloud of little careless curls clustered above the broad, intelligent forehead.
She was talking gaily with her companion, Colonel Fordingbridge, a retired engineer, settled for some fifteen years in the outskirts of Matcham, and an intimate friend of Mr. Mornington's. He was telling her about the neighbourhood, holding it up to contempt and ridicule in a good-natured way which implied that, after all, it was the best neighbourhood in the world.
"It suits an old fellow like me," Allan heard him say; "plenty of sport of a mildish order. Huntin', fishin', shootin', hawkin', and golf."
"Hawking!" cried the young lady. "Do you really mean that? I thought there were no more hawks left in the world. Why, it sounds like the Middle Ages."
"Yes, and I'm afraid you'll say it looks like the Middle Ages when you see a flight on the hills near Matcham. The members of the Falconry Club in this neighbourhood are not all boys."
"But the hawks!" exclaimed she. "Where—where can one see them?"
"Have you really hawks?" inquired Allan's young lady, who had exhausted the Chapter House, and who caught eagerly at another local subject. "How utterly delightful! Do you go out with them very often?"
"I blush to admit that I have not even seen them, though I know there are such birds kept in the neighbourhood. I have even been invited to become a member of the society, and am seriously thinking about offering myself for election."
Seriously thinking since two minutes ago, be it understood, for until he caught that speech from the unknown young lady he had hardly given falconry a thought.
She and her companion had disappeared when he and his porcelain lady turned at the end of the terrace.