“On the contrary, I feel so much the more interested in the young lady.”
“Ah, your interest will not last. However, I shall be charmed to introduce you.”
They went across the room to that distant recess where Miss Faux was still seated, her hair and attitude unchanged since George Ransome first observed her. She started with a little look of surprise when Signora Vicenti and her companion approached; but she accepted the introduction with a nonchalant air, and she replied to Ransome’s opening remarks with manifest indifference. Then by degrees she grew more animated, and talked about the people in the room, ridiculing their pretensions, their eccentricities, their costume.
“You are not an habitué here?” she asked. “I don’t remember seeing you before to-night.”
“No; it is the first of Signora Vicenti’s parties that I have seen.”
“Then I conclude it will be the last.”
“Why?”
“O, no sensible person would come a second time. The music is tolerable if one could hear it anywhere else, but the people are odious.”
“Yet I conclude this is not your first evening here?”
“No; I come every week. I have nothing else to do with myself but to go about to houses I hate, and mix with people who hate me.”