“My dear Eve, I shall keep it for garden-parties till it begins to get shabby. Scarlet gives just the right touch of colour in a landscape.”
“Yes, but I think one would always rather that somebody else should give the touch.”
“Mr. Sefton said yesterday that fair-haired women should wear scarlet.”
Sefton was Sophy’s great authority. He had been very polite to her, very pleasant, very confidential, talking to her about London society as if she were to the manner born, and had been brought up in the very midst of these people whom she saw to-day for the first time. This flattered her; indeed, his whole speech was made up of flattery, that subtle adulation which did not express itself in mere words, but which was indicated rather by a deference to her opinion, a quickness in laughing at her little jokes, an acceptance of her as on his own intellectual level. “You and I know better than the common herd,” was expressed in all his conversation with her.
When they met in the evening it was only natural she should tell him her sister’s plans for the next day, whether they were going to spend the morning in the Park or at the picture-galleries. Sophy was eager for picture-seeing when there was nothing better to be done. Those galleries would give her so much to talk about at autumn tea-parties, such a superior air among women who thought they did a great deal for art when they fatigued themselves at the Royal Academy.
If they sat in the Park for an hour or so before luncheon Sefton contrived to find them there—if they were picture-seeing he dropped into the gallery, and criticized the pictures in technical phraseology which provided Sophy with a treasury of art talk especially adapted for country use. If they were at a theatre in the evening he was there too. Eve warned Sophy that he was only a philanderer.
“You remember how disagreeably attentive he was to me,” she said, reddening at the recollection, “and yet, you see, he never meant anything.”
“We were worse detrimentals then than we are now,” argued Sophy. “Your marriage has altered our position, and now that the father lives abroad a man need not be afraid of marrying one of us. I don’t mean to say that Mr. Sefton is going to make me an offer; but he is certainly very attentive.”
“Yes, he is very attentive, I admit. He likes being attentive to girls. Nothing pleases him better than to try the effect of that musical voice of his, and his nicely chosen phrases, upon any girl who will listen to him—like Orpheus leading the brute beasts with his lyre. I doubt if he cares any more for the girls than Orpheus cared for the beasts. He is false for falsehood’s sake.”
“You are very bitter against him, Eve,” retorted Sophy. “Yet I dare say you would have married him if he had asked you.”