“Sit to you? For a picture, do you mean?” and Féraz looked delighted yet amazed.
“Yes. You have just the face I want. Are you in town?—can you spare the time?”
“I am always with my brother”—began Féraz hesitatingly.
El-Râmi heard him, and smiled rather sadly.
“Féraz is his own master,” he said gently, “and his time is quite at his own disposal.”
“Then come and let us talk it over,” said Ainsworth, taking Féraz by the arm. “I’ll pilot you through this crowd, and we’ll make for some quiet corner where we can sit down. Come along!”
Out of old habit Féraz glanced at his brother for permission, but El-Râmi’s head was turned away; he was talking to Lord Melthorpe. So through the brilliant throng of fashionable men and women, many of whom turned to stare at him as he passed, Féraz went, half eager, half reluctant, his large fawn-like eyes flashing an innocent wonderment on the scene around him,—a scene different from everything to which he had been accustomed. He was uncomfortably conscious that there was something false and even deadly beneath all this glitter and show,—but his senses were dazzled for the moment, though the poet-soul of him instinctively recoiled from the noise and glare and restless movement of the crowd. It was his first entry into so-called “society”;—and, though attracted and interested, he was also somewhat startled and abashed—for he felt instinctively that he was thrown upon his own resources,—that, for the present at any rate, his brother’s will no longer influenced him, and with the sudden sense of liberty came the sudden sense of fear.
XXIV.
Towards midnight the expected Royal Personage came and went; fatigued but always amiable, he shed the sunshine of his stereotyped smile on Lady Melthorpe’s “crush”—shook hands with his host and hostess, nodded blandly to a few stray acquaintances, and went through all the dreary duties of social boredom heroically, though he was pining for his bed more wearily than any work-worn digger of the soil. He made his way out more quickly than he came in, and with his departure a great many of the more “snobbish” among the fashionable set disappeared also, leaving the rooms freer and cooler for their absence. People talked less loudly and assertively,—little groups began to gather in corners and exchange friendly chit-chat,—men who had been standing all the evening found space to sit down beside their favoured fair ones, and indulge themselves in talking a little pleasant nonsense,—even the hostess herself was at last permitted to occupy an arm-chair and take a few moments’ rest. Some of the guests had wandered into the music-saloon, a quaintly-decorated oak-panelled apartment which opened out from the largest drawing-room. A string band had played there till Royalty had come and gone, but now “sweet harmony” no longer “wagged her silver tongue,” for the musicians were at supper. The grand piano was open, and Madame Vassilius stood near it, idly touching the ivory keys now and then with her small white, sensitive-looking fingers. Close beside her, comfortably ensconced in a round deep chair, sat a very stout old lady with a curiously large hairy face and a beaming expression of eye, who appeared to have got into her pink silk gown by some cruelly unnatural means, so tightly was she laced, and so much did she seem in danger of bursting. She perspired profusely and smiled perpetually, and frequently stroked the end of her very pronounced moustache with quite a mannish air. This was the individual for whom Lady Melthorpe had been searching,—the Baroness von Denkwald, noted for her skill in palmistry.
“Ach! it is warm!” she said in her strong German accent, giving an observant and approving glance at Irene’s white-draped form.—“You are ze one womans zat is goot to look at. A peach mit ice-cream,—dot is yourself.”