"Which Miss Grey?"
"Why, the one Jos Carstairs is to marry. She is coming under my wing. And now she isn't here. What on earth am I to do? We can't wait for ever."
A tall white figure was advancing slowly, as if dragged step by step, through the shadow of the great grey building.
"She does not hurry herself," said Mrs Lestrange indignantly, and she did not welcome Elsa very cordially as she came on board. The youngest of the party had made all the rest of that distinguished gathering wait for her.
Mary, in a gown of immaculate white serge stitched with black, was sitting under the awning when Elsa passed her on her way towards a vacant seat lower down. The two women looked fixedly at each other for a moment, and in that moment Mary saw that Elsa knew that she knew. Even in that short time Lord Francis had evidently warned the girl against her.
Do what she would, Mary could not help watching Elsa. This was the less difficult, as no one ever talked for long together to Mary. The seat next her was never resolutely occupied. Her gentle voice was one of those which swell the time-honoured complaint, that in society you hear nothing but the same vapid small talk, the same trivial remarks over and over again. She was not neglected, but she awakened no interest. Her china blue eyes turned more and more frequently towards that tall figure with its lithe, panther-like grace sitting in the sun, regardless of the glare. Mary, whose care for her own soul came second only to her care for her complexion, wondered at her recklessness.
Mrs Lestrange introduced one or two men to Elsa, but they seemed to find but little to say to her. She was distraite, indifferent to what was going on round her. After a time she was left alone, except when Mrs Lestrange came to sit by her for a few minutes. Yet she was a marked feature of the party. Wherever Elsa might be she could not be overlooked. Mysterious involuntary power which some women possess, not necessarily young and beautiful like Elsa, of becoming wherever they go a centre, a focus of attention whether they will or no.
Married men looked furtively at her, and whispered to their approving wives that Carstairs was a bold man, that nothing would have induced them to marry a woman of that stamp. The unmarried men looked at her too, but said nothing.
At seventeen Elsa's beauty was mature. It was not the thin wild-flower beauty of the young English girl who emerges but slowly from her chrysalis. It was the splendid pale perfection of the magnolia which opens in a night. The body had outstripped the embryo spirit. Out of the exquisite face, with its mysterious foreshadowing of latent emotion, looked the grave inscrutable eyes of a child.
Elsa appeared quite unconscious of the interest she excited. She looked fixedly at the gliding dwindling buildings, at the little alert brown-sailed eel-boats, and the solemn low-swimming hay barges, burning yellow in the afternoon sun, and dropping gold into the grey water as they went. Sometimes she looked up at the overhanging bridges, and past them to the sky. Presently a white butterfly came twinkling on toddling, unsteady wings across the water, and settled on the awning. Elsa's eyes followed it. "It is coming with us," she said to Captain Lestrange, who was standing near her. The butterfly left the awning. It settled for a moment on the white rose on Elsa's breast. Now it was off again, a dancing baby fairy between the sunny sky and sunny river. Then all in a moment some gust of air caught its tiny spread sails, and flung it with wings outstretched upon the swift water.