"Oh, no one can play any more," interposed Eva lightly. "I've sent for refreshments and we're going to have conversation. Where are Sidney and Count Massena and Colonel Sedley?" she added, going toward the billiard-room.
As she pushed aside the portières and looked into the long narrow room, she smiled a little at the picture that the three men made, for Colonel Sedley was playing with the young Chargé d'Affaires of the Italian Embassy, while Sidney Billop stood looking on with that vacant expression that Astry called his "frog stare." Count Massena, graceful, olive-tinted, and astute, used his cue with an easy grace and finish that might have been called diplomatic, while Sedley, red and obviously short of breath, plunged at his ball with more zeal than accuracy. Their hostess regarded them a moment unperceived and then she allowed her presence to interrupt the game at precisely the moment when they would all be most likely to observe the beauty of her delicate, black-robed figure against the crimson draperies of the door.
However, at that very moment, there was the stir of rising from the card-table and Dr. Macclesfield inadvertently stepped on Mrs. Prynne's skirt. She sweetly accepted his apologies, looking at him with a confiding smile that seemed to wreathe her mutilated gown in the roses of poetical oblivion, although it was a recent arrival from Paris.
Mrs. Billop raised her lorgnon and studied Mrs. Prynne's porcelain beauty with an impartial stare. Then she bent confidentially toward Rachel.
"My dear," she whispered, "have you heard? She's engaged to John Charter."
Rachel turned slowly toward her. "Who's engaged to—Mr. Charter?"
"Lottie Prynne; it isn't to be announced until his return from the Philippines; she told me so herself."
A footman was placing the silver-collared decanters on the table by the fire, while Van Citters had drawn up a chair and was telling Mrs. Prynne's fortune with cards. She was dressed in pale blue and her pretty face was bloomingly childlike; she rested one white elbow on the table and nestled her round chin in her upturned, pink palm, her hair showing exquisite blond tints except where it grew out dark at the roots. She looked so pretty and neat in her blue gown that she reminded you of those dear little, shallow, blue and white saucepans that are so useful to mix sweeties in, only she would have described herself as the "sweetie," had she been asked to interpret the analogy. Van Citters thought her "jolly pretty" and he rather liked to flirt with her when Pamela had been trying; not that this diversion made Pamela more amiable, but it was a counter-irritant.
Meanwhile Johnstone Astry came back with Colonel Sedley, whom Eva had previously rescued from Sidney Billop. The colonel was a fresh-faced man of fifty, whose increasing girth had ruined a dapper figure. He liked the open-air life in the country, but could not afford to keep horses and hounds as Astry did, so he visited Astry. Sidney Billop had transferred his attentions to Eva, and Eva, regretting her generosity to Sedley, was painfully aware that his pale hair was parted crooked and his pale eyes were more watery than usual. His head was so big and round and he tapered so abruptly toward the feet that in early life he had been called, by a small but appreciative circle of friends, "the Tadpole." Sidney was the only son of a fond and admiring mother, and Dr. Macclesfield had once remarked that a merciful Providence had withheld a duplicate. Sidney was the amazing result of an anxious maternal supervision that had engulfed him, like a poultice, from his cradle to his final exit from college, where he had been a kind of mental and moral sponge, absorbing only bad habits and small beer. He kept laughing incessantly now, with a succulent gurgle, at the interruptions of Count Massena, who had come over to help Eva out of her dilemma. But this triangular scene was completely disrupted by Mrs. Van Citters. She had been nibbling a piece of cake when a sudden thought diverted her from her peaceful occupation.
"Does any one know what became of the boy who was hurt so seriously by Eva's motor the other day?" she asked abruptly.