"Mademoiselle est ravissante!" she cried at length, with the easy lie of the Latin races, as, the task completed, Miss Beadon surveyed her reflection in the mirror with a satisfied smile. From crown to foot she represented wealth, and yet how simple was the whole costume! The dress itself was suitable only for a débutante in her first youth—Dora always dressed twenty years younger than her looks—but her jewels were worth a fortune.
Brand, arriving at the party with his wife rather late in the evening, noticed them at once and took in their significance.
"You have excelled even yourself to-night," he said, adopting the tone of solemn fervour in which a very pious Catholic speaks of relics. "Better not say such things, perhaps, but circumstances are sometimes too strong for one. Yours is a regal power, Miss Beadon, yet you dispense your favours with quite exquisite simplicity."
Dora looked up, surprised. Up to the present she had found little in common with Brand; now she began to think she had misjudged him.
"Oh, well, it's always nice to help one's friends," she said, awkwardly fingering her fan. "Evelyn does it too, doesn't she? She and Mr. Farquharson are quite inseparable, I hear."
"Oh, Evelyn——" Brand shrugged his shoulder, and, obeying the invitation of her gesture, seated himself deferentially beside her. "What of that? Compare her years to yours, my dear young lady. Why, she's like a mother to Farquharson. I dare say they are really about the same age, but Evelyn's hard life makes her appear many years his senior. Now you, young and fresh——" He paused and sighed. "Ah, Richard Farquharson's a lucky fellow in more ways than one," he said daringly.
"I can't think what you mean. How quite absurd of you!" giggled Miss Beadon.
"You must really ask the Brands to dine next week, father," she announced a little later. "We've all been mistaken in Mr. Brand, I'm sure; there's ever so much more in him than one would think. We had a most interesting talk together just now. And I'm rather sorry for him, too. I'm afraid dear Evelyn doesn't make him happy. She's such an icicle, and from what he said to me just now I'm sure he's a man of extraordinarily deep feelings. There's nothing sadder, dear, is there, than to see a woman sow sympathy broadcast as Evelyn does, and yet not spare a grain of it for her husband?"
Easy indifference to the faults and failings of ourselves and our personal friends carry a man unscathed through many a social dilemma, but there are certain obvious misdemeanours to which he cannot well be blind. Sin—if it be but brave in face of danger—does not actually alienate us as mere meanness does. Love in itself, for instance, glows with so white a flame that its reflection lights the face of any woman who has given herself for love alone. Such a one hangs hourly upon the cross of wounded honour, crowding more sacrifices for her lover into a day than most of us can compass in a lifetime. But women who lie for the sake of lying, who secure confidences by base means to sell or betray them at the first prick of jealousy, and men who run up gambling debts and leave their womenkind to pay them, are on a different level. They return, like dogs, to their vomit, and the stench is surely foul in the nostril of God and man alike.
Yet even for these allowance is made—so prone is society to condone the faults of its immediate circle, if the men are good-natured enough to entertain dull dowagers at dinner parties, and the women in question have large enough balances at their bankers' to give large sums in public charity or to found philanthropic annuities. A witty raconteur, Brand's eye for detail, and memory for those trifles which sum up many of life's minor comforts, had stood him in good stead for some years. Luckily for him, they failed him only when he could count upon his wife's popularity to keep him in the position he had once held unaided. Some men "drop out or go under" without wincing; Brand was not of the number. His hold upon his social niche, such as it was, was insecure enough, at best; he meant to grasp it, to which end he laid successful siege to Dora Beadon.