"One moment, dear; just let me pin that chiffon up on your shoulder, to make your sleeves look wider—there!" She hovered round Katherine, spying out the weak points in her dress, and disguising them with quick, skillful fingers. A woman never looks more charming than when doing these little services for another. So Ted thought, as he watched Audrey laying her white arms about his sister, and putting her head on one side to survey the effect critically. To the boy, with his senses sharpened to an almost feverish subtilty by the incessant stimulus of his imagination, Audrey was the epitome of everything most completely and joyously alive. Roses, sunlight, flame, with the shifting, waving lines of all things most fluent and elusive, were in her face, her hair, the movements of her limbs. Her body was like a soul to its clothes; it animated, inspired the mass of silk and lace. He could not think of her as she was—the creature of the day and the hour, modern from the surface to the core. Yet never had she looked more modern than at this moment; never had that vivid quality, that touch of artificial distinction, appeared more stereotyped in its very perfection and finish. But Ted, in the first religious fervour of his passion, had painted her as the Saint of the Beatific Vision; and in the same way, to Ted, ever since that evening on the river, she recalled none but open-air images. She was linked by flowery chains of association to an idyllic past—a past of four days ago. Her very caprices suggested the shy approaches and withdrawals of some divinity of nature. It was by these harmless fictions, each new one rising on the ruins of the old, that Ted managed to keep his ideal of Audrey intact.
There was a slight stir in the passage outside the half-open door. Audrey, still busy about Katherine's dress, seemed not to hear it.
"My dear Audrey!" protested Miss Craven from her corner.
"There, that'll do!" said Katherine, laughing; "you've stuck quite enough pins into me for one night."
"Stand still, and don't wiggle!" cried Audrey, as the door opened wide. For a second she was conscious of being watched by eyes that were not Ted's or anything like them. At the same time the footman announced in a firm, clear voice, "Mr. Knowles and Mr. Langley Wyndham!"
She had heard this time. The look she had seen from the doorway was the same look that had followed her in the Dean's drawing-room at Oxford. All the emotions of that evening thronged back into her mind—the vague fascination, the tense excitement, the mortification that resulted from the wound to her self-love and pride.
So this was Mr. St. John!
A year ago he had refused an introduction to her, and now he wanted to know her; his friend had said so. He was seeking the acquaintance of his own accord, without encouragement. How odd it all was! Well, whether his former discourtesy had been intentional or not, he knew how to apologise for it gracefully.
She had no time to think more about the matter, for her remaining guests came in all together; and in another five minutes Audrey was suffering from that kind of nightmare in which some grave issue—you don't know precisely what—hangs on the adjustment of trifles, absurdly disproportionate to the event, and which disarrange themselves perversely at the dramatic moment. Everything seemed to go wrong. She had relied on Knowles and Miss Gladys Armstrong for a brilliant display of intellectual fireworks; but beyond the first casual remarks absolutely required of them, they had not a word to say to each other. Miss Armstrong managed cleverly enough to strike a little spark of epigram from the flinty dialogue. It flickered and went out. Knowles smiled politely at the abortive attempt; but at her first serious remark he shook his head, as much as to say, "My dear lady, this is a conundrum; I give it up," and finally turned to Katherine on his left. In fact, he monopolised her during the rest of dinner, much to the annoyance of Mr. Dixon Barnett, who spent himself in futile efforts to win back her interest,—his behaviour in its turn rousing the uneasy attention of Mrs. Dixon Barnett. She, again, was so preoccupied in watching the movements of her lord, that she almost forgot the existence of Mr. Flaxman Reed, who sat silent and depressed under her shadow.
Wyndham gave Audrey credit for great perspicacity in pairing these two off together. "Poor fellow," he said to himself; "to preserve him from the temptations of the world and the flesh, she's considerately sent him in with the devil." For his own part, he devoted himself to Audrey and his dinner. From time to time he glanced across the table, and whenever he did so the corners of Knowles's mouth twitched nervously and he began to stroke his upper lip—a provoking habit of his, seeing that he had no moustache to account for it. Evidently there was some secret understanding between the two, and Wyndham was gravely and maliciously amused.