“Yes, do go; I shan’t tell,” said Mrs. Benedict, smiling approval. “The little rest will do you good, and I know Jack will think well of your change of comrades.”
Thus everything conspired to bring closer around poor Russell the net he had not sought to weave. Sitting back among the cloaks and hats, with the music floating in to them in softened cadence, he could feast his eyes upon the beauty that had ensnared him. Her talk, bright, friendly, unaffected, girlish, was exactly calculated to win him from his habitual attitude of reserve. He found himself pouring out upon her ear the stream of strong original thought and language which had first made Jack Benedict his ardent admirer. She, in turn, felt a sense of pleasure and bedazzlement in this man’s society that she had never known before. All Jack had said of Hubert Russell was more than confirmed by her talk with him; and before the brief period of their isolation was ended, something of the same everyday marvel worked upon him by her was accomplished in her gentle breast by him. A tremor of admiration, of preference for his society, ran through her veins. She asked herself timorously what should she do if she never met him again; why fate had been so long in granting to her this experience of delight!
An invasion of young men (the missing partner, full of apologies for the accident of his detention, and the man to whom the next intermission was promised) broke up their tête-à-tête. Russell hardly believed his good fortune when she said, in a vexed aside:
“There, now, they have spoiled the best of the evening for me. I am sure we shall have no other chance to talk.”
“You are going to-morrow?” he murmured, trying to seem indifferent.
“Yes, at eleven. I am so sorry,” she answered in the same vein of restrained feeling.
“I must see you once more,” he said, briefly—then drew within himself, frightened at his own audacity.
After that he watched her from afar, not being able to bring himself to join the throng of chatterers who surrounded her in the intervals of dancing or at supper time. Once only, Jack, running upon him, paused under the weight of official cares to say, brightly:
“You took to them, then? My people, I mean.”