"Poor Peter," she said, "he looks so white and wretched and I am sure the thought of his ruined future is keeping your father back."
Ferlie said she had no heart for dancing. She, also, was looking white but as nothing had ruined her career it could only be caused by their common anxiety for Mr. Carmichael. As a matter of fact, when one has seen as little of one's father as had Ferlie it was not him one missed so much as his Presence and that which he stood for in a household.
There is no law that children and parents should be one flesh and it was with her mother Ferlie had corresponded; not with the man whose ideas on children's upbringing dovetailed with Mary's thread-bare creed concerning "Her that overcometh the pudding," with the added clause that should life not provide sufficient obstacles upon which to test the will they must be artificially fashioned.
In the end Ferlie went to Lady Cardew's dance, clad in virgin white, reminiscent of her confirmation, since Mrs. Carmichael's mind was nothing if not unoriginal and Ferlie did not really care.
White was not exactly the fashion for débutantes that Season, so it was unavoidable that she should look like a snowdrop which had somehow mistaken the time of year and arrived among a riot of summer flowers.
So, doubtless, would the young man have put it, lounging in rather a tired fashion in the vicinity of the Refreshments (liquid), had he possessed poetical leanings. As it was, conscious of the quickening of a somewhat jaded appetite for débutantes, he decided that he would dance this evening, after all.
Lady Cardew was greatly relieved by this decision. Girls were plentiful, men few; and she always prided herself upon eschewing that modern form of invitation which requests a girl to bring her "dancing-partner."
Ferlie was more fortunate than many in the possession of a brother whose good nature could usually be relied upon, although he did not describe himself as a dancing-man. But Peter had not been able to come to-night.
Lord Clifford Greville-Mainwaring, aged twenty-six, had lately, by an unforeseen railway accident, succeeded to his uncle's estate. For a wonder, not only were these considerable, but the means to maintain them were adequate. He was the Catch of the Season and perfectly aware of that interesting truth. Mammas had a furtive eye upon him; daughters a calculating one, as they weighed his tall but rather meagre proportions against the knowledge that Jack here and Eric there, if infinitely better-looking, were obliged to admit that their chins were their fortunes.
Dancers are born, not made. Ferlie was a Lucky One. Clifford Greville-Mainwaring began to enjoy her ingenuous enjoyment. She acknowledged very recent escape from school but wore a mystifyingly philosophical air which intrigued him. He had been fully prepared to initiate her into the mysteries of a first flirtation; always excepting, he supposed, the school music or drawing-master of ascetic or bulbous personal appearance.