Jean lifted her chin, with the slightly obstinate expression in which she took refuge when her will was questioned.
“Oh-h! Well, you know best—or at least, you imagine you do. I should have thought, however, being of a simple and credulous nature, that you were enjoying yourself excessively when you walked through that conservatory last night. If you wished to hide your head at that moment you were a remarkably modest ostrich, for it looked most animated and attractive. Who was your partner, by the way? He looked quite nice.”
“Quite nice!” Vanna lifted her coffee-cup to hide a twitching lip. Behold the historic moment, and the heroine’s romantic impression of her future spouse. “I must remember this,” was the mental resolve, as she answered tranquilly:
“He was more than nice, he was a delightful man. I was not introduced to him until after twelve o’clock, but our talk together was the best part of the evening. His name is Gloucester.”
Jean dropped her fork with a little clatter of surprise.
“Gloucester? Not Robert Gloucester? Surely not! He could not possibly have been there.”
“He was, though. Very much there, for he is staying in the house. He naïvely observed that he had intended to go to bed, but as the ‘confounded noise’ had kept him awake, he came downstairs in desperation, and Miss Morton introduced him to me. You did not look as if you recognised each other.”
“We didn’t! I have never seen him before, but I have heard—oh, my dear, libraries about him! He is the Mortons’ theme. We all have themes, on which we fall back on every possible pause of the conversation. My theme, poor butterfly, is fun and clothes; yours, my angel, has been the same, plus a tinge of duty and maiden aunt; the Mortons’ is Robert Gloucester, his words, deeds, thoughts, looks, ideas. He’s been abroad for years and years, chiefly occupied in losing his money, so far as I can understand. He seems to have a specialty for losing money, but their infatuation is such that it is counted to him as an added charm. The boring times I have had listening to prosy accounts of his trials and adventures, when I have wanted to discuss a hat! And then at last he was coming home, the ball was arranged so that he should be there, I expected him to dance half the night with me: it was the least he could do, considering how I had suffered for him; and behold he hides upstairs, and creeps down to sit on balconies with another girl! Wretch! Why on earth could they not have introduced him to me, instead of to you?”
“You were not sitting by your lone, a dejected wallflower, while your partners gorged in the supper-room. I was. We took pity on one another, and determined to talk, not dance.”
“And pray, what did you talk about?”