CHAPTER IX.
"How enchanting!" cried Marcella, as they emerged on the terrace, and river, shore, and sky opened upon them in all the thousand-tinted light and shade of a still and perfect evening. "Oh, how hot we were—and how badly you treat us in those dens!"
Those confident eyes of Wharton's shone as they glanced at her.
She wore a pretty white dress of some cotton stuff—it seemed to him he remembered it of old—and on the waving masses of hair lay a little bunch of black lace that called itself a bonnet, with black strings tied demurely under the chin. The abundance of character and dignity in the beauty which yet to-night was so young and glowing—the rich arresting note of the voice—the inimitable carriage of the head—Wharton realised them all at the moment with peculiar vividness, because he felt them in some sort as additions to his own personal wealth. To-night she was in his power, his possession.
The terrace was full of people, and alive with a Babel of talk. Yet, as he carried his companions forward in search of Mrs. Lane, he saw that Marcella was instantly marked. Every one who passed them, or made way for them, looked and looked again.
The girl, absorbed in her pleasant or agitating impressions, knew nothing of her own effect. She was drinking in the sunset light—the poetic mystery of the river—the lovely line of the bridge—the associations of the place where she stood, of this great building overshadowing her. Every now and then she started in a kind of terror lest some figure in the dusk should be Aldous Raeburn; then when a stranger showed himself she gave herself up again to her young pleasure in the crowd and the spectacle. But Wharton knew that she was observed; Wharton caught the whisper that followed her. His vanity, already so well-fed this evening, took the attention given to her as so much fresh homage to itself; and she had more and more glamour for him in the reflected light of this publicity, this common judgment.
"Ah, here are the Lanes!" he said, detecting at last a short lady in black amid a group of men.
Marcella and Edith were introduced. Then Edith found a friend in a young London member who was to be one of the party, and strolled off with him till dinner should be announced.
"I will just take Miss Boyce to the end of the terrace," said Wharton to
Mr. Lane; "we shan't get anything to eat yet awhile. What a crowd! The
Alresfords not come yet, I see."
Lane shrugged his shoulders as he looked round.