'What did you really mean by "worldliness" and the "world" in your lecture last Sunday?' she asked him suddenly, with a little accent of scorn. 'I thought your diatribes absurd. What you religious people call the "world" is really only the average opinion of sensible people which neither you nor your kind could do without for a day.'
He smiled, half amused by her provocative tone, and defended himself not very seriously. But she threw all her strength into the argument, and he forgot that he had meant to go at once. When she chose she could talk admirably, and she chose now. She had the most aggressive ways of attacking, and then, in the same breath, the most subtle and softening ways of yielding and, as it were, of asking pardon. Directly her antagonist turned upon her he found himself disarmed he knew not how. The disputant disappeared, and he felt the woman, restless, melancholy, sympathetic, hungry for friendship and esteem, yet too proud to make any direct bid for either. It was impossible not to be interested and touched.
Such at least was the woman whom Robert Elsmere felt. Whether in his hours of intimacy with her, twelve months before, young Alfred Evershed had received the same impression may be doubted. In all things Eugénie de Netteville was an artist.
Suddenly the curtain dividing them from the larger drawing-room was drawn back, and Sir John Headlam stood in the doorway. He had the glittering amused eyes of a malicious child as he looked at them.
'Very sorry, madame,' he began in his high cracked voice, 'but Wharncliffe and I are off to the New Club to see Desforêts. They have got her there to-night.'
'Go,' she said, waving her hand to him, 'I don't envy you. She is not what she was.'
'No, there is only one person,' he said, bowing with grotesque little airs of gallantry, 'for whom time stands still.'
Madame de Netteville looked at him with smiling half-contemptuous serenity. He bowed again, this time with ironical emphasis, and disappeared.
'Perhaps I had better go back and send them off,' she said, rising. 'But you and I have not had our talk out yet.'
She led the way into the drawing-room. Lady Aubrey was lying back on the velvet sofa, a little green paroquet that was accustomed to wander tamely about the room perching on her hand. She was holding the field against Lord Rupert and Mr. Addlestone in a three-cornered duel of wits, while M. de Quérouelle sat by, his plump hands on his knees, applauding.