They all rose as their hostess came in.
'My dear' said Lady Aubrey, 'it is disgracefully early, but my country before pleasure. It is the Foreign Office to-night, and since James took office I can't with decency absent myself. I had rather be a scullerymaid than a minister's wife. Lord Rupert, I will take you on if you want a lift.'
She touched Madame de Netteville's cheek with her lips, nodding to the other men present, and went out, her fair stag-like head well in the air, 'chaffing' Lord Rupert, who obediently followed her, performing marvellous feats of agility in his desire to keep out of the way of the superb train sweeping behind her. It always seemed as if Lady Aubrey could have had no childhood, as if she must always have had just that voice and those eyes. Tears she could never have shed, not even as a baby over a broken toy. Besides, at no period of her life could she have looked upon a lost possession as anything else than the opportunity for a new one.
The other men took their departure for one reason or another. It was not late, but London was in full swing, and M. de Quérouelle talked with gusto of four 'At homes' still to be grappled with.
As she dismissed Mr. Wharncliffe, Robert too held out his hand.
'No,' she said, with a quick impetuousness, 'no: I want my talk out. It is barely half-past ten, and neither of us wants to be racing about London to-night.'
Elsmere had always a certain lack of social decision, and he lingered rather reluctantly—for another ten minutes, as he supposed.
She threw herself into a low chair. The windows were open to the back of the house, and the roar of Piccadilly and Sloane Street came borne in upon the warm night air. Her superb dark head stood out against a stand of yellow lilies close behind her, and the little paroquet, bright with all the colours of the tropics, perched now on her knee, now on the back of her chair, touched every now and then by quick unsteady fingers.
Then an incident followed which Elsmere remembered to his dying day with shame and humiliation.
In ten minutes from the time of their being left alone, a woman who was five years his senior had made him what was practically a confession of love—had given him to understand that she knew what were the relations between himself and his wife—and had implored him with the quick breath of an indescribable excitement to see what a woman's sympathy and a woman's unique devotion could do for the causes he had at heart.