Until I had turned to the fire I had not looked at the third lady who had come into the room. She was sitting languidly in an arm-chair by the fire, with her eyes fixed on the door, as if she were looking anxiously for some one to enter. She was decidedly advanced in middle age, yet she was dressed like a girl of seventeen: in a low, white evening dress, and a most elaborate gold chain and locket round her neck. She looked dissatisfied and restless, as if she was always striving to reach some object which was eluding her grasp. She took no particular interest in the general conversation which was going on, but seemed either lost in thought, or not thinking at all.
Lady Eldridge was giving an account of Eastern life, which she described as the most delightful life on earth. I found she had lived many years abroad, and was going to Constantinople the following spring. She could not settle in England more than a year at a time, she said.
"Those miserable skies; those depressing fogs; those dreadful rainy days, enough to make any one commit suicide who has lived in the East, my dear." And Lady Eldridge fanned herself again at the bare recollection of it.
She kept up a continual run of conversation for about half an hour; but she gave me the idea of being a woman who had hardly opened a book in the whole course of her life, and who was thoroughly ignorant of everything except the worldly ways of the worldly world—in which she seemed to be anything but ignorant.
But her chattering was brought to a close by a rap at the door, and the announcement that the gentlemen had arrived in the drawing-room.
"Those tiresome men!" said Lady Eldridge. "As if they could not amuse themselves for half an hour without sending for us. Well, Alicia, I suppose we must obey the lords of creation and go downstairs. Good-night, Evelyn, my dear."
And, without taking the slightest notice of me, Lady Eldridge sailed out of the room.
The other two ladies said good-night to both of us and followed in her train, and Evelyn and I were left alone.
"Well, what do you think of them?" she said, as soon as the door was shut. "Bring your chair close to the fire and tell me."
"I think that the lady who sat near me has one of the sweetest faces that I ever saw," I said. "I could quite believe in any one loving her at first sight."