Carey was greeted effusively by his hostess, a tall, bony woman, with a nervous, flustered manner, and was speedily and impressively introduced right and left.
The crowded drawing-room, with its lights and flowers and babel of conversation, struck him as somewhat bewildering. He found it hard to fix his attention upon the lank-haired youth before him who had begged an introduction, apparently for the purpose of anathematizing the prudery of the British public, which by the hand of its publishers persisted in refusing his distinguished, if somewhat erotic poems.
Carey glanced round the room with interest. He had been out of drawing-room life so long that it had almost the glamour of novelty for him. He was pleased with the bright, sheeny folds of the women’s dresses, with the gleam of diamonds on the white neck of a pretty girl who stood near him, talking vivaciously; with the star-like effect of the candles between the flowers about the room.
He vaguely wondered how many times since his absence these same men and women had met and talked, and been bored, and had concealed or revealed the fact, according to their several natures. He felt it was marvellous that they kept up appearances so well. Five years of it! and Heaven knew how many before that. There was a little stir and flutter about the door at the moment, as a fresh arrival was announced.
“There’s Travers—and his wife. Lovely woman, isn’t she?” he heard some one remark at his elbow.
A tall, high-shouldered man, with a narrow, clean-shaven face, was shaking hands with people near the door. Mrs. Travers was talking to her hostess. Carey could not see her face just for a moment, till Mrs. Edgbaston Smith moved aside to greet new-comers.
She came forward then, smiling, and shaking hands. Two or three men hurried to meet her, and she was soon the centre of a little circle.
“She has altered!” was Carey’s first conscious thought, after the momentary shock of surprise. “She is beautiful, but she’s changed!”
She was exquisitely dressed, he noticed, in white, with a great deal of filmy lace about the gown. She moved with the same grace he remembered, and he even recalled the quick turn of her head as she talked. She did not look much older at first sight. It was difficult to tell what constituted the great change in her appearance; he puzzled over it a moment, and thought it lay in the expression of her eyes. He did not know whether he liked the change. Her face was more interesting. “She has lived some of the life she wanted so much, I expect,” he thought as he watched her. Until this evening he had not thought of the girl for years; now almost every word of their five years’ old conversation came back to him. “Bridget Ruan! Bridget Travers now, of course,” he added, correcting himself.
He had no opportunity of speaking to her for some time; the room was very full, and he saw she had not yet recognized him. Once he found himself standing at the back of her chair. A young man with long hair, and very loose-jointed about the knees, was lounging on the corner of a divan next to her. Carey caught snatches of their conversation.