“You don’t want me to ask you about your travels and explorings, do you? It would bore me a great deal to hear them. Sugar?”
“Thanks, no. Not half so much, I’m sure, as it would bore me to tell them. I came to hear all the latest scandal. Won’t you begin before the actors arrive?”
“Miss Burton,” said the man at the door.
“Too late!” ejaculated Lady Wilmot, as she went forward to meet her new guest.
“Ah, how do you do, Philippa, my dear? Did you bring an escort of police?—or is the untutored savage getting used to sandals? My dear, where will your hair stop? You look like Mélisande. Can’t you throw some of it out of the window? Mr. Mayne will run down and climb up. He’s used to athletic exercises. By the way, Mr. Mayne—Miss Burton. Now you can go and talk lions and things. He’s an explorer, you know. Here’s Mr. Nevern. He’ll have to put up with me. How do you do, Mr. Nevern?”
During these somewhat incoherent remarks Miss Burton had adopted the simple expedient of doing nothing, and, as Mayne was constrained to admit, doing it rather well.
She stood with a faint, dreamy smile just touching her lips, and waited till there was an opportunity of offering her hand to Mayne. This she did with a slow movement, according to the state of mind of its recipient, subtly graceful, or somewhat affected. Rather characteristically Mayne inclined to the least flattering of these strictures. He did not like “that kind of thing,” even though in this instance it was the act of a woman by many people considered beautiful.
Philippa Burton’s tall figure was of the sinuous type, and she clothed it in trailing garments, cut on the latest hygienic principle, combining conspicuousness with impracticability. The robe she now wore was of some coarse white material, a little soiled at the hem where it trailed, and a little too low at the neck, where several necklaces of beads were wound about a full white throat. Her hat, of that peculiar make which flies from the head, and is restrained by ribbons tied under the ear, revealed, rather than covered, quantities of dark, rippling hair of the Rossetti texture.
Her dark eyes, full of a cultivated mystery, very effectively lit a pale face, whose excessive spirituality was redeemed by full red lips.
“You are the Mr. Mayne?” she began, with an elusive smile. “I read your travel-book. It is wonderful. A book that sets the blood racing in one’s veins. You are one of the strong men. I worship strength in men.”