She interests him; he decides to stay on at Surrenden.
When he sees her at dinner he is still more favorably impressed.
Her figure is superb, and her sleeveless gown shows the beauty of her bust and arms; she has a flat band of diamonds worn between the elbow and the shoulder of the right arm. The effect is singular, but good.
"It is to show that she has the muscle above the elbow," says old Sir Adolphus, who is learned in sculpture and anatomy. "You know, not one woman in ten thousand has it; and for want of it their arms fall in above the elbow. I have heard sculptors say so a hundred times. She has it, and so she wears that flat bracelet to emphasize the fact."
Brandolin feels annoyed. There is no reason in life why he should object to Madame Sabaroff having any number of affectations and vanities, or why he should mind hearing this handsome old viveur discuss them; but he is annoyed by both facts.
There is not a plain woman among the guests of Surrenden: some are even far beyond the average of good looks, and all have that chic which lends in itself a kind of beauty to the woman of the world. But the handsomest of them all, Nina Curzon herself, pales beside the beautiful pallor of the Russian lady, contrasted as it is with the splendor of her jewels, the red rose of her lips, and the darkness of her eyelashes and eyes.
At dinner, Xenia Sabaroff does not speak much: she has a dreamy look, almost a fatigued one.
Brandolin is opposite to her: as there are no ornaments or flowers on the table higher than eight inches, he can contemplate her at his leisure across the field of shed rose-leaves which is between them. Finding that she is so silent, he talks in his best fashion, in his most reckless, antithetical, picturesque manner: he perceives he gains her attention, though he never directly addresses her.
He also makes Mr. Wootton furious. Mr. Wootton has half a dozen good stories untold. His method of getting good stories is ingenious: he procures obscure but clever memoirs, French and English, which are wholly forgotten, alters their most piquant anecdotes a little, and fits them on to living and famous personages; the result is admirable, and has earned him his great reputation as a raconteur of contemporary scandal. He has six delicious things ready now, and he cannot find a moment in which he can lead up to and place any one of them.
"Brandolin is so amusing when he likes," says Lady Arthur Audley, incautiously, to this suppressed and sullen victim.