Every one is laughing and talking; Usk is drinking a glass of kümmel, and Brandolin is playing with the dog; conversing with Nina Curzon and the mistress of the house, and standing in front of them, is a tall fair man irreproachable in tenue and extremely distinguished in appearance. He is Lord Gervase. His back is towards the door, and he does not see or hear her enter, but as the Babe rushes towards her, toppling over a stool and treading mercilessly on the trains of tea-gowns in the wind of his going, the noise made by the child makes him turn his head, and an expression of recognition mingled with amazement passes over his usually impassive features.
"Is that not Princess Sabaroff?" he asks of his hostess, with a certain breathless astonishment betrayed in his voice.
Lady Usk assents. "One of my dearest friends," she adds. "I think you don't know her? I will present you in a moment. She is as clever as she is beautiful. The children adore her. Look at Babe."
The Babe has dragged his princess to a couch and climbed up on it himself, kneeling half on her lap and half off it, with no respect for the maize satin, whilst his impatient little feet beat the devil's tatoo among the point d'Alençon.
"My dear Babe, do not be such a monopolist," says Brandolin, as he approaches with a cup of tea and a wafer of caviare bread-and-butter. "Your shoes have seventeenth-century buckles, it is true, yet still they are scarcely bibelots to be wrapped up in a lady's dress."
The Babe grins saucily, tossing his hair out of his eyes; but, with unwonted obedience, he disentangles his feet with some care out of the lace.
Xenia Sabaroff does not take as much notice of him as usual. She is reserved and preoccupied. Brandolin, like the child, fails in awakening her interest or attention. She has seated herself almost with her back to where Gervase is standing, but every now and then she looks half round, as by an irresistible unconscious impulse of curiosity.
Brandolin notes the gesture, as her actions have an interest for him which grows daily in its fascination. "There is Dorothy Usk's Ph[oe]nix," he says to her, in a low tone, when the Babe has scampered off after bon-bons: he indicates Gervase with a glance. Her eyebrows contract slightly, as in some displeasure or constraint.
"Lady Usk is very soon satisfied," she replies, coldly. "Her own amiability makes her see perfection everywhere."
"It is a quality we cannot value too highly in so imperfect a world. It is better than seeing everything en noir, surely?" says Brandolin. "If we make people what we think them, as optimists say, it is best to be optimistic."