June heat glowed through the huge city; the pavements were hot under the fierce sun; the air felt used up, heavy; the packed streets vibrated under their load of wheeled monsters, of swooping, gliding taxis. Everyone was going somewhere; busy, smiling, full of the business of pleasure. Old faces were lined under powder and face cream; young ones had lost their colour a little.
Perfectly gowned, with hair in the order of the moment, faintly scented, smiling, woman, hawk-like, swooped on her natural prey, man. Soft debutantes, white-robed, hopeful, fluttered as they dreamt of the matches which they might make. Anxious, youthful mothers spent their all, and more, to give their girls a chance. Older girls smiled more confidently, yet were less hopeful of drawing some great prize.
There, walking along quietly in morning coat, a slouching, keen-eyed young fellow; a flutter as he passes.
"See, Audrey! Lord Golderly. Evie, bow; did you not see Lord Golderly?"
Or from more intimate friends: "Sukey! There's Joss. Call him over! He's thinner than ever! Mum! there's Jossy! Ask him to our little dinner—he might come."
The Marquis of Golderly, with eighty thousand a year, with a panelled house in Yorkshire, a castle in Scotland, with Golderly House in Piccadilly—let now to rich Americans—had strolled by. A pleasant-looking, well-made boy, with his mind full of his new polo pony, and not in the least interested in the Ladies Evie and Audrey, or in his cousin Sukey. Some day he must marry, but not yet.
Another flutter: a girl runs laughing to catch her toy pom, showing her lithe, active limbs as she slips along.
"There comes Sir Edward Castleknock," a little elderly man, his income lately depleted by a white marble tombstone to his second wife, but he has no heir; he must marry again, and he is a rich man. The youthful mothers signal to him, stopping him carelessly, calling to their girls as he stops.
"Here's my little Evie, grown up, Sir Edward; you used to give her sugared almonds. Makes one so ancient, doesn't it?"
Evie musters a smile for the memory of sugared almonds. She says something conventional with a show of excellent teeth. Sir Edward is musical. Milady invites him to hear the dear child sing; to lunch on Sunday—one-thirty—the old address.