"Going to the Bellews? Lord! I'm weary of cream pies done up in colours." Jimmie waved a sweet away. "Going, Mrs Carteret?"
"Bertie has to go home." Esmé had eaten nothing; she was feeling sick and tired. "He doesn't like my going there."
"To Thames Cottage? Oh, how I'd love to go," Sybil Chauntsey broke in. "They have such fun there."
Her peach bloom deepened; the beauty of youth, which is as no other beauty, sparkled in her deep grey eyes.
The big dark man looked at her, his own eyes taking fire. These men delight in rosebuds, find an unflagging zest in seeing the tender petals unfold to their hot admiration.
"Easily managed," he said. "If Madame the mother permits."
Captain Knox, a mere no one, son of a hunting Irishman, flushed.
"It's not a nice house," he said. "I've heard of it. Don't go, Miss Chauntsey."
"Lila Navotsky will be there"—Jimmie turned to the girl, carelessly ignoring the man—"she'll dance. It will be rather a bright party. Prince Fritz of Grosse Holbein is going, Lady Deverelle, and Loftus Laking, the actor. We'll have a moonlight dance, all costumes home made."
Fresh from the country, doing her first season, the great names dazzled the child. Mother's friends were so dull; the peach-bloom flush deepened, the sweet eyes flashed for Jimmie, who had watched so many flushes, seen so many bright eyes flash into his. Sybil was very pretty, soft and fresh as fruit just ripe; sun-kissed, unpowdered, roundly contoured.