“But your engagement?”
“Of no importance. I can easily go some other night. Old friends.... If you will have me I am entirely at your service.”
He looked into her eyes with his, over which he had not troubled to draw the blinds of conventionality. They underlined and emphasized the spoken words so that no woman could fail to understand. And she felt a pleasing sensation of power as she parried his devotion. She did not acknowledge it to herself, but she was subtly aware that they were both on the brink of deep waters. His eyes had spoken words of love for many weeks. His very naïveté and boyishness had its attraction for her. He was just as easy to move as Gilbert was difficult. She could colour his thoughts, deflect his mind, bring him instantly inside the circle of her mood. He took his colour from her like a chameleon, and she did not stop to consider whether she alone had this power, or if Frank Hamilton were always so influenced by attractive women.
“Very well, then,” she said, holding out her hand, “You are bidden to take dinner at the house of one Major-General Rivington, who served Her Majesty Queen Victoria with great distinction, and is now resting on his laurels in the wilds of West Hampstead. Come for me at half-past seven.”
CHAPTER II
“LIVE! LIVE! LIVE!”
Claudia did not belong to the tribe of unpunctual women who stretch the minutes at their will and snap derisive fingers at Greenwich. The person who was unpunctual in their house was its master. That, however, was not due to carelessness, but to his uncertain calls. Often it was Claudia who, when the motor was at the door, sat down in her cloak and waited for her spouse.
So this evening she was ready in good time. It wanted still a few minutes to the half-hour when she cast a last critical look at herself in the mirror.
She was one of those women whom a décolleté dress shows at their best, and Claudia knew, as she surveyed herself, that the result was good. She was as little conceited as any of her sex—she had too much brain and good looks for that; but she could not fail to see that the gown she was wearing for the first time made her look strikingly handsome in the best and most individual way. It was as though the creator of the gown had loved his task, for the deep orange of the rich yet light-weight fabric, softened with some exquisite pearl-embroidered lace and bordered on the skirt with dark-hued skunk, threw up into relief the darkly-bronze lights in her hair and made the big brown eyes seem softer and deeper than ever. A strange Oriental-looking headpiece studded with topazes and pearls accentuated the foreign note in her appearance, which so impressed strangers that they refused to believe that she was entirely English as she averred and believed. They said the way she moved and wore her dresses was not English, that she could not belong to the nation of women who know how to choose a frock but not how to wear it. As she stood in front of the mirror she was a flat contradiction to the American who said that English men were dressed, but the women only wore frocks.