“When I have teeth out I generally do,” said Valcourt carefully. “They always give you half a guinea extra allowance for gas, so most of the fellows ask to have it.” He touched his waistcoat pocket meditatively as he spoke, and smiled, or rather grinned, again so seraphically that Mrs. Mussard longed to tip him a ten-pound note. She gave her young guest a sumptuous luncheon, and, not without serious misgivings, commanded the butler to produce the exhilarating beverage of champagne.
“A little sweet, isn’t it?” said Valcourt critically.
“I thought that you—that is——” Mrs. Mussard crumpled her delicate eyebrows in embarrassment, and the butler permitted himself the shadow of a smile.
“Ladies like sweet wine,” remarked Valcourt. He refused liqueur with coffee, but considered Mrs. Mussard’s cigarettes “rather mild.”
“I—I don’t usually smoke that brand,” his hostess explained. “I—I ordered them on purpose for——” She broke off, in sheer admiration of Valcourt’s beautiful grin.
The matinée for which she had secured a stage-box did not commence until three. “Time for a little chat in the drawing-room,” she thought, and ran over in her mind a list of the things dear Geraldine would have wished her to say. She bade the boy sit in the opposite angle of her pet sofa, upholstered in shimmering lily-leaf green, billowed with huge puffy pillows of apricot-yellow, covered with cambric and Valenciennes. She thought the harmony well completed by Valcourt’s sleek fair head and inscrutable tourmaline eyes, and wished for the first time that poor dear Mussard had left an heir. Vague as the yearning was, it imparted a misty softness to her brown eyes, and caused the corners of her delicate lips to quiver. She drew a little nearer to Valcourt, and laid her white jeweled hand softly upon the muscular young arm, firm and hard beneath an uncommonly well-cut sleeve.
“My dear Valcourt,” she began.
“Your eyes are brown, aren’t they?” asked Valcourt.
“I believe they are,” murmured Mrs. Mussard. “My dear boy, I trust that——”
Valcourt shut his own sleepy tourmaline eyes and sniffed, a long rapturous sniff. “Mother uses attar of violets. It’s her pet scent. Jolly, but not so nice as yours. What is it?” He sniffed again. “I can’t guess. ’Mph! I give it up. I know!” The sleepy tourmaline eyes opened, large and round and bright, the cherubic-angelic smile suffused his features. “Why, it comes from your hair!”