“Quite true.”
“He has such wonderful eyes, like moss agates, and his profile is like the Hermes of Praxiteles, or would be but for the waxed mustache and crisp, golden beard. And there is a vibrating timbre in his voice that goes to the very heart. One could not but be sorry for him.”
“I am sure you were very sorry indeed. But Pontoise, as one knows of him, would not long be content with that. Your heartfelt pity, and the tip of your little finger to kiss....” Lady Millebrook’s sleepily dark eyes smiled cynical amusement. “Those things are the hors d’œuvres of flirtation. Soup, fish, made-dishes, roast, and sweets invariably succeed, with black coffee and a subsequent indigestion.”
Clarice avoided the glance of this feminine philosopher.
“Pontoise was always respectful,” she said, with a little note of defiance in her voice. “He never forgot what was due to me save once, when——”
“When it was borne in upon him too strongly what he owed to himself. And then he kissed you, and you were furiously angry.”
“Furious!” nodded Clarice, brushing her round chin with the edge of the crimson screen. “I vowed I would never speak to him again.”
“And how long did you keep that oath?” asked Bettine.
“We met at dinner in the evening, and of course one has to be civil. And when I went to bed, and he handed me my candlestick,” said Mrs. Tollebranch—“for gas is only laid as high as the first floor of the castle, and the electric light has never been heard of—he slipped a note into my hand. It implored my pardon, and declared that unless I would meet him in the golf-house on the links next day before lunch, and receive his profound apologies, he would terminate an existence which my well-deserved scorn had rendered insupportable. He spoke of the—the——” Clarice hesitated.
“The kiss,” put in Lady Millebrook, “and——”