She did not look in his direction, and he had a few moments to observe her carefully.
The slender girl whom he remembered had grown into a superb woman. Her head was poised upon her shoulders like that of a Greek goddess, and around her white throat gleamed a collar of brilliants. A tightly-fitting black gown made by contrast her bosom and arms dazzling in whiteness. Her hair was rolled into a large round knot at the back of her head, and its coils shone red-brown in the soft glow of the candles. Her face seemed cold and calm to him as he looked at her, a faint, mocking smile played upon her full, red lips, and her delicate eyebrows were slightly raised. All of a sudden she turned toward him, and their eyes met in a flash of recognition. He remembered those eyes well, but here was something in them which was not there when his brain last thrilled with their magnetic glances—a something which he could not understand, but which repelled him. She raised her hand and seemed to beckon to him, and he obeyed her command.
"You remember me, then, Lord Brompton," she said coldly, as she gave him her hand.
"Remember you!" he exclaimed, and was at a loss for words. Featherstone, who had withdrawn a step or two, seemed to see his confusion, and after welcoming his old friend back to England went away.
Mrs. Carey looked up at Geoffrey with a mocking smile, as if deriding his embarrassment. "So we meet again after all these years, Geoffrey?" He looked down at the floor, confused and shame-faced, as he thought of the time when he had gone up to Oxford from her father's house with her image in his heart. She, too, was thinking of those days of fresh spring-time. "He is not much changed," she thought, "save that he looks tired and discouraged; then his eyes were bright, looking, as they were, into a world where everything seemed easy and full of pleasure to him."
"We are both thinking of the old days," she said to him, as she pulled a rose from her belt, and nervously crumpled its petals between her fingers. "Ah, how I wept when you ceased writing to me!"
"I do not imagine that you ever wept any bitter tears on my account," remonstrated Geoffrey. "I was a mere boy then; and a girl of eighteen can hold her own with a man of any age, while a boy of eighteen can no more look after himself in a love affair than a—"
"Boy of any other age," interrupted Mrs. Carey. "Ah, Geoffrey, I did weep then more than you can imagine. But I have always remembered you as a dear boy, who loved me a little and forgot me when he was away. Men are deceivers ever, and I fancy that I am not the last woman whom you have loved a little and forgotten since. But the others are going in to dinner. It is a motley party, is it not? Just fancy Richard Lincoln's being here, and the old Duke, and John Dacre, too. Why is he here? Do you know?"
"I haven't seen him since I first went to Paris," answered Geoffrey, as he offered her his arm.
The pair walked in to dinner in their proper place in the procession.