"But you were not Mrs. Carey then, and, not being a prophet, I could not very well call you so."
"Do not be flippant. But if we were prophets what a dreadful thing life would be! It did not seem possible seven years ago that Eleanor Leigh would become a professional beauty, a hired guest, who lived upon the royalty from the sale of her photographs."
"You can congratulate yourself that yours is the only 'royalty' left in the country, Eleanor." He lowered his voice as he spoke her name.
"I will not talk about myself," she said, in a cold, hard tone. "That's a man's prerogative. But I wish you, when we are alone, to tell me all about your life. The lines of our lives, which once bade fair to run along together, have diverged; but fate is strong. We are thrown together again. I know not whether it matters to you that we have met again, but it does very much to me. I wish to know what you have been doing all these years. To-morrow, surely, we shall have a chance to see each other, and till then let us change the subject, for if the walls have not ears, Mr. Sydney certainly has, and very large and ugly ones, too, like a lop-eared rabbit's."
Geoffrey looked with a smile at poor Mr. Sydney's villified ears, and said to himself that the unfortunate wit never could live in much comfort upon the royalties from the sale of his picture. Mrs. Carey looked around the table searchingly. Her quick wit was tickled by the curious incongruities of the scene; by Richard Lincoln talking small nothings to the Duchess of Bayswater across the rich American; by the genial and smirking Jawkins, seated between Sir John Dacre and that pink of fashion, Colonel Featherstone; by Lady Carringford, who was between the indifferent Colonel and the Duke; by the three members of the artiste class, Prouty, Diddlej and Sydney, whom Mr. Jawkins had placed together with delicate discrimination. Mrs. Carey gave a little shrug at perceiving that she, too, was put in the same neighborhood. Lord Carringford and the Duchess seemed to be getting along uncommonly well together. Sir John Dacre ignored his dapper neighbor, Jawkins, and was absorbed in conversation with beautiful Mary Lincoln, who blushed whenever she caught her father's eye looking questioningly at her. Mrs. Carey's glance over the table was at first cursory; she had been so much interested in meeting Geoffrey that the tide of old feelings, surging back through her brain, had driven out all thought of the other people, for in the heart of this woman of the world, who had lived in ball-rooms and in the maddest whirl of that most mad and material of all things, modern society, where love is a plaything and an excitement only, there had lingered a fond remembrance of the ardent young lover, whose boyish affection for her, absence had so quickly cooled. Through all his wanderings she had managed to trace him. The world of society is small. She had heard of his affair with Miss Windsor in Paris two years before; so her eyes, after wandering over the table, fixed themselves upon her. With a woman's instinct, Mrs. Carey had known that Geoffrey would not have been so indifferent to her if he had been fancy free; when she first saw him, before dinner, her heart throbbed with passion, and she determined to wind around him again the chain of flowers which he had snapped so easily when the great god of modern love, "Juxtaposition," deserted her. But now she saw that he had long since ceased to care for her. He had called her "Eleanor" once, to be sure; but it was only after she had forced his hand.
She picked up the large bouquet of roses which lay by her plate, and raising them to her face as if to inhale their fragrance, she attentively observed Miss Windsor, for she felt that there must be something between her and Geoffrey; some tie stronger than the memory of a dead flirtation. Her masked battery served her purpose well, for Maggie, presently, after smiling faintly at some remark of Mr. Prouty's, looked quickly over toward Lord Brompton, who was at the time listening attentively to a political conversation between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Windsor. Maggie only looked at him for a moment, but Mrs. Carey saw that she looked at him with that fondness with which a woman gazes at the man she loves when she thinks that she is unobserved. Mrs. Carey put down her bouquet and turned to Geoffrey.
"Miss Windsor is not a bad-looking girl, is she?" she asked.
"You put me in an awkward dilemma, Mrs. Carey," replied Geoffrey, a little nervously, "in the alternative of criticising my hostess unfavorably or praising the looks of one woman to another. Is that quite fair?"
"Her features are not regular, yet she seems attractive in a way," she continued, not waiting for his answer or answering his question. "You knew her before, did you not?"
"Yes, slightly."