“Dion,” she said, in the darkness, “I think you are rather a dangerous companion for me.”
“How can I be?”
“I’m not at all a piece of perfection. Take care you don’t teach me to think I am.”
“But you’re the least conceited—”
“Hush, you encourager of egoism!” she interrupted seriously.
“I’m afraid you’ll find a good many more at Mrs. Chetwinde’s.”
Dion thought he had been a true prophet half an hour later when, from a little distance, he watched and listened while Rosamund was singing her first song. Seeing her thus in the midst of a crowd he awakened to the fact that Robin had changed her very much. She still looked splendidly young but she no longer looked like a girl. The married woman and the mother were there quite definitely. Even he fancied that he heard them in her voice, which had gained in some way, perhaps in roundness, in mellowness. This might be the result of study; he was inclined to believe it the result of motherhood. She was wearing ear-rings—tiny, not long drooping things, they were green, small emeralds; and he remembered how he had loved her better when he saw her wearing ear-rings for the first time in Mr. Darlington’s drawing-room. How definite she was in a crowd. Crowds effaced ordinary people, but when Rosamund was surrounded she always seemed to be beautifully emphasized, to be made more perfectly herself. She did not take, she gave, and in giving showed how much she had.
She was giving now as she sang, “Caro mio ben.”
Towards the end of the song, when Dion was deeply in it and in her who sang it, he was disturbed by a woman’s whisper coming from close behind him. He did not catch the beginning of what was communicated, but he did catch the end. It was this: “Over there, the famous Mrs. Clarke.”
But Mrs. Clarke was in Paris. Daventry had told him so. Dion looked quickly about the large and crowded room, but could not see Mrs. Clarke. Then he glanced behind him to see the whisperer, and beheld a hard-faced, middle-aged and very well-known woman—one of those women who, by dint of perpetually “going about,” become at length something less than human. He was quite sure Mrs. Brackenhurst would not make a mistake about anything which happened at a party. She might fail to recognize her husband, if she met him about her house, because he was so seldom there; she would not fail to recognize the heroine of a resounding divorce case. Mrs. Clarke must certainly have returned from Paris and be somewhere in that room, listening to Rosamund and probably watching her. Dion scarcely knew whether this fact made him sorry or glad. He did know, however, that it oddly excited him.