Not until the latter was almost touching her hostess did she lift her eyes from the ground. Then she stood still, looked up calmly, and said, in a drawling and infantine voice:
“I had to see my trunks unpacked, but I was bound to be on time. I wouldn’t have come down to-day for any soul in the world but you. I would not.”
It was a pretty speaking voice, clear and youthful, with a choir-boyish sound in it, and remarkably free from nasal twang, but it was not a lady’s voice. It sounded like the frontispiece of a summer number become articulate.
Mrs. Wolfstein began to introduce Miss Schley to her guests, none of whom, it seemed, knew her. She bowed to each of them, still with the vestal virgin air, and said, “Glad to know you!” to each in turn without looking at anyone. Then Mrs. Wolfstein led the way into the restaurant.
Everyone looked at the party of women as they came in and ranged themselves round a table in the middle of the big room. Lady Cardington sat on one side of Mrs. Wolfstein and Lady Holme on the other, between her and Mrs. Trent. Miss Schley was exactly opposite. She kept her eyes eternally cast down like a nun at Benediction. All the quite young men who could see her were looking at her with keen interest, and two or three of them—probably up from Sandhurst—had already assumed expressions calculated to alarm modesty. Others looked mournfully fatuous, as if suddenly a prey to lasting and romantic grief. The older men were more impartial in their observation of Mrs. Wolfstein’s guests. And all the women, without exception, fixed their eyes upon Lady Holme’s hat.
Lady Cardington, who seemed oppressed by grief, said to Mrs. Wolfstein:
“Did you see that article in the Daily Mail this morning?”
“Which one?”
“On the suggestion to found a school in which the only thing to be taught would be happiness.”
“Who’s going to be the teacher?”