General Raoul Delisle had known Colonel de Moidrey; he and the Countess formed the center of the brilliant little assembly where half a dozen officers surrounded Peggy and Warner.
But the effect of Philippa on the Russian Military Observer, General Count Cassilis, was curious to watch.
From the instant he laid eyes on her, he had continued to look at her; and his inspection would have had all the insolence of a stare had he not always averted his gaze when hers moved in his direction.
When he had been named to her, he had bowed suavely, and with characteristic Russian ceremony and empressement; but the instant her name was pronounced the Russian Observer had straightened himself like a steel rod released from a hidden spring, and his fishy blue eyes widened so that his monocle had fallen from its place to swing dangling across the jeweled decorations on his breast.
And now he had managed to approach Philippa and slightly separate her from the company, detaining her in conversation, more suave, more amiably correct than ever.
Already in her inexperience with a world where such men are to be expected, the girl found herself vaguely embarrassed, subtly on the defensive—a defensive against something occult which somehow or other seemed to menace her privacy and seemed to be meddling with the natural reticence with which, instinctively, she protected herself from any explanation of her past life.
Not that Count Cassilis had presumed to ask any direct question; she was not even aware of any hint or innuendo; yet she was constantly finding herself confronted with a slight difficulty in responding to his gay, polite, and apparently impersonal remarks. Somehow, everything he said seemed to involve some reference on her part to a past which now concerned nobody excepting herself and the loyal friends who comprehended it.
And, from the beginning, from the first moment when this man was presented to her, and she had looked up with a smile to acknowledge the introduction, she experienced an indefinite sensation of meeting somebody whom she had seen somewhere years before—years and years ago.
As he conversed with her, standing there by the table with the lighted lamp partly concealed by his gold-slashed shoulder, the vague impression of something familiar but long forgotten came at moments, faded, returned, only to disappear again.
And once, a far, pale flicker of memory played an odd trick on her, for suddenly she seemed to remember a pair of thin, conspicuous ears like his, and lamplight—or perhaps sunlight—shining behind them and turning them a translucent red. It came and vanished like the faint memory of a dream dreamed years and years ago. As she looked at Count Cassilis, the smile died out in her eyes and on her lips, and the slightest feeling of discomfort invaded her.