"I oughtn't to be here, really," he confided. "I haven't the time or energy for this kind of thing, but the Croxton's an old love of mine, I've not missed a Croxton ball since I was at Oxford." He was tempted to describe his first Croxton ball; but it was a long story, and he discovered that he had been monopolizing the conversation. "You're a great dancer, I expect?" he said with the indulgence of early middle age. "I look forward to watching you to-night."
Lady Barbara began to shake her head and then stopped with closed eyes and a bitten lip.
"I'm not going," she answered. "I've had such an awful headache all day."
"I'm so sorry! I don't dance myself, but I hoped you might spare me one or two for sitting out. If you're interested in law—the bar's by no means the dry-as-dust life some people think."
Talking to her was so easy that Jack had half determined to ask if he might have supper with her. Of the rest of the evening he could dispose comfortably enough by gossiping with old Gervaise, who had been in his father's regiment, and the other veterans of the hunt. Lady Pentyre never regarded him as a dancing man in making up her numbers. It would not be half so easy to find common ground with Sally Farwell or Grace Pentyre; without meaning to be unsympathetic, he felt that Lady Barbara might have chosen any other night of the year for her headache.
"It'll be better, when you get there," he prophesied encouragingly and wondered whether she would mistake his convenience for her own triumph. So far he had not looked at her, but he now stole a glance out of the corner of his eye and saw a straight, thin nose, haggard cheeks that had a pathetic fascination for him and a mouth which drooped wistfully; the lips were red, her eyes a velvet black, fringed with long black lashes and shaded with dark rings, changing colour and size like a cat's. The white, hollow cheeks combined with the dark eyes and red lips to suggest ravaging dissipation or ill-health; he would never be surprised to be told that she was consumptive. And he could not understand how any one so thin could be so attractive.
She caught him watching her and forced a smile.
"I've only been doing rather too much lately, I expect," she said.
"That I can well believe. But after dinner—I say, have you had anything to eat?"
"I had some melon.... But I'm not very hungry. If I don't go, don't tell Aunt Kathleen—Lady Knightrider, you know—will you? She gave me this dress specially and she'd be so awfully disappointed."