"As like as we can make it," she whispered tremulously; and I was conscious of a new fascination. Though I have never seen a woman or man more perfectly put together, the head on the neck, the neck on the shoulders, the hands on the wrists or the wrists on the arms, there was something skin-deep and mechanical in her beauty—not necessarily reaching to the heart—until that moment.
The softness passed as suddenly as it had come, and she awoke to a sense of her duties as hostess.
"I want to introduce you to my mother, Lady Dainton," she told me.
Under cover of the presentation she escaped and in another moment was darting with the movement of a dragon-fly in search of a partner for the savage Hawaiian dance which her husband had begun to play. This in turn she abandoned to give extravagant welcome to Sir Adolphus Erskine and to thank him for a string of pearls which she held out jubilantly for his admiring inspection.
My next half-hour was more varied and less pleasant. I was introduced to Lady Dainton, who claimed acquaintance with my brother and insisted that we had met at one of Aylmer Lancing's parties at Ripley Court; I was introduced to her daughter-in-law, who had lately lost her husband and now engaged me in a sullen debate on compulsory service with a view, so far as I could follow the poor creature's distraught reasoning, to securing that as many other women as possible should lose their husbands. I exchanged a few words with Roger Dainton about the state of parties in the House and, as I fancied that I had exhausted the family, found myself confronted once more by Lady Dainton, who led me into a corner, enquired how long I had known O'Rane and begged me to use whatever influence I possessed to bring this folly to an end. Since my first sight of her I had watched a storm-cloud of disapproval banking up, but I could not imagine why its force should be expended on me.
"I'm not narrow-minded, don't you know?" she informed me with majestic uncontradictability, "but this is the first time I've seen Sonia since she was married, and this—this bear-garden is what I find."
There was no disputing the definition, but its application was limited, for she flung out her arm, until I feared it would leave its socket, in the direction of an arm-chair where Beresford, shabbier than ever by contrast with the rather rich clothes around him, was holding forth with combative resonance on the hypocrisy of our fighting for the free development of the smaller nationalities while we held our Indian Empire in unrepresentative thraldom.
"It's not what Sonia's accustomed to, it's not what she has a right to expect!" exclaimed Lady Dainton with rising indignation. "That—that creature has been mocking the people who've gone out and given their lives for their country, when half of us in the room are in mourning. As for the woman——"
"I really don't feel I can interfere," I interrupted diffidently.
She sighed with an attempt at resignation.