"With all my heart! I am tired of his hanging about me, however. Now go away: at the dance to-night I will talk to you all you wish."
There were plenty of beautiful girls at the picnic, and not a few of them sat outside the circle quite neglected or wandered away like school-girls in couples, picking ferns and gathering pale wood-blossoms; but since I could not speak to Georgina at my ease, there seemed to me neither meaning nor occupation for the slowly-passing hours. I have sometimes wondered how those women feel to whom society brings no homage, no real social intercourse, who sit outside the groups formed around their more brilliant sisters and behold their easy triumphs. They seem patient and good-natured, but must they not wonder in their hearts why one woman's face and figure are a magnet compelling every man to come within the circle of her attraction, while others, not less fair and sweet, seem depolarized?
Georgy had many successful days, and this was but one of them. She understood allurement now not as an accident, but as a science, and she practised it cleverly. She had already heard bold language from the count, so held him in check as he sat beside her, giving him at times, however, "a side glance and look down," and to his trained habits of observation showed constantly that she was perfectly aware of his presence even if she seemed to ignore him. She was openly flirting with Frank Woolsey (a cousin of mine), but since she knew him for a veteran whose admiration only counted to lookers-on, she consoled herself by other little diversions, and scarcely a man there but felt his pulses tingle as she sent him a bright word or a careless smile.
Thorpe was there, but dull, moody, distrait, and he joined me and poured into my ears his disgust at this form of entertainment. He had eaten ants in his salad, he affirmed, his wine was corked, his pâté spoiled.
"What are we here for?" he asked. "I see no reason in it. I suppose Miss Lenox is enjoying herself, and she thinks the men about her are in a seventh heaven. What do even the cleverest women know about the men they meet? Woolsey hates her like poison; the count is on the lookout for a belle héritière and is yawning over his loss of time; and I doubt if one of that group except Talbot would marry her. I don't think many of us are pleased with that sort of thing. We don't want too fierce a light to beat about the woman we are dreaming of. She has no love or respect for sweetness and womanly virtue for their own sake—no faith in their value to her, further than that the semblance of them may attract admirers."
"You're out of humor, Thorpe," said I: "don't vent it on her."
"I am out of humor," he exclaimed, "devilishly out of humor! For God's sake, Randolph, tell me if you think I have any chance with Miss Floyd."
"Look here, Thorpe," I returned under my breath: "I have no business to make any suppositions concerning that young lady, but I will say just this much. Do you see that bird in the air hovering above that oak tree?"
He followed my look upward toward the unfathomable blue. "I do," he returned.
"I think there is just as much chance of that bird's coming down at your call and nestling in your bosom as there is of your winning the young lady you allude to."