“Yes,” said Lady Joan, looking at him through narrowed lids, “Mr. Temple Barholm ought to tell us about it.”
She wanted to hear what he would say, to see how he would try to get out of the difficulty or flounder staggeringly through it. Her mother knew in an instant that her own speech had been a stupid blunder. She had put the man into exactly the position Joan would enjoy seeing him in. But he wasn’t in a position, it appeared.
“What is the season, anyhow?” he said. “You’ve got one on me when you talk about seasons.”
“In London,” Miss Alicia explained courageously, “it is the time when her Majesty is at Buckingham Palace, and when the drawing-rooms are held, and Parliament sits, and people come up to town and give balls.”
“I guess they have it in the winter in New York, then, if that’s it,” he said. “There’s no Buckingham Palace there, and no drawing-rooms, and Congress sits in Washington. But New York takes it out in suppers at Sherry’s and Delmonico’s and theaters and receptions. Miss Alicia knows how I used to go to them when I was a little fellow, don’t you, Miss Alicia?” he added, smiling at her across the table.
“You have told me,” she answered.
“I used to stand outside in the snow and look in through the windows at the people having a good time,” he said. “Us kids that were selling newspapers used to try to fill ourselves up with choosing whose plate we’d take if we could get at them. We were so all-fired hungry!”
“How pathetic!” exclaimed Lady Mallowe. “And how interesting, now that it is all over!”
She knew that her manner was gushing, and Joan’s side glance of subtle appreciation of the fact exasperated her almost beyond endurance. But she had been forced to hold her ground before in places she detested or where she was not wanted, and she must hold it again until she had found out the worst or the best. And, great Heaven! how Joan was conducting herself, with that slow, quiet insultingness of tone and look, the wicked, silent insolence of bearing which no man was able to stand, however admiringly he began! The Duke of Merthshire had turned his back upon it even after all the world had known his intentions, and she herself had been convinced that he could not possibly retreat. She had worked desperately that season. And never had Joan been so superb; her beauty at its most brilliant height. The match would have been magnificent; but he could not stand her, and would not. Why, indeed, should any man?
And there were no dukes on the horizon. Merthshire had married almost at once, and all the others were too young or had wives already. If this man would take her, she might feel herself lucky. Temple Barholm and seventy thousand a year were not to be trifled with by a girl who had made herself unpopular and who was twenty-six. And for her own luck the moment had come just before it was too late—a second marriage, wealth, the end of the hideous struggle. Joan was the obstacle in her path, and she must be forced out of it. She glanced quickly at Tembarom. He was trying to talk to Joan now. He was trying to please her. She evidently had a fascination for him. It struck her that he could not take his eyes away. That was because he had never before been on speaking terms with a woman of beauty and rank.