“Then you do know him?” Bexley interpolated quickly.
“I just know him, that is all,” she answered evenly. “I do not suppose, however, that he remembers me. Our introduction took place many years ago.”
The performers were taking their places for the trio with which the concert opened. Mrs. Neville Williams bowed and swept away. She carried herself with more hauteur than usual, and there was a bright spot, which was not rouge, on either of her cheeks.
Lord Bexley returned to his seat, and affected not to notice his sister’s expression of disapproval. He passed the programme to Gladys Milnes, and then leant back and appeared absorbed in the music. The trio was one composed by Beethoven for piano, violin, and ’cello, all three performers being skilled executants. When the second movement came to a close, Lady Marjorie spoke.
“You seem to have found plenty to say to that woman,” she remarked caustically. “I should advise you to be careful, Bexley, or you will find yourself the next on her list.”
Bexley shrugged his shoulders. When one lady designates another fair dame as “that woman,” it is an infallible sign that there is no love lost between the two.
“I presume you mean Mrs. Neville Williams,” he answered sotto voce. “I am sure I don’t know why you are so dead against her. It is not like you to be uncharitable, Marjorie.”
“I remember Dr. Williams, and I remember the poor infatuated Duke of Wallingcourt,” she returned in a whisper. “They were good men in their way, and she ruined them both. I don’t like to see good men ruined, therefore I am uncharitable.”
The musicians struck up the third movement of the trio. Bexley was silent, and his sister gave her attention again to the music.
Gladys Milnes, who sat the other side of Lady Marjorie, also listened attentively, her face aglow with interest and excitement. She might have been what her aunt had termed her, a gauche little country wench, but she was very charming for all that. There was no deception about her wavy golden hair and peach-like complexion; they were the gifts of Nature—which her aunt’s were not. And if she were not a fashionable young lady with the fashionable affectation of ennui, at least she was genuinely healthy in body, mind, and soul—which, too, her aunt was not. It was her first visit to the metropolis, and she had come for the sole purpose of attending this concert. She was greatly impressed by all that she saw; the brilliancy of the audience almost took her breath away. Never before had she seen such a galaxy of fair women, such a profusion of beautiful dresses and magnificent jewels. She began to wonder if this were what her father meant, when from the pulpit he denounced the “pomps and vanity of this wicked world;” for the elegant “creations” and “confections” represented an amount of money which, it seemed to her, might have been devoted to a much more useful purpose than the display of dress. She enjoyed watching them, nevertheless, and was keenly observant of all that went on around her.