“I know you by your eyes,” he said. “Eyes like the sea——”
Now, Lady Scilly’s eyes are quite common, it is only the work round them that makes them tell, and that would be hidden by the mask. One saw that George was talking without thinking.
“Eyes without their context mean nothing!” she said, and then I knew the woman was Christina, for that was the very thing she had once said to Ariadne to tease her. She evidently thinks it good enough to say twice.
“Come!” she said to George. “Speak to me, say anything to me that the hour and the mood permit. I want to hear how a poet makes love!”
“Madame!” said George, bowing. I think he was a little shocked, but after all, if he will give a masked ball, what can he expect? Only I had no idea that Christina could have done it so well!
“Come,” she said again, tapping her foot to show that she had grown impatient. “Come, a madrigal—a ballade, in any kind of china!”
I fancy it was then that George began to suspect that it wasn’t Lady Scilly. She couldn’t have managed that about ballads and lyrics.
He asked her if she would lift up the lace of her mask a little—just a little.
“No, no, I dare not!” she cried out. “There is a hobgoblin called Ben in the room—a sort of lubber fiend who loves to play pranks on people. Why on earth don’t you send that boy to school?”
I could not help giggling. George looked cross, for this was personal, and he took the first chance of leaving the mask’s side. There wasn’t a buzz of talk in the room, no, not at all, for everybody was trying so hard to say something clever and appropriate, that they mostly didn’t say anything, but mooned about, trying to look as if they were enjoying themselves hugely, and secretly bored to death all the time. The only time people are really gay, I observe, is at a funeral, or at Every man, or somewhere where they particularly shouldn’t be jolly.