“Ah!” she sighed, looking at him in a rapt, absorbed way. “Somehow you put it all in a nutshell. I should simply love to be able to say the true, the right, the inevitable thing. I could almost—perhaps, I ought not to say it—but I could almost worship a clever man.”
Erb, reddening, said that there were precious few of them about.
“Talk to me, please!” she said appealingly. “Button this glove of mine, and then tell me all about yourself. I shall be frightfully interested.”
“You don’t want to hear about me,” said Erb, essaying the task set him.
“If you only knew!” she said.
This was really very gratifying. Erb had wondered whether the evening would interfere for a time with consideration of his great crisis: he soon found that the evening was to put that subject entirely out of his thoughts. This was in itself a relief, for, despite confidence in himself, he felt nervous about the result of the forthcoming meeting; to-night he could dismiss worry and give his mind a holiday. He found that Jessie’s surname was Luker, and the house called her Masters; the tall young woman declared that she positively hated the name of Luker, and confessed to a special admiration for the name of Barnes, strongly contesting Erb’s suggestion that Barnes was a second-class sort of name, and worthy of but little esteem. Near the cottage pianoforte that had been fixed in the corner of the kitchen, a sombre young person in black sat on a chair that had to be improved and made suitable by an enormous dictionary, fetched by the pageboy from upstairs, and, receiving orders to play just what she liked for the first, this lady struck violently into the prelude of a waltz, choosing a square in the pattern of the wall-paper before her at which she could yawn. Couples, standing up, waited impatiently for the real waltz to commence; young women moving a smartly-slippered foot; Louisa formulating her first protest against convention by saying aloud to her partner, a precise footman, “Oh, let me and you make a start!” The others said, “S-s-s-h!” and watched the butler. The butler gave a pull at his yellow waistcoat and advanced solemnly to the housekeeper.
“Mrs. Margetson,” he said, “I’m not so handy on me feet as I used to be, but I trust I may have the honour of opening the dance with you?”
“Mr. Rackham,” replied the housekeeper with a slight bow, “thank you very much for asking, but, as you know, the leastest excitement makes my head a torture. Would you mind,” with a wave of the fan, “asking Mamselle to take my place?”
“I shall have much plaisure,” said the French lady’s maid, promptly. “A deux temps or a trois temps, Meestair R-rackham?”
“Leave it to you, Mamselle,” replied the butler.