When he saw her discomfort, boylike, he burst into a shout of laughter.
“Oh, I’ve made you blush.”
His blue eyes sparkled, and he was delighted with his little wickedness. He did not know that afterwards, in her room, Bella, the kisses still burning on her hands, wept bitterly as though her heart would break.
IV
When Miss Ley entered her drawing-room she found the punctual Dean already dressed for dinner, very distinguished in silk stockings and buckled shoes, and presently Bella appeared, attired with sombre magnificence in black satin.
“I went to Holywell Street this morning to look round the book-shops,” said the Dean, “but Holywell Street is pulled down. London isn’t what it was, Polly. Each time I come I find old buildings gone and old friends scattered.”
With melancholy he thought of the pleasant hours he had spent fingering second-hand books, and the scent of musty volumes rose to his nostrils. The new shops to which the Jewish vendors had removed no longer had the old dusty nonchalance, the shelves were too spick and span, the idle lounger apparently less welcome.
Mrs. Barlow-Bassett and her son were announced. She was a tall woman of handsome presence, with fine eyes and a confident step; her gray hair, abundant and curling, recalled in its elaborate arrangement the fashion of the eighteenth century, and her manner of dress, suggested by the modes of that time, gave her somewhat the look of a sitter for Sir Joshua Reynolds. Her movements were characterized by a kind of obstinate decision, and she bore herself with the fine uprightness of a woman bred when deportment was still a part of maidenly education. She was immensely proud of her son, a tall strapping fellow of two-and-twenty, with black hair no less fine than his mother’s, and with singularly beautiful features. Big-boned but unmuscular, very dark, his large brown eyes, straight nose and olive skin, his full sensual mouth, made him a person of striking appearance; and of this he was by no means unconscious. He was a good-humoured, lazy creature, languid as an Oriental houri, unscrupulous, untruthful, whom his mother by an exacting adoration had forced into insincerity. Left a widow of means, Mrs. Barlow-Bassett had devoted her life to the upbringing of this only son, and was pleased to think that hitherto she had kept him successfully from all knowledge of evil. She meant him to and in her a friend and confidant as well as a mother, and boasted that from her he had never kept a single action nor a single thought.
“I want to talk to Mr. Kent this evening, Mary,” she said. “He’s a barrister, isn’t he? And we’ve just made up our minds that Reggie had better go to the Bar.”
Reggie, who, notwithstanding the attraction of a splendid uniform, had no inclination for the restraints of a military career, and disdained the commercial walk in which his father had earned a handsome fortune, was quite content to put up with the more gentlemanly side of the law. He knew vaguely that a vast number of dinners must be eaten, a prospect to which he looked forward with equanimity; and afterwards saw himself, becomingly attired in wig and gown, haranguing juries to the admiration of the world in general.