Romayne and Stella passed through the card-room and the chess-room, turned into a corridor, and entered the conservatory.
For the first time the place was a solitude. The air of a newly-invented dance, faintly audible through the open windows of the ballroom above, had proved an irresistible temptation. Those who knew the dance were eager to exhibit themselves. Those who had only heard of it were equally anxious to look on and learn. Even toward the latter end of the nineteenth century the youths and maidens of Society can still be in earnest—when the object in view is a new dance.
What would Major Hynd have said if he had seen Romayne turn into one of the recesses of the conservatory, in which there was a seat which just held two? But the Major had forgotten his years and his family, and he too was one of the spectators in the ballroom.
“I wonder,” said Stella, “whether you know how I feel those kind words of yours when you spoke of my mother. Shall I tell you?”
She put her arm round his neck and kissed him. He was a man new to love, in the nobler sense of the word. The exquisite softness in the touch of her lips, the delicious fragrance of her breath, intoxicated him. Again and again he returned the kiss. She drew back; she recovered her self-possession with a suddenness and a certainty incomprehensible to a man. From the depths of tenderness she passed to the shallows of frivolity. In her own defense she was almost as superficial as her mother, in less than a moment.
“What would Mr. Penrose say if he saw you?” she whispered.
“Why do you speak of Penrose? Have you seen him to-night?”
“Yes—looking sadly out of his element, poor man. I did my best to set him at his ease—because I know you like him.”
“Dear Stella!”
“No, not again! I am speaking seriously now. Mr. Penrose looked at me with a strange kind of interest—I can’t describe it. Have you taken him into our confidence?”