Morland looked up and saw the pair on the terrace, midway between the band and the Guignol audience.
“I'm glad she has got somebody to amuse her,” he said, turning away. He was almost grateful to Weever for taking Norma off his hands.
Meanwhile Jimmie was continuing to find life full of agreeable surprises. Lady FitzHubert was not the only lady to whom he was presented as the Mr. Padgate who was painting the princess's portrait. Mrs. Hardacre waived the personal grudge, and flourished him tactfully in the face of the county; and the county accepted him with unquestioning ingenuousness. He was pointed out as a notability, became the well-known portrait-painter, the celebrated artist, the James Padgate, and thus achieved the bubble reputation. A guest who was surreptitiously reporting the garden-party for the local paper took eager notes of the personal appearance of the eminent man, and being a woman of the world, professed familiarity with his works. For the first time in his life he found himself a person of importance. The fact of his easy inclusion in the charmed circle cast a glamour over the crudities of the gala costume designed and furbished up with so much anxious thought by Aline, and people (who are kindly as a rule when their attention is diverted from the trivial) looked only at his face and were attracted to the man himself. Only Lady FitzHubert, who had private reasons for frigidity, treated him in an unbecoming manner. Other fair ladies smiled sweetly upon him, and spread abroad tales of his niceness, and thus helped in the launching of him as a fashionable portrait-painter upon the gay world.
He had a brief interlude of talk with Norma by the refreshment-table.
“I hope you are not being too much bored by all this,” she said in her society manner.
“Bored!” he cried. “It's delightful.”
“What about the hollow world where imagination doth not corrupt and enthusiasms do not break in and steal?”
“It's a phantom dust-heap for inept epigrams. I don't believe it exists.”
“You mustn't preach a gospel one day and give it the lie the next,” she said, half seriously; “for then I won't know what to believe. You don't seem to realise your responsibilities.”
He echoed the last word in some surprise. Norma broke into a little nervous laugh.