“I had n't time,” said Morland. “I was fearfully busy to-day.”
Norma did not reply. She looked over the heads of the crowd in front of her towards the music-room whence came the full notes of the singer. Then she said to him with a little shiver:
“I am glad you are a rich man, Morland.”
“So am I. Otherwise I should not have got you.”
“That's true enough,” she said. “I pretend to scoff at all this, but I could n't live without it.”
“It has its points,” he assented, turning and regarding the brilliant scene.
Norma turned with him. She was glad it was her birthright and her marriage-right. The vast state ballroom, lit as with full daylight by rows of electric lamps cunningly hidden behind the cornices and the ground-glass panels of the ceiling, stately with its Corinthian pilasters and classic frieze, its walls adorned with priceless pictures, notably four full-length cavaliers of Vandyck, smiling down in their high-bred way upon this assembly of their descendants, its atmosphere glittering with jewels, radiant with colour, contained all the magnificence, all the aristocracy, all the ambitions, all the ideals that she had been trained to worship, to set before her as the lodestars of her life's destiny. Here and there from amid the indistinguishable mass of diamonds, the white flesh of women's shoulders, the black and white chequer and brilliant uniforms of men, flashed out the familiar features of some possessor of an historic name, some woman of world-famed beauty, some great personage whose name was on the lips of Europe. There, by the wall, lonely for the moment, stood the Chinese Ambassador, in loose maroon silk, and horse-tail plumed cap, his yellow, wizened face rendered more sardonic by the thin drooping grey moustache and thin grey imperial, looking through horn spectacles, expressionless, impassive, inhumanly indifferent, at one of the most splendid scenes a despised civilisation could set before him. There, in the centre of a group of envious and unembarrassed ladies, an Indian potentate blazed in diamonds and emeralds, and rolled his dusky eyes on charms which (most oddly to his Oriental conceptions) belonged to other men. Here a Turk's red fez, a Knight of the Garter's broad blue sash, an ambassador's sparkle of stars and orders; and there the sweet, fresh rosebud beauty of a girl caught for a moment and lost in the moving press. And there, at the end of the vast, living hall, a dimly seen haggard woman, with a diamond tiara on her grey hair, surrounded by a little court of the elect, sat Her Serene Highness, the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck, sister to a reigning monarch, and bosom friend, despite the pretty quarrel, of Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire.
The song in the music-room coming to an end, the audience for the most part rose and pressed into the ballroom. The Hardacres and Morland were driven forward. There was a long period of desultory conversation with acquaintances. Morland, proud in the possession of Norma's beauty, remained dutifully attendant, and received congratulations with almost blushing gratification. Mrs. Hardacre, preoccupied by anticipation of her promised talk with the duchess, kept casting distracted glances at the door whereby the great lady would enter. The appearance from a group of neighbouring people of a pleasant young fellow with a fair moustache and very thin fair hair, who greeted her cordially, brought her back to the affairs of the moment. This was the Honourable Charlie Sandys, a distant relative of the duchess, and her Grand Vizier, Master of the Horse, Groom of the Chambers, and general right-hand man. He was two and twenty, and had all the amazing wisdom of that ingenuous age. Morland shook hands with him, but being tapped on the arm by the fan of a friendly dowager, left him to converse alone with Mrs. Hardacre and Norma. The youth indicated Morland's retiring figure by a jerk of the head.
“Parliament—Cosford division.”
“We hope so,” said Mrs. Hardacre.