He was really attracted towards her by her childlike absence of artificiality. Though the shyness of the débutante had scarcely worn off, she committed no errors of etiquette. As she slowly fanned herself, she talked to him with all the gravity and composure of a woman of the world.
Lady Meldrum had also been introduced to him by the honourable Member for South Staffordshire, and she was, he discovered, a rather gushing, good-looking woman of the type prone to paying compliments quite indiscriminately.
Women nowadays keep their good looks much longer than they used to do. The woman of forty, and even the woman of fifty, to-day is not so old as the woman of thirty was—well, thirty years ago. For this reason, no doubt, and because we are becoming so very Continental, the married women reign supreme, and appear to reign for ever. It seems absurd to read in the list of beauties at a ball, the names of mothers and daughters bracketed together; but, in several instances, if the truth were told, it should be the daughter’s name, and and not the mother’s, which ought to be left out.
“Do you know, Mr Chisholm, I have already paid a visit to your chambers,” her ladyship laughed. “Lady Richard Nevill took me up with her, fearing that I should catch cold while waiting in the carriage. She has been staying with us down at Fernhurst. Perhaps you have heard?”
“She told me so,” the Under-Secretary answered, at once summing her up as a rather vulgar person who had opened the door of society by means of a key fashioned out of gold.
“And now I must let you into another secret,” she went on fussily. “I took Muriel to the House the other night, and we heard you speak.”
He smiled.
“I don’t know what subject you heard me speak upon, Miss Mortimer,” he said, turning to the blue-eyed girl in cream, “but I hope you were edified.”
“I was intensely interested,” the young girl said. “Mr Blackwood,” she added, indicating the Honourable Member who had introduced them,—“took us all through the House and showed us the library, the dining-rooms, the Lobby, and all the places that I’d read about. I had no idea the House of Commons was such a wonderful place and so full of creature comforts.”
“Its wonders are very often tiresome,” he remarked with a little smile. “As a show-place, Miss Mortimer, it is one of the sights of England. As a place in which to spend half one’s days it is not the most comfortable, I assure you.”