She threaded her way slowly through the crowd, talking calmly to one and another, seeing everything, understanding everything, tremendously at home in the midst of complications.
Lady Sellingworth talked to Lady Anne, who had just come back from Mexico. It was her way to dart about the world, leaving her husband in his arm-chair at the Marlborough. She brought gossip with her from across the seas, gossip about exotic Presidents and their mistresses, about revolutionary generals and explorers, about opera singers in Havana, and great dancers in the Argentine. In her set she was called "the peripatetic pug," but she had none of the pug"s snoring laziness.
Presently someone took her away to play bridge, and for a moment Lady Sellingworth was standing alone. She was close to a great window which gave on to the terrace at the back of the house facing the falling gardens and the woods. She looked out, then looked across the room.
Craven was standing near the door. He had just come in with a lot of men from the dining-room. He had a cigar in his hand. His cheeks were flushed. He looked hot and drawn, like a man in a noisy prison of heat which excited him, but tormented him too. His eyes shone almost feverishly. As she looked at him, not knowing that he was being watched he drew a long breath, almost like a man who feared suffocation.
Immediately afterwards he glanced across the room and saw her.
She beckoned to him. With a reluctant air, and looking severe, he came across to her.
"Are you going to play bridge?" she said.
"I don"t think so."
"Dindie has persuaded me to stay on for the music. Shall we take a little walk in the garden? I am so unaccustomed to crowds that I am longing for air."
She paused, then added:
"And a little quiet."
"Certainly," he said stiffly.
"Does he hate me?" she thought, with a sinking of despair. He went to fetch her wrap. They met in the hall.
"Where are you two going?"
Dindie Ackroyde"s all-seeing eyes had perceived them.
"Only to get a breath of air in the garden," said Lady Sellingworth.
"How sensible!"
She gave them a watchful smile and spoke to Eve Colton, who was hunting for the right kind of bridge, stick in hand.
"I"ll find Melville for you. Jennie and Sir Arthur are waiting in the card-room."
"I hope you don"t mind coming out for a moment?"
Lady Sellingworth"s unconquerable diffidence was persecuting her. She spoke almost with timidity to Craven on the doorstep.
"Oh, no. I am delighted."
His young voice was carefully frigid.
"More motors!" she said. "The whole of London will be here by tea time."
"Great fun, isn"t it? Such a squash of interesting people."
"And I am taking you away from them!"
"That"s all right!"
"Oh, what an Eton"s boy"s voice!" she thought.
But she loved it. That was the truth. His youngness was so apparent in his coldness that he was more dangerous than ever to her who had an unconquerable pa.s.sion for youth.
"Let us go through this door in the wall. It must lead to the gardens."
"Certainly!"
He pushed it open. They pa.s.sed through and were away from the motors, standing on a broad terrace which turned at right angles and skirted the back of the house.
"Don"t let us go round the corner before all the drawing-room windows."
"No?" he said.
"Unless you prefer--"
"I will go wherever you like."
"I thought--what about this path?"
"Shall we do down it?"
"I think it looks rather tempting."
They walked slowly on, descending a slight incline, and came to a second long terrace on a lower level. There was a good deal of brick-work in Mrs. Ackroyde"s garden, but there were some fine trees, and in summer the roses were wonderful. Now there were not many flowers, but at least there were calm and silence, and the breath of the winter woods came to Lady Sellingworth and Craven.
Craven said nothing, and walked stiffly beside his companion looking straight ahead. He seemed entirely unlike the man who had talked so enthusiastically in her drawing-room after the dinner in the _Bella Napoli_, and again on that second evening when they had dined together without the company of Beryl Van Tuyn. But Dindie Ackroyde had said he had come down that day because he had been told he would meet her. And Dindie was scarcely ever wrong about people. But this time surely she had made a mistake.
"Oh, there"s the hard court!" Lady Sellingworth said.
"Yes."
"It looks a beauty."
"Do you play?"
"I used to. But I have given it up."
After a silence she added:
"You know I have given up everything. There comes a time--"
She hesitated.
"Perhaps you will not believe it, but I feel very strange here with all these people."
"But you know them all, don"t you?"
"Nearly all. But they mean nothing to me now."