Edith Mazerod laughed, the careless pa.s.sing laugh of inattention.
"Dora," she said, "may I introduce General Michael? My cousin."
She rose, and Seymour Michael prepared to take the vacant seat. The youth called Jack was making signs with his eyebrows, and in attempting to decipher his meaning she forgot to mention Dora"s name.
"You will be sorry for this," said Seymour Michael, sitting down. "You will not thank your cousin."
"Why?" inquired Dora, prepared to like him, possibly because he had a brown face and wore his hair cut short.
"Because," he replied, "I am hopelessly new to this work."
"So am I," replied Dora; "I don"t even know what pictures to look at and what to ignore. So I dare not look at the walls at all."
"That is precisely my position, only I am worse. You know how to behave in polite circles; I don"t. You have a slightly tired look, as if this sort of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony."
"Have I? I am sorry for that."
"No, there is no reason to be sorry. They all have it."
"But," protested Dora, "I am not one of them. I am only aping the Romans."
"You do it well; I shall study your method. You do it better than Edith Mazerod."
"Edith is young--hopelessly, enviably young. Do you know them well?"
"Yes, I knew them in India."
"Of course; I forgot."
He turned and looked at her sharply. Sometimes his own reputation, far from being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. A man with an unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
It was Seymour Michael who spoke first. True to his mixed blood, he sought to make himself safe.
"Excuse me," he said, "but Edith Mazerod did not mention your name; may I ask it?"
"Dora Glynde!"
She saw him start. She saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in another man she would have set down to fear.
"Miss Dora Glynde," he repeated; and the expression of his face was so serene again that the look which had pa.s.sed away from it began already to present itself to her memory as a conception of her own brain.
"When I was younger and shyer," he said, with a singular haste, "I was afraid to ask a lady her name when I did not catch it, and--and I frequently regretted not having had the courage to do so."
She recollected it all afterwards--every word, every pause. But then, as so frequently happens, knowledge aided her memory, and added significance to every detail.
"Are you staying with the Mazerods?" he asked.
"Yes, I am being shown life. I am doing a season. To-night is part of my education. To-morrow, I believe, we go to Hurlingham; the next day to a charity bazaar, and so on. I believe I am getting on very well. Aunt Mary is pleased with me. But I still stare about me, and show visible disappointment when I am presented to a literary celebrity or some other person of newspaper renown."
"Celebrities in the flesh _are_ disappointing."
"Not only that, but I find that many of them are just a little common.
Not quite what we in the country call gentlemen."
"Ah! Miss Glynde, you forget that Art rises superior to cla.s.s distinctions."
"Yes, but artists don"t; and artists" wives don"t rise at all. I think you are to be congratulated. In your profession there are fewer persons "superior to cla.s.s distinction.""
This was a subject which Seymour Michael dreaded. He was ignorant of how much Dora might know. He had suspected from the first that Jem Agar"s desire that she should know the truth had been a mere matter of sentiment; but the fact of meeting her at this public festivity, gay and in colours, shook this theory from its foundation. He disliked Edith Mazerod, because he suspected that his own early career had probably been discussed in her hearing, and her easy lightness of heart was to him as incomprehensible as it was suspicious. Dora he rather feared without knowing why.
"I suppose you know India well?" she said, looking straight in front of her.
"Too well," was the reply, with a sharp sidelong glance.
He was right. At that moment Dora might have been one of these _habituees_ of rout and ballroom. She was very pale and looked tired out.
"I went out there thirty years ago," he continued, "into the Mutiny. From that time to this India has been killing my friends."
There was a little pause. She knew that in the natural course of events it was almost certain that this man knew Jem personally. It would have been easy to mention his name; but the wound was too fresh, her heart was too sore to bear the sting of hearing him discussed.
For a second Seymour Michael hovered on the brink. His lips almost framed the name. Good almost triumphed over evil.
And the girl sitting there--broken-hearted, quiet and strong, as only women can be--never knew how near she was. Sometimes it seems as if the cruelty of fate were unnecessary, as if the word too little or the word too much, which has the power to alter a whole life, were withheld or spoken merely to further a Providential experiment.
"Yes," said Michael, "I hate India."
And the spell was broken, the moment lost for ever. Seymour Michael had kept silence, and elsewhere, perhaps, at that very moment his doom was spoken. Who can tell? We are offered chances--we are, if you will, the puppets of an experiment--and surely there must be a moment which decides.
Dora was conscious of having miscalculated her own strength. She had led him on to the dangerous ground, but it was with relief that she saw him step back. She did not dare to lead him to it again.
It was not long before he left her, on the timely arrival of another friend.
The introduction brought about by Miss Mazerod did not seem to have been an entire success, for they parted gravely and without a word expressing the hope of meeting again. And yet Dora liked him, for he was strong and purposeful, such as she would have had all men. She wanted to know more of him. She wanted to be admitted further into the knowledge which she knew to be his.
Seymour Michael was conscious of a feeling of discomfort, no less disquieting by reason of its vagueness. He had a nervous sensation of being surrounded by something--something in the nature of a chain, piecing itself together, link by link--something that was slowly closing in upon him.
CHAPTER XIX
AT HURLINGHGAM
I must be cruel only to be kind.
It is not your deep person who succeeds in carrying out a set purpose, but one who is just profound enough to be fathomed of the mult.i.tude. For, after all, the mult.i.tude is ready enough to help, in a casual, parenthetic way, in the furtherance of a design; and a little depth, serving to flatter that vanity which taketh delight in a sense of superior perspicacity, only adds to the zest. There are plenty of people ready to pull on a rope or shove at a wheel, but there are more eager to do so if they are offered the direction of affairs.