“Oh, how interesting! You must tell me all about it!”
“I am afraid,” replied Guy Oscard, with a somewhat shy laugh, “that that would not be interesting. Besides, I could not tell you now.”
“No, but some other time. I suppose you are not going back to Africa tomorrow, Mr. Oscard?”
“Not quite. And perhaps we may meet somewhere else.”
“I hope so,” replied Miss Chyne. “Besides, you know my aunt, Lady Cantourne. I live with her, you know.”
“I know her slightly.”
“Then take an opportunity of improving the acquaintanceship. She is sitting under the ragged banner over there.”
Millicent Chyne indicated the direction with a nod of the head, and while he looked she took the opportunity of glancing hastily round the room. She was seeking someone.
“Yes,” said Oscard, “I see her, talking to an old gentleman who looks like Voltaire. I shall give her a chance of recognising me before the evening is out. I don’t mind being snubbed if—”
He paused and steered neatly through a narrow place.
“If what?” she asked, when they were in swing again.
“If it means seeing you again,” he answered bluntly—more bluntly than she was accustomed to. But she liked it. It was a novelty after the smaller change of ballroom compliments.
She was watching the door all the while.
Presently the music ceased and they made their way back to the spot whence he had taken her. She led the way thither by an almost imperceptible pressure of her fingers on his arm. There were several men waiting there, and one or two more entering the room and looking languidly round.
“There comes the favoured one,” Lady Cantourne muttered, with a veiled glance towards her companion.
Sir John’s grey eyes followed the direction of her glance.
“My bright boy?” he inquired, with a wealth of sarcasm on the adjective.
“Your bright boy,” she replied.
“I hope not,” he said curtly.
They were watching a tall fair man in the doorway who seemed to know everybody, so slow was his progress into the room. The most remarkable thing about this man was a certain grace of movement. He seemed to be specially constructed to live in narrow, hampered places. He was above six feet; but, being of slight build, he moved with a certain languidness which saved him from that unwieldiness usually associated with large men in a drawing-room.
Such was Jack Meredith, one of the best known figures in London society. He had hitherto succeeded in moving through the mazes of that coterie, as he now moved through this room, without jarring against anyone.
II
Over the Old Ground
A man who never makes mistakes never makes anything else either.
Miss Millicent Chyne was vaguely conscious of success—and such a consciousness is apt to make the best of us a trifle elated. It was certainly one of the best balls of the season, and Miss Chyne’s dress was, without doubt, one of the most successful articles of its sort there.
Jack Meredith saw that fact and noted it as soon as he came into the room. Moreover, it gratified him, and he was pleased to reflect that he was no mean critic in such matters. There could be no doubt about it, because he knew as well as any woman there. He knew that Millicent Chyne was dressed in the latest fashion—no furbished-up gown from the hands of her maid, but a unique creation from Bond Street.
“Well,” she asked in a low voice, as she handed him her programme, “are you pleased with it?”
“Eminently so.”
She glanced down at her own dress. It was not the nervous glance of the debutante, but the practised flash of experienced eyes which see without appearing to look.
“I am glad,” she murmured.
He handed her back the card with the orthodox smile and bow of gratitude, but there was something more in his eyes.
“Is that what you did it for?” he inquired.
“Of course,” with a glance half coquettish, half humble.
She took the card and allowed it to drop pendent from her fan without looking at it. He had written nothing on it. This was all a form. The dances that were his had been inscribed on the engagement-card long before by smaller fingers than his.
She turned to take her attendant partner’s arm with a little flaunt—a little movement of the hips to bring her dress, and possibly herself, more prominently beneath Jack Meredith’s notice. His eyes followed her with that incomparably pleasant society smile which he had no doubt inherited from his father. Then he turned and mingled with the well-dressed throng, bowing where he ought to bow—asking with fervour for dances in plain but influential quarters where dances were to be easily obtained.
And all the while his father and Lady Cantourne watched.
“Yes, I think,” the lady was saying, “that that is the favoured one.”
“I fear so.”
“I noticed,” observed Lady Cantourne, “that he asked for a dance.”
“And apparently got one—or more.”
“Apparently so, Sir John.”
“Moreover—”
Lady Cantourne turned on him with her usual vivacity.
“Moreover?” she repeated.
“He did not need to write it down on the card; it was written there already.”
She closed her fan with a faint smile.
“I sometimes wonder,” she said, “whether, in our young days, you were so preternaturally observant as you are now.”
“No,” he answered, “I was not. I affected scales of the very opaquest description, like the rest of my kind.”
In the meantime this man’s son was going about his business with a leisurely savoir-faire which few could rival. Jack Meredith was the beau-ideal of the society man in the best acceptation of the word. One met him wherever the best people congregated, and he invariably seemed to know what to do and how to do it better than his compeers. If it was dancing in the season, Jack Meredith danced, and no man rivalled him. If it was grouse shooting, Jack Meredith held his gun as straight as any man. All the polite accomplishments in their season seemed to come to him without effort; but there was in all the same lack of heart—that utter want
