Part 5 (2/2)
She nodded. ”Such a dream of a gown! Nina's present! You'll see it. I hope Gerald will be here to see it. He promised. You'll say you like it if you do like it, won't you?”
”I'll say it, anyway.”
”Oh, well--if you are contented to be commonplace like other men--”
”I've no ambition to be different at my age.”
”Your age?” she repeated, looking up quickly. ”You are as young as Nina, aren't you? Half the men in the younger set are no younger than you--and you know it,” she concluded--”you are only trying to make me say so--and you've succeeded. I'm not very experienced yet. Does tea bring wisdom, Captain Selwyn?” pouring herself a cup. ”I'd better arm myself immediately.” She sank back into the depths of the chair, looking gaily at him over her lifted cup. ”To my rapid education in worldly wisdom!”
She nodded, and sipped the tea almost pensively.
He certainly did seem young there in the firelight, his narrow, thoroughbred head turned toward the fire. Youth, too, sat lightly on his shoulders; and it was scarcely a noticeably mature hand that touched the short sun-burnt moustache at intervals. From head to waist, from his loosely coupled, well-made limbs to his strong, slim foot, strength seemed to be the keynote to a physical harmony most agreeable to look at.
The idea entered her head that he might appear to advantage on horseback.
”We must ride together,” she said, returning her teacup to the tray; ”if you don't mind riding with me? Do you? Gerald never has time, so I go with a groom. But if you would care to go--” she laughed. ”Oh, you see I am already beginning a selfish family claim on you. I foresee that you'll be very busy with us all persistently tugging at your coat-sleeves; and what with being civil to me and a martyr to Drina, you'll have very little time to yourself. And--I hope you'll like my brother Gerald when you meet him. Now I _must_ go.”
Then, rising and partly turning to collect her furs:
”It's quite exciting to have you here. We will be good friends, won't we? ... and I think I had better stop my chatter and go, because my cunning little Alsatian maid is not very clever yet... . Good-bye.”
She stretched out one of her amazingly white hands across the table, giving him a friendly leave-taking and welcome all in one frank handshake; and left him standing there, the fresh contact still cool in his palm.
Nina came in presently to find him seated before the fire, one hand shading his eyes; and, as he prepared to rise, she rested both arms on his shoulders, forcing him into his chair again.
”So you've bewitched Eileen, too, have you?” she said tenderly. ”Isn't she the sweetest little thing?”
”She's--ah--as tall as I am,” he said, blinking at the fire.
”She's only nineteen; pathetically unspoiled--a perfect dear. Men are going to rave over her and--_not_ spoil her. Did you ever see such hair?--that thick, ruddy, l.u.s.trous, copper tint?--and sometimes it's like gold afire. And a skin like snow and peaches!--she's sound to the core. I've had her exercised and groomed and hardened and trained from the very beginning--every inch of her minutely cared for exactly like my own babies. I've done my best,” she concluded with a satisfied sigh, and dropped into a chair beside her brother.
”Thoroughbred,” commented Selwyn, ”to be turned out to-night. Is she bridle-wise and intelligent?”
”More than sufficiently. That's one trouble--she's had, at times, a depressing, sponge-like desire for absorbing all sorts of irrelevant things that no girl ought to concern herself with. I--to tell the truth--if I had not rigorously drilled her--she might have become a trifle tiresome; I don't mean precisely frumpy--but one of those earnest young things whose intellectual conversation becomes a visitation--one of the wants-to-know-for-the-sake-of-knowledge sort--a dreadful human blotter! Oh, dear; show me a girl with her mind soaking up 'isms' and I'll show you a social failure with a wisp of hair on her cheek, who looks the dowdier the more expensively she's gowned.”
”So you believe you've got that wisp of copper-tinted hair tucked up snugly?” asked Selwyn, amused.
”I--it's still a worry to me; at intervals she's inclined to let it slop. Thank Heaven, I've made her spine permanently straight and her head is screwed properly to her neck. There's not a slump to her from crown to heel--_I_ know, you know. She's had specialists to forestall every blemish. I made up my mind to do it; I'm doing it for my own babies. That's what a mother is for--to turn out her offspring to the world as flawless and wholesome as when they came into it!--physically and mentally sound--or a woman betrays her stewards.h.i.+p. They must be as healthy of body and limb as they are innocent and wholesome minded. The happiest of all creatures are drilled thoroughbreds. Show me a young girl, unspoiled mentally and spiritually untroubled, with a superb physique, and I'll show you a girl equipped for the happiness of this world. And that is what Eileen is.”
”I should say,” observed Selwyn, ”that she's equipped for the slaughter of man.”
”Yes, but _I_ am selecting the victim,” replied his sister demurely.
”Oh! Have you? Already?”
”Tentatively.”
”Who?”
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