Part 7 (1/2)
”Miss Floyd's party is put off till next week.”
”Daphne is just coming in,” said Miss Boyson.
The General turned again. The watchful Cecilia was certain that _he_ was not in love with Daphne. But the nephew--the inordinately handsome, and by now much-courted young man--what was the real truth about him?
Cecilia recognized--with Mrs. Verrier--that merely to put the question involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum.
”Miss Floyd is looking well to-night,” remarked the General.
Cecilia did not reply. She and a great part of the room were engaged in watching Roger Barnes and Miss Maddison walking together through a s.p.a.ce which seemed to have been cleared on purpose for them, but was really the result of a move towards the supper-room.
”Was there ever such a pair?” said an enthusiastic voice behind the General. ”Athene and Apollo take the floor!” A gray-haired journalist with a small, bewrinkled face, buried in whiskers, and beard, laid a hand on the General's arm as he spoke.
The General smiled vaguely. ”Do you know Mrs. and Miss Maddison?”
”Rather!” said the little man. ”Miss Elsie's a wonder! As pretty and soft as they make them, and a Greek scholar besides--took all sorts of honours at Radcliffe last year. I've known her from her cradle.”
”What a number of your girls go to college!” said the General, but ungraciously, in the tones of one who no sooner saw an American custom emerging than his instinct was to hit it.
”Yes; it's a feature of our modern life--the life of our women. But not the most significant one, by a long way.”
The General could not help a look of inquiry.
The journalist's face changed from gay to grave. ”The most significant thing in American life just now----”
”I know!” interrupted the General. ”Your divorce laws!”
The journalist shook his head. ”It goes deeper than that. What we're looking on at is a complete transformation of the idea of marriage----”
A movement in the crowd bore the speaker away. The General was left watching the beautiful pair in the distance. They were apparently quite unconscious that they roused any special attention. Laughing and chatting like two children, they pa.s.sed into the supper-room and disappeared.
Ten minutes later, in the supper-room, Barnes deserted the two ladies with whom he had entered, and went in pursuit of a girl in white, whose necklace of star sapphires, set in a Spanish setting of the seventeenth century, had at once caught the eye of the judicious. Roger, however, knew nothing of jewels, and was only conscious as he approached Miss Floyd, first of the mingling in his own mind of something like embarra.s.sment with something like defiance, and then, of the glitter in the girl's dark eyes.
”I hope you had an interesting debate,” he said. ”Mrs. Phillips tells me you went to the Senate.”
Daphne looked him up and down. ”Did I?” she said slowly. ”I've forgotten. Will you move, please? There's someone bringing me an ice.”
And turning her back on Roger, she smiled and beckoned to the Under-Secretary, who with a triumphant face was making his way to her through the crowd.
Roger coloured hotly. ”May I bring Mrs. Maddison?” he said, pa.s.sing her; ”she would like to talk to you about a party for next week----”
”Thank you. I am just going home.” And with an energetic movement she freed herself from him, and was soon in the gayest of talk with the Under-Secretary.
The reception broke up some time after midnight, and on the way home General Hobson attempted a raid upon his nephew's intentions.
”I don't wish to seem an intrusive person, my dear Roger, but may I ask how much longer you mean to stay in Was.h.i.+ngton?”
The tone was short and the look which accompanied the words not without sarcasm. Roger, who had been walking beside his companion, still deeply flushed, in complete silence, gave an awkward laugh.