Part 11 (2/2)
”He might be,” said Dorothy, calmly.
Lily looked up from her place as if she were going to speak, but, though she said nothing, Dorothy was glad that the terms of the note gave her no excuse for asking her to-morrow, even if Sylvia did maliciously propose that Lily should go instead of herself.
”Oh, but they particularly want you,” Dorothy protested.
”Anyway, I can't go,” Lily said; ”I've promised to go round some of the colleges with Tom.”
Dorothy winced at the threatened sacrilege.
Next morning a cab jingled up to the girls' lodgings, and they were driven to the nearest point of embarkation for a picnic on the upper river. Their host, a short young man with very fair hair and a round pink face, introduced himself and led the way to the Rollers, over which punts and canoes were dragged from the lower level of the Cherwell to the wider sweeps of the Isis. A tall young man who was standing by a couple of canoes moored to the bank came forward to greet them. His most immediately conspicuous feature was a pair of white flannel trousers down the seams of which ran stripes of vivid blue ribbon; but when he was introduced to Dorothy as Lord Clarehaven she forgot about his trousers in the more vivid blue of his name. All sorts of ideas rushed through her mind--a sudden dread that he might think Sylvia more attractive than herself, a sudden contempt for the party of the evening before, a sudden rapture in which blue sky, blue blood, and the blue stripes of the trousers merged exquisitely, and a sudden apprehension created by her pleated reflection in the water that she was not looking her best. After Lord Clarehaven she should not have been surprised if the first young man had also had a t.i.tle; but he was apparently only Mr.
Lonsdale, and, though ent.i.tled to respect as a friend of Lord Clarehaven, would probably interest Sylvia more than herself.
Dorothy's dread that she and Lord Clarehaven might not find themselves in the same canoe was soon dispelled, because Lord Clarehaven was evidently as eager for her company as she was for his, and they were soon leaving the others behind. There is no form of conveyance which makes for so much intimacy of regard as a canoe, and Dorothy, when she had once been able to rea.s.sure herself by means of a pocket-mirror that she had not been ruffled by the cab-drive or by the nervous business of getting gracefully into a wabbling canoe, settled herself down to be admired at a distance of about four feet. Moreover, she indulged for the first time in her life in the pleasure of admiring somebody else, a state of mind which doubled her charm by taking away much of her self-consciousness. If Lord Clarehaven was below the standard of aristocracy set by our full-blooded lady novelists, he was equally far removed from the chinless convention of ba.n.a.l caricature. He had the long legs, the narrow hips and head, and the big teeth of the Norman; but his fair hair was already thinning upon a high, retreating forehead, his nose was small, and if the protuberant eyes that one sees in Pekinese spaniels and other well-bred mammals were a faint intimation of approaching degeneracy in the stock, Dorothy was not sufficiently versed in physiognomy to recognize such symptoms; already fascinated by his t.i.tle and his trousers, she was quite ready to be fascinated by his eyes.
”I was lunching in St. Mary's yesterday with Arthur Lonsdale,” he was explaining, ”and I noticed you from the lodge. I should have come up and spoken to you myself, but I was rather frightened by your friend's eye-gla.s.s. In fact, I'm still not at all at ease with her. She looks deuced clever, I mean, don't you think?”
”She is awfully clever.”
”Poor girl, but I suppose it's not such a bore for a girl as it would be for a man. I'm an awful a.s.s myself, you know. I mean, I'm absolutely incapable of doing anything.”
”How did you know we belonged to the company?” asked Dorothy, implying that with all his modesty he must possess acute powers of judgment hidden away somewhere.
”Well, to tell you the truth, we didn't know. Somebody said your friend was a medical student, only I wasn't going to have that, and some man said he'd noticed you at the station, so Lonnie and I went to the theater on the off-chance and tried to spot you.”
”Which you did?”
”Oh, rather. Only, then we couldn't spot your name. I was all for Clarice Beauchamp.”
”She's an awfully horrid girl,” said Dorothy, quickly.
”Is she? I'm sorry to hear that. And Lonnie betted you were Fay Onslow.
So we were quits. Funny thing you should have the same name as Lonnie.
No relation, I suppose?”
He was evidently so sure of this that Dorothy was rather piqued and asked, loftily, which Lonsdale he was.
”Cleveden's son.”
”Oh, then I am a relation,” said Dorothy. ”Though of course a very, very distant one.”
”By Jove! that's great!” said Clarehaven.
He seemed enthusiastic, but Dorothy could not make out whether he believed her or not, and she rather wished she had kept the relations.h.i.+p for the dressing-room. She hoped that Sylvia would not give Lonsdale an impression that she claimed to be his first cousin; this abrupt plunge into the whirlpool of society might make her act extravagantly. What a pity that she had not known who he was before they met, and ”Oh!” she cried, aloud.
”What's the matter?” Clarehaven asked.
”Nothing. At least I think I touched a fish,” said Dorothy.
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