Part 55 (1/2)
”_Do_ they? how do you know, dear?” asks Olga Bohun, sweetly.
Miss Fitzgerald, feeling she has made a _faux-pas_, colors violently, tries to get herself out of it, and flounders helplessly. Lord Rossmoyne is looking surprised, Ulic Ronayne and Desmond amused.
”Every one says so,” says the fair Bella, at last, in a voice that trembles with anger: ”you know very well they do.”
”I don't, indeed, my dear Bella. My acquaintance with--er--that sort of person has been limited: I quite envy you your superior knowledge.”
Here Olga laughs a little, low, rippling laugh that completes her enemy's defeat. After the laugh there is a dead silence.
”I think somebody ought to remove the poor little child,” says Mr.
Kelly, in a low, impressive tone, pointing to Mrs. Herrick's little girl. At which everybody laughs heartily, and awkwardness is banished.
”Browne?--I knew an Archibald Browne once: anything to this girl?” asks Lord Rossmoyne, hurriedly, unwilling to let silence settle down on them again.
”Big man with a loose tie?” asks Ulic.
”Ye-es. There was something odd about his neck, now I remember,” says Rossmoyne.
”That was her father. He had an idea he was like Lord Byron, and always wore his necktie flying in the wind.”
”He couldn't manage it, though,” says Mr. Kelly, with as near an attempt at mirth as he ever permits himself. ”It always flew the wrong way.
Byron's, if you call to mind his many portraits, always flew over his left shoulder; old Browne's wouldn't. By the bye,” thoughtfully, ”Byron must have had a wind of his own, mustn't he? our ordinary winds don't always blow in the same direction, do they?”
”I would that a wind could arise to blow you in some direction, when you are in such an idle mood as now,” says Mrs. Herrick, in a low tone.
”If it would blow me in _your_ direction, I should say amen to that,” in a voice as subdued as her own.
”May the Fates avert from me a calamity so great!”
”You will have to entreat them very diligently, if you hope to escape it.”
”Are you so very determined, then?”
”Yes. Although I feel I am mocked by the hope within me, still I shall persist.”
”You waste your time.”
”I am content to waste it in such a cause. Yet I am sorry I am so distasteful to you.”
”That is not your fault. I forgive you that.”
”What is it, then, you can't forgive in me?”
”Not more than I can't forgive in another. 'G.o.d made you all, therefore let you all pa.s.s for men.' I don't deal more hardly with you than with the rest, you see. You are only one of many.”
”That is the unkindest thing you ever said to me. And that is saying much. Yet I, too, will beseech the Fates in my turn.”
”To grant you what?”
”The finding of you in a gentler mind.”