Lady Roses Daughter | Page 2

For the party within was not a "crush." The hostess who had collected it was of opinion that the chief object of your house is not to entice the mob, but to keep it out. The two men mounted the stairs together.
"What a charming house!" said the elder, looking round him. "I remember when your uncle rebuilt it. And before that, I remember his mother, the old Duchess here, with her swarm of parsons. Upon my word, London tastes good--after Teheran!"
And the speaker threw back his fair, grizzled head, regarding the lights, the house, the guests, with the air of a sensitive dog on a familiar scent.
"Ah, you're fresh home," said Delafield, laughing. "But let's just try to keep you here--"
"My dear fellow, who is that at the top of the stairs?"
The old diplomat paused. In front of the pair some half a dozen guests were ascending, and as many coming down. At the top stood a tall lady in black, receiving and dismissing.
Delafield looked up.
"That is Mademoiselle Le Breton," he said, quietly.
"She receives?"
"She distributes the guests. Lady Henry generally establishes herself in the back drawing-room. It doesn't do for her to see too many people at once. Mademoiselle arranges it."
"Lady Henry must indeed be a good deal more helpless that I remember her," murmured Sir Wilfrid, in some astonishment.
"She is, physically. Oh, no doubt of it! Otherwise you won't find much change. Shall I introduce you?"
They were approaching a woman whose tall slenderness, combined with a remarkable physiognomy, arrested the old man's attention. She was not handsome--that, surely, was his first impression? The cheek-bones were too evident, the chin and mouth too strong. And yet the fine pallor of the skin, the subtle black-and-white, in which, so to speak, the head and face were drawn, the life, the animation of the whole--were these not beauty, or more than beauty? As for the eyes, the carriage of the head, the rich magnificence of hair, arranged with an artful eighteenth-century freedom, as Madame Vigée Le Brun might have worn it--with the second glance the effect of them was such that Sir Wilfrid could not cease from looking at the lady they adorned. It was an effect as of something over-living, over-brilliant--an animation, an intensity, so strong that, at first beholding, a by-stander could scarcely tell whether it pleased him or no.
"Mademoiselle Le Breton--Sir Wilfrid Bury," said Jacob Delafield, introducing them.
"Is she French?" thought the old diplomat, puzzled. "And--have I ever seen her before?"
"Lady Henry will be so glad!" said a low, agreeable voice. "You are one of the old friends, aren't you? I have often heard her talk of you."
"You are very good. Certainly, I am an old friend--a connection also." There was the slightest touch of stiffness in Sir Wilfrid's tone, of which the next moment he was ashamed. "I am very sorry to hear that Lady Henry has grown so much more helpless since I left England."
"She has to be careful of fatigue. Two or three people go in to see her at a time. She enjoys them more so."
"In my opinion," said Delafield, "one more device of milady's for getting precisely what she wants."
The young man's gay undertone, together with the look which passed between him and Mademoiselle Le Breton, added to Sir Wilfrid's stifled feeling of surprise.
"You'll tell her, Jacob, that I'm here?" He turned abruptly to the young man.
"Certainly--when mademoiselle allows me. Ah, here comes the Duchess!" said Delafield, in another voice.
Mademoiselle Le Breton, who had moved a few steps away from the stair-head with Sir Wilfrid Bury, turned hastily. A slight, small woman, delicately fair and sparkling with diamonds, was coming up the stairs alone.
"My dear," said the new-comer, holding out her hands eagerly to Mademoiselle Le Breton, "I felt I must just run in and have a look at you. But Freddie says that I've got to meet him at that tiresome Foreign Office! So I can only stay ten minutes. How are you?"--then, in a lower voice, almost a whisper, which, however, reached Sir Wilfrid Bury's ears--"worried to death?"
Mademoiselle Le Breton raised eyes and shoulders for a moment, then, smiling, put her finger to her lip.
"You're coming to me to-morrow afternoon?" said the Duchess, in the same half-whisper.
"I don't think I can get away."
"Nonsense! My dear, you must have some air and exercise! Jacob, will you see she comes?"
"Oh, I'm no good," said that young man, turning away. "Duchess, you remember Sir Wilfrid Bury?"
"She would be an unnatural goddaughter if she didn't," said that gentleman, smiling. "She may be your cousin, but I knew her before you did."
The young Duchess turned with a start.
"Sir Wilfrid! A sight for sair een. When did you get back?"
She put her slim hands into both of his, and showered upon him all proper surprise and the greetings