Rodens Corner | Page 8

outward signs of industrial honesty.
Joan shook the hand frankly, and its possessor passed on.
"Is that the gas-man?" inquired Major White, gravely. He had been standing beside her ever since his arrival, seeking, it seemed, the protection of one who understood these social functions. It is to be presumed that the major was less bewildered than he looked.
"Hush!" And Joan said something hurriedly in White's large ear. "Everybody has him," she concluded; and the explanation brought certain calm into the mildly surprised eye behind the eye-glass. White recognized the phrase and its conclusive contemporary weight.
"Here's a flat-backed man!" he exclaimed, with a ring of relief. "Been drilled, this man. Gad! He's proud!" added the major, as the new-comer passed Joan with rather a cold bow.
"Oh, that's the detective," explained Joan. "So many people, you know; and so mixed. Everybody has them. Here's Tony--at last."
Tony Cornish was indeed making his way through the crowd towards them. He shook hands with a bishop as he elbowed a path across the room, and did it with the pious face of a self-respecting curate. The next minute he was prodding a sporting baronet in the ribs at the precise moment when that nobleman reached the point of his little story and on the precise rib where he expected to be prodded. It is always wise to do the expected.
At the sight of Tony Cornish, Joan's face became grave, and she turned towards him with her little frown of preoccupation, such as one might expect to find upon the face of a woman concerned in the great movements of the day. But before Tony reached her the expression changed to a very feminine and even old-fashioned one of annoyance.
"Oh, here comes mother!" she said, looking beyond Cornish, who was indeed being pursued by a wizened little old lady.
Lady Ferriby, it seemed, was not enjoying herself. She glanced suspiciously from one face to another, as if she was seeking a friend without any great hope of finding one. Perhaps, like many another, she looked upon the world from that point Of view.
Cornish hurried up and shook hands. "Plenty of people," he said.
"Oh yes," answered Joan, earnestly. "It only shows that there is, after all, a great deal of good in human nature, that in such a movement as this rich and poor, great and small, are all equal."
Cornish nodded in his quick sympathetic way, accepting as we all accept the social statements of the day, which are oft repeated and never weighed. Then he turned to White and tapped that soldier's arm emphatically.
"Way to get on nowadays," he said, "is to be prominent in some great movement for benefiting mankind." Joan heard the words, and, turning, looked at Cornish with a momentary doubt.
"And I mean to get on in the world, my dear Joan," he said, with a gravity which quite altered his keen, fair face. It passed off instantly, as if swept away by the ready smile which came again. A close observer might have begun to wonder under which mask lay the real Tony Cornish.
Major White looked stolidly at his friend. His face, on the contrary never changed.
Lady Ferriby joined them at this moment--a silent, querulous-looking woman in black silk and priceless lace, who, despite her white hair and wrinkled face, yet wore her clothes with that carefulness which commands respect from high and low alike. The world was afraid of Lady Ferriby, and had little to say to her. It turned aside, as a rule, when she approached. And when she had passed on with her suspicious glance, her bent and shaking head, it whispered that there walked a woman with a romantic past. It is, moreover, to be hoped that the younger portion of Lady Ferriby's world took heed of this catlike, lonely woman, and recognized the melancholy fact that it is unwise to form a romantic attachment in the days of one's youth.
"Tony," said her ladyship, "they have eaten all the sandwiches."
And there was something in her voice, in her manner of touching Tony Cornish's arm with her fan that suggested in a far-off, cold way that this social butterfly had reached one of the still strings of her heart. Who knows? There may have been, in those dim days when Lady Ferriby had played her part in the romantic story which all hinted at and none knew, another such as Tony Cornish--gay and debonair, careless, reckless, and yet endowed with the power of making some poor woman happy.
"My dear aunt," replied Cornish, with a levity with which none other ever dared to treat her, "the benevolent are always greedy. And each additional virtue--temperance, loving-kindness, humility--only serves to dull the sense of humour and add to the appetite. Give them biscuits, aunt."
And offering her his arm, he good-naturedly led her to the