The Coast of Chance | Page 8

to-night it was not the picture exhibition, nor the function itself
that elated her, but the fancy she had as she looked over the moving
mass below her that the crowning excitement of the day, the vanishing
mystery, hovered over them all. It was fantastic, but it persisted; for
had not the Chatworth ring itself proved that the most ordinary
appearances might cover unimagined wonders? Which of those bland,
satisfied faces might not change shockingly at the whisper "Chatworth"
in its ear? She wanted to confide the naughty thought to Harry. But no,
he wasn't the one. If Harry were apprehensive of anything at all it was
only of being caught in too hot a crush. He saw no possibilities in the

mob below except boredom. He saw no possibilities in the evening but
his conventional duty; and Flora could read in his eye his intention of
getting through that as comfortably as possible. His suggestion that
they have a look at the pictures brought the two women's eyes together
in a rare gleam of mutual mirth. They knew he suspected that the
picture gallery would be the emptiest place in the club, since to have a
look at the pictures was what they were all supposed to be there for.
That was so infallibly the note of their life, Flora thought, as she
followed up the wide sweep of the middle stair, and along the
high-ceiled, gilded hall whose open arches overlooked the rooms
below.
The picture gallery was new, an addition; and the plain, narrow,
unexpected door in this place, where all was high, arched, elaborate and
flourished, was like a loophole through which to slip into a foreign
atmosphere. This atmosphere was resinous of fresh wood; the light was
thick with drifting motes; the carpets harshly new, slipping beneath the
feet on the too polished floor; the bare bones of the place yet scarcely
covered. But its quiet was after all comparative. There were plenty of
people lingering in groups in the center of the gallery which was dusky,
eclipsed by the great reflectors that circled the room, throwing out the
pictures in a bright band of color around the walls. People leaning from
this border of light back into the dusk to murmur together, vanished
and reappeared with such fascinating abruptness that Flora caught
herself guessing what sort of face, where this nearest group stood just
on the edge of shadow, would pop out of the dark next.
She was ready for something extraordinary, but now, when it came, she
was taken aback by it. It gave her a start, that toss of black hair, that
long, irregular, pale face whose scintillant, sardonic smile was
mercilessly upon the poor, inadequate picture-face fronting him. His
stoop above the rail was so abrupt that his long, lean back was almost
horizontal, yet even thus there was something elegant in the swing of
him--in the careless twist of his head, around, to speak to the woman
behind him. The light above struck blind on the glass in one eye, but
the other danced with a genial, a mad scintillation. The light of it
caught like contagion, and touched the merest glancer at him with the

spark of its warm, ironic mirth. The question which naturally rose to
Flora's lips--"Who in the world is that?"--she checked; why, she didn't
ask herself. She only felt as she followed Clara, trailing away across the
floor, that the interest of the evening which had promised so well,
beginning with the Chatworth ring, had been raised even a note higher.
Her restive fancy was beginning again. All the footlights of her little
secret stage were up.
Clara turned to the right, following a beckoning fan, and Flora, dallying
with her anticipation, reasoned that now they must circle the room
before they should face him--the interesting apparition. It was a
pilgrimage of which he on the other side was performing his half.
Perfunctorily talking from group to group, conscious now and again of
the lagging Clara or Harry, she could nevertheless keep a sly eye on the
stranger's equal progress. The flash of jet, and the voluble, substantial
shoulders of the lady so profusely introducing him, were an assurance
of how that pilgrimage would terminate, since it was Ella Buller who
was parading him. She even wondered before which of the florid
pictures at the far, other end of the room, as before a shrine, the
ceremony would take place.
She kept her eyes fixed on the paintings before her, and as she moved
down from one to another, and the voices of the approaching group
drew nearer, one separated itself from the general murmur, so clear, so
resonantly carried, so clean-clipped off the tongue, that it stood out in
syllables on the blur of sound which