The Halo | Page 5

daughter's unusually confidential conversation with her son, Brigit joined her.
"Ugh, mother, you have too much scent," observed the girl, curling her upper lip rather unpleasantly. "It's horrid."
"Never mind, ducky, I've only just put it on; it will go off after a bit. It's the very newest thing in Paris. Gerald brought it to me--Souvenir de Jeunesse."
Brigit looked at her for a moment, but said nothing.
Lady Kingsmead's unconsciousness was, as it always was when she was in a good humour, both amusing and disarming. So the two women descended the dark, panelled staircase in silence, crossed the hall and went into the drawing-room. A man sat over the fire, his long, white hands held up to the blaze.
"H'are you, Brigit?"
"How d'you do, Gerald?"
Carron turned without rising, and stared thoughtfully at the girl. He was a big, bony man who had once been very handsome, and the conquering air had remained true to him long after the desertion of his beauty. This, too, "gives to think," and is a warning to all people who have made their worldly successes solely by force of looks, and these are many. Carron pulled his moustache and narrowed his tired-looking blue eyes in a way that had been very fetching fifteen years before.
"You look pretty fit," he observed after a pause, as she gazed absently over his head at the carvings of the mantelpiece.
"I'm--ripping, thanks," she answered with a bored air.
"You'll have to look out, Tony," he went on, frowning as he caught the expression in Lady Kingsmead's eyes, "she is confoundly good-looking. Beauties' daughters ought always to be plain."
Lady Kingsmead flushed angrily, and was about to speak, when her daughter interrupted in a perfunctory voice: "Oh, don't, Gerald, you know she loathes being teased. Besides, your praise doesn't in the least interest me."
His smile was not good to see. "I think, my dear Brigit, that you are about the handsomest woman I ever saw--that is, the handsomest dark woman; but you look so damned ill-tempered that you will be hideous in ten years' time."
The girl drew a deep sigh of indifference, and turning, walked slowly away. She wore a rather shabby frock of tomato-coloured chiffon, and as she went down the room one of her greatest charms appeared to striking advantage--the lazy, muscular grace of her movements. She walked like an American Indian youth of some superior tribe, and every curve of her body indicated remarkable physical strength and endurance.
Gerald Carron watched her, his face paling, and as Lady Kingsmead studied him, her own slowly reddened under its mask of paint and powder. The situation was an old one--a woman, too late reciprocating the passion which she had toyed with for many years, suddenly brought face to face with the realisation that this love had been transferred to a younger woman, and that woman her own daughter. The little scene enacted so quietly in the pretty, conventional drawing-room, with its pale walls and beflowered furniture, was of great tenseness.
Before anyone had spoken the door opened and the Newlyns and Pat Yelverton came in, Mrs. Newlyn hastily clasping the last of the myriad bracelets that were so peculiarly unbecoming to her thin red arms. She and her husband both were bird-like in eye and gesture, and their nicknames among their intimates were, though neither of them knew it, the Cassowary and the Sparrow, she being the Cassowary. Besides being bird-like, they were both bores of the deepest dye.
Pat Yelverton was a blond giant with a very bad reputation, a genius for Bridge, and the softest, most caressing voice that ever issued from a man's throat.
Meeting the new-comers at the door, Brigit shook hands with them and returned, with an aimless air peculiar to her, to the fire.
She knew them all so well, and they all bored her to tears, except Carron, whom she strongly hated. Everybody bored her, and everything. With the utmost sincerity she wondered for the thousandth time why she had ever been born.
As the others chattered, she went to a window and stood looking out over the moonlit lawn.
"Lady Brigit!"
She turned, and seeing the smile of delight on the boyish face before her, smiled back. "Monsieur Joyselle!"
Théo, who was twenty-two, and who adored her, flushed to the roots of his curly hair--and who was it who decided that blushes stop there, and do not continue up over the skull, down the back and out at one's heels?
"Yes, yes," he cried, holding her hand tightly in his. "Let us speak French, I--I love to speak my own tongue to you."
He himself had a delightful little fault in his speech, being quite incapable of pronouncing the English "r," rolling it in his throat in a way that always amused Brigit.
As he talked, her smile deepened in character, and from one of mere friendly greeting became