The Knave of Diamonds | Page 4

the only light it boasted filtered through a square aperture in the wall which once had held a window. Through this aperture the curious could spy into the hall below, which just then was thronged with dancers who were crowding out of the ballroom and drifting towards the refreshment-room, the entrance to which was also visible.
An ancient settee had been placed in this coign of vantage, and upon this they established themselves by mutual consent.
The man was laughing a little below his breath. "I feel like a refugee," he said.
His companion leaned her arms upon the narrow row sill and gazed downwards. "A refugee from boredom?" she suggested. "We are all that, more or less."
"I dispute that," he said at once. "It is only the bores who are ever bored."
"And I dispute that," she replied, without turning, "of necessity, in self-defence."
He leaned forward to catch the light upon her profile. "You are bored?"
She smiled faintly in the gloom. "That is why I have engaged the services of a jester."
"By Jove," he said, "I'm glad you pitched on me."
She made a slight movement of impatience. "Isn't it rather futile to say that sort of thing?"
"Why?" he asked.
"Because you know quite well it was not a matter of choice."
"Rather a matter of manque de mieux?" he suggested coolly.
She turned from her contemplation of the crowd below. "I am not going to contradict you," she said, "I never foster amour propre in a man. It is always a plant of hardy growth."
"'Hardy' is not the word," he declared. "Say 'rank,' and you will be nearer the mark. I fully endorse your opinion. We are a race of conceited, egotistical jackanapeses, and we all think we are going to lick creation till a pretty woman comes along and makes us dance to her piping like a row of painted marionettes. But is the pretty woman any the happier, do you think, for tumbling us thus ruthlessly off our pedestals? I sometimes wonder if the sight of the sawdust doesn't make her wish she hadn't."
The drawl in his voice was very apparent as he uttered the last sentence. His chin was propped upon his hands. He was obviously studying her with a deliberate criticism that observed and considered every detail.
But his scrutiny held without embarrassing her. She met it with no conscious effort.
"I can't bear cynicism," she told him frankly.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Cynics--real cynics--never can."
"But I am not a cynic."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes, quite sure."
"And yet you tell me that you never take the trouble to flatter the inferior male. That's conflicting evidence, you know. Are you a man-hater, by the way?"
She shivered as if at a sudden draught. "I'm not prepared to answer that question off-hand." she said.
"Very prudent of you!" he commented. "Do you know I owe you an apology?"
"I shouldn't have said so."
"No? Well, let me confess. I'm rather good at confessing. I didn't believe you just now when you said you were twenty-five. Now I do. That single streak of prudence was proof absolute and convincing."
"I usually tell the truth," she said somewhat stiffly.
"Yes, it takes a genius to lie properly. I am not so good at it myself as I should like to be. But a woman of twenty-five ought not to look like a princess of eighteen--a tired princess moreover, who ought to have been sent to bed long ago."
Her laugh had in it a note of bitterness. "You certainly are not the sort of genius you aspire to be," she said, "any more than I am a princess of eighteen."
"But you will be a queen at thirty," he said. "Hullo! Here is someone coming! Don't speak, and p'r'aps they won't discover us. They can't stay long."
He rose swiftly with the words and blocked the little spy-hole with his body. Certainly footsteps were approaching, but they ceased before they reached the alcove at the end of the passage. There was another settee midway.
"Oh, this is quite comfortable," said a woman's voice. "Here I am, Major Shirley! It's dark, isn't it, but rather a relief after the glare downstairs. What a crush it is! I am beginning to think the Hunt Ball rather a farce, for it is next to impossible to dance."
"People don't know how to dance nowadays," grumbled Major Shirley in response. "I can't stand these American antics. That young Nap Errol fairly sickens me."
"Oh, but he is a splendid dancer," protested his partner tolerantly.
"Oh course you say so," growled the Major. "All women like that horrid little whipper-snapper. I can't see what in thunder they find to attract them. I call him a downright cad myself, and I'm inclined to think him a blackguard as well. He wouldn't be tolerated if it weren't for his dollars, and they all belong to his brother, I'm told."
"Ah!