With Edged Tools | Page 4

hampered places.
He was above six feet; but, being of slight build, he moved with a
certain languidness which saved him from that unwieldiness usually
associated with large men in a drawing-room.
Such was Jack Meredith, one of the best known figures in London
society. He had hitherto succeeded in moving through the mazes of that
coterie, as he now moved through this room, without jarring against
any one.


CHAPTER II.
OVER THE OLD GROUND

A man who never makes mistakes never makes anything else either.
Miss Millicent Chyne was vaguely conscious of success--and such a
consciousness is apt to make the best of us a trifle elated. It was
certainly one of the best balls of the season, and Miss Chyne's dress
was, without doubt, one of the most successful articles of its sort there.
Jack Meredith saw that fact and noted it as soon as he came into the
room. Moreover, it gratified him, and he was pleased to reflect that he
was no mean critic in such matters. There could be no doubt about it,
because he KNEW as well as any woman there. He knew that Millicent
Chyne was dressed in the latest fashion--no furbished-up gown from
the hands of her maid, but a unique creation from Bond Street.
"Well," she asked in a low voice, as she handed him her programme,
"are you pleased with it?"
"Eminently so."
She glanced down at her own dress. It was not the nervous glance of
the debutante, but the practised flash of experienced eyes which see
without appearing to look.
"I am glad," she murmured.
He handed her back the card with the orthodox smile and bow of
gratitude, but there was something more in his eyes.
"Is that what you did it for?" he inquired.
"Of course," with a glance half coquettish, half humble.
She took the card and allowed it to drop pendent from her fan without
looking at it. He had written nothing on it. This was all a form. The
dances that were his had been inscribed on the engagement-card long
before by smaller fingers than his.
She turned to take her attendant partner's arm with a little flaunt- -a
little movement of the hips to bring her dress, and possibly herself,

more prominently beneath Jack Meredith's notice. His eyes followed
her with that incomparably pleasant society smile which he had no
doubt inherited from his father. Then he turned and mingled with the
well-dressed throng, bowing where he ought to bow--asking with
fervour for dances in plain but influential quarters where dances were
to be easily obtained.
And all the while his father and Lady Cantourne watched.
"Yes, I THINK," the lady was saying, "that that is the favoured one."
"I fear so."
"I noticed," observed Lady Cantourne, "that he asked for a dance."
"And apparently got one--or more."
"Apparently so, Sir John."
"Moreover--"
Lady Cantourne turned on him with her usual vivacity.
"Moreover?" she repeated.
"He did not need to write it down on the card; it was written there
already."
She closed her fan with a faint smile
"I sometimes wonder," she said, "whether, in our young days, you were
so preternaturally observant as you are now."
"No," he answered, "I was not. I affected scales of the very opaquest
description, like the rest of my kind."
In the meantime this man's son was going about his business with a
leisurely savoir-faire which few could rival. Jack Meredith was the
beau-ideal of the society man in the best acceptation of the word. One

met him wherever the best people congregated, and he invariably
seemed to know what to do and how to do it better than his compeers.
If it was dancing in the season, Jack Meredith danced, and no man
rivalled him. If it was grouse shooting, Jack Meredith held his gun as
straight as any man. All the polite accomplishments in their season
seemed to come to him without effort; but there was in all the same
lack of heart--that utter want of enthusiasm which imparted to his
presence a subtle suggestion of boredom. The truth was that he was
over-educated. Sir John had taught him how to live and move and have
his being with so minute a care, so keen an insight, that existence
seemed to be nothing but an habitual observance of set rules.
Sir John called him sarcastically his "bright boy," his "hopeful
offspring," the "pride of his old age"; but somewhere in his shrivelled
old heart there nestled an unbounded love and admiration for his son.
Jack had assimilated his teaching with a wonderful aptitude. He had as
nearly as possible realised Sir John Meredith's idea of what an English
gentleman should be, and the old aristocrat's standard was
uncompromisingly high. Public school, University, and