"Dear me, Mr. Lorimer, you are quite a stranger!" she observes somewhat satirically. "We thought you had made up your mind to settle in Norway!"
"Did you really, though!" and Lorimer smiles languidly. "I wonder at that,--for you knew I came back from that region in the August of last year."
"And since then I suppose you have played the hermit?" inquires her ladyship indifferently, unfurling her fan of ostrich feathers and waving it slowly to and fro.
"By no means! I went off to Scotland with a friend, Alec Macfarlane, and had some excellent shooting. Then, as I never permit my venerable mamma to pass the winter in London, I took her to Nice, from which delightful spot we returned three weeks ago."
Lady Winsleigh laughs. "I did not ask you for a categorical explanation of your movements, Mr. Lorimer," she says lightly--"I'm sure I hope you enjoyed yourself?"
He bows gravely. "Thanks! Yes,--strange to say, I did manage to extract a little pleasure here and there out of the universal dryness of things."
"Have you seen your friend, Sir Philip, since he came to town?" asks Mrs. Rush-Marvelle in her stately way.
"Several times. I have dined with him and Lady Errington frequently. I understand they are to be here to-night?"
Lady Winsleigh fans herself a little more rapidly, and her full crimson lips tighten into a thin, malicious line.
"Well, I asked them, of course,--as a matter of form," she says carelessly,--"but I shall, on the whole, be rather relieved if they don't come."
A curious, amused look comes over Lorimer's face.
"Indeed! May I ask why?"
"I should think the reason ought to be perfectly apparent to you"--and her ladyship's eyes flash angrily. "Sir Philip is all very well--he is by birth a gentleman,--but the person he has married is not a lady, and it is an exceedingly unpleasant duty for me to have to receive her."
A feint tinge of color flushes Lorimer's brow. "I think," he says slowly, "I think you will find yourself mistaken, Lady Winsleigh. I believe--" Here he pauses, and Mrs. Rush-Marvelle fixes him with a stony stare.
"Are we to understand that she is educated?" she inquires freezingly. "Positively well-educated?"
Lorimer laughs. "Not according to the standard of modern fashionable requirements!" he replies.
Mrs. Marvelle sniffs the air portentously,--Lady Clara curls her lip. At that moment everybody makes respectful way for one of the most important guests of the evening--a broad-shouldered man of careless attire, rough hair, fine features, and keen, mischievous eyes--a man of whom many stand in wholesome awe,--Beaufort Lovelace, or as he is commonly called. "Beau" Lovelace, a brilliant novelist, critic, and pitiless satirist. For him society is a game,--a gay humming-top which he spins on the palm of his hand for his own private amusement. Once a scribbler in an attic, subsisting bravely on bread and cheese and hope, he now lords it more than half the year in a palace of fairy-like beauty on the Lago di Como,--and he is precisely the same person who was formerly disdained and flouted by fair ladies because his clothes were poor and shabby, yet for whom they now practise all the arts known to their sex, in fruitless endeavors to charm and conciliate him. For he laughs at them and their pretty ways,--and his laughter is merciless. His arrowy glance discovers the "poudre de riz" on their blooming cheeks,--the carmine on their lips, and the "kohl" on their eyelashes. He knows purchased hair from the natural growth--and he has a cruel eye for discerning the artificial contour of a "made-up" figure. And like a merry satyr dancing in a legendary forest, he capers and gambols in the vast fields of Humbug--all forms of it are attacked and ridiculed by his powerful and pungent pen,--he is a sort of English Heine, gathering in rich and daily harvests from the never-perishing incessantly-growing crop of fools. And as he,--in all the wickedness of daring and superior intellect,-- approaches, Lady Winsleigh draws herself up with the conscious air of a beauty who knows she is nearly perfect,--Mrs. Rush-Marvelle makes a faint endeavor to settle the lace more modestly over her rebellious bosom,--Marcia smiles coquettishly, and Mrs. Van Clupp brings her diamond pendant (value, a thousand guineas) more prominently forward,--for as she thinks, poor ignorant soul! "wealth always impresses these literary men more than anything!" In one swift glance Beau Lovelace observes all these different movements,--and the inner fountain of his mirth begins to bubble. "What fun those Van Clupps are!" he thinks. "The old woman's got a diamond plaster on her neck! Horrible taste! She's anxious to show how much she's worth, I suppose! Mrs. Marvelle wants a shawl, and Lady Clara a bodice. By Jove! What sights the women do make of themselves!"