xtemps, and talked to the marchioness
and other women of her set, in reality he was watching Beatrice, who,
her pride roused by his presence, laughed and chatted with me and other
men with her old gay abandon, and, impervious to dereglement though he
was, I fancy even _he_ felt it a severe trial of his composure when Lady
Pursang, who had been the last five years in India with her husband, and
who was ignorant of or had forgotten the name of the girl Earlscourt was
to have married the year before, asked him, when the concert was over,
to let her introduce him to her, yet Beatrice Boville, bringing him in
innocent cruelty up to that little Pythoness, with whom he had parted so
passionately and bitterly ten months before! Happy for them that they
had that armor which the Spartans called heroism, the stoics philosophy,
and we--simply style good breeding, or they would hardly have gone
through that ordeal as well as they did when she introduced them to each
other as strangers!--those two who had whispered such passionate love
words, given and received such fond caresses, vowed barely twelve
months before to pass their lifetime together! Happy for them they were
used to society, or they would hardly have bowed to each other as calmly
and admirably as they did, with the recollection of that night in which
they had parted so bitterly, so full as it was in the minds of both.
Beatrice was standing in one of the open windows of the little cabinet
de peinture almost empty, and when the marchioness moved away, satisfied
that she had introduced two people admirably fitted to entertain one
another, Earlscourt, with people flirting and talking within a few yards
of him, was virtually alone with Beatrice--for there is, after all, no
solitude like the solitude of a crowd--and _then_, for the first time in
his life, his self-possession forsook him. Beatrice was silent and very
pale, looking out of the window on to the Green Park, which the house
overlooked, and Earlscourt's pride had a hard struggle, but his passion
got the better of him, malgre lui, and he leaned towards her.

"Do you remember the last night we were together?"

She answered him bitterly. She had not forgiven him. She had sometimes,
I am half afraid, sworn to revenge herself.

"I am hardly likely to forget it, Lord Earlscourt."

He looked at her longingly and wistfully; his pride was softened, that
granite pride, hitherto so unassailable! and he bent nearer to her.