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Ulford came in just as the curtain was going up, and the introductions had to be gone through with a certain mysterious caution, and the sitting arrangements made with as little noise as possible. Lady Holme managed them deftly. Mr. Laycock sat nearest the stage, then Leo Ulford next to her, on her right. Sir Donald was on her other side, Mrs.
She looked up gaily to greet Leo and saw her husband coming into the room. She was greatly startled. It had never occurred to her that Fritz was quite as likely to arrive before Leo Ulford as Leo Ulford to arrive before Fritz. Why had she never thought of so obvious a possibility? She could not imagine.
The cab had stopped before their door, and she saw Leo Ulford standing on the pavement with his back to the house. He was feeling in his pocket, evidently for some money to give to the cabman. If she could only attract his attention somehow and send him away! She glanced back. Fritz was coming towards her with a look of surprise on his face. "Leave me alone," she said unevenly.
But her talk and manner in conversation were so unlike her singing, so little accorded with the look that often came into her eyes while she sang, that she was a perpetual puzzle to such elderly men as Sir Donald Ulford, to such young men as Robin Pierce, and even to some women. They came about her like beggars who have heard a chink of gold, and she showed them a purse that seemed to be empty.
As she passed Leo Ulford it brushed gently against him, and he drummed the large fingers of his left hand with sudden violence on the tablecloth, at the same time pursing his chubby lips and then opening his mouth as if he were going to say something. Sir Donald rose and bowed. Mrs.
Perhaps it was the first time in her life that the affection of a man whom she really liked was distasteful to her. It made her uneasy, doubtful of herself just then, to be loved as Robin loved her. Carey had come back to town, but he went nowhere. He was in bad odour. Sir Donald Ulford was almost the only person he saw anything of at this time.
Behind them, in the distance, was visible the yellow and sunken face of Sir Donald Ulford. When Miss Schley gained the top of the staircase Lady Holme saw that their gowns were almost exactly alike. Hers was sewn with diamonds, but otherwise there was scarcely any difference.
If she only knew which mood had been his to-night she thought she would feel calmer. The uncertainty in which she was made mind and body tingle. If Fritz had remembered to lock the door, Leo Ulford would try to get in, fail, and go away. But if he had not remembered, at any moment Leo Ulford might walk into the room triumphantly with the latch-key in his hand. And it was nearly half-past twelve.
Long ago Lady Holme had distracted Leo's wandering glances from the American and fixed them on herself. With the instinct to be common of an utterly common nature Miss Schley had resolved to awake a double jealousy of husband and wife by exhibiting Leo Ulford as her ami intime, perhaps as the latest victim to her fascination.
"It's Sir Donald's son, Leo," said Lady Cardington. Pimpernel Schley lifted her eyes for an instant from her plate, glanced at Leo Ulford, and cast them down again. "Leo Ulford's a blackguard," observed Mrs. Trent. "And when a fair man's a blackguard he's much more dangerous than a dark man." All the women stared at Leo Ulford with a certain eagerness. "He's good-looking," said Sally Perceval.
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