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She felt angry with Miss Schley for resembling her in colouring, for resembling her in another respect capacity for remaining calmly silent in the midst of fashionable chatterboxes. "Will she?" she said to Mrs. Wolfstein. "Yes. If she'd never been shipwrecked she'd have been almost entertaining, but there's Sir Donald Ulford trying to attract your attention." "Where?"
"I only want some air." "But " "Leave me oh, do leave me alone!" He stopped, but stood staring at her in blank amazement. She dared not do anything. Leo Ulford stretched out his arm towards the cabman, who bent down from his perch. He took the money, looked at it, then bent down again, showing it to Leo and muttering something. Doubtless he was saying that it was not enough.
Miss Schley, Leo Ulford, even Fritz in his suppressed rage and jealousy of a male animal openly trampled upon, had nothing to do with her, could have no effect on her at this moment. She remembered that she had once sighed for release. Well, it seemed to her as if release were at hand. The tenor finished his romance. Again the muffled applause sounded.
"I can always manage to find what I want," he returned, still smiling. When he had gone back to his table Robin Pierce said: "How insolent Englishmen are allowed to be in Society! It always strikes me after I've been a long time abroad. Doesn't anybody mind it?" "Do you mean that you consider Mr. Ulford insolent?" "In manner. Yes, I do." "Well, I think there's something like Fritz about him."
Leo's trumpet, all the while nearly deafened by Fritz's demonstrations, which even outran Mr. Laycock's. When at last they died away she said to Leo: "We are going on to the Elwyns. Shall you be there?" He stood over her, while Mrs. Ulford watched him, drooping her head sideways. "Yes." "We can talk it all over quietly. Fritz!" "What's that about the Elwyns?" said Lord Holme. "I was telling Mr.
"Do as much the what?" cried Mrs. Ulford, holding the trumpet at right angles to her pink face. Leo Ulford leant backwards and hissed "Hush!" at her. She looked at him and then at Lady Holme, and a sudden expression of old age came into her bird-like face and seemed to overspread her whole body.
The angel in her shuddered at the siren in her now, as at a witch with power to evoke Satanic things, and she forgot the trembling of her hands in the sensation of the trembling of her soul. The blow of Fritz, the blow of Leo Ulford, had both struck her. She felt a beaten creature. The door opened. She did not turn round, but she saw in the glass her husband come in. His coat was torn.
Perhaps he would have been more sorry if Leo Ulford had not come into Lady Holme's life, and if the defiance within her had not driven her into an intimacy that distressed Mrs. Leo and puzzled Sir Donald. Robin's time in London was very nearly at an end. The season was at its height. Every day was crowded with engagements.
She had let herself go, careless whether she set the poor pink eyelids of Mrs. Leo fluttering or not. The hint of Fritz which she recognised in Leo Ulford had vaguely attracted her to him from the first. How her world would have laughed at such a domestic sentiment!
He wiped his hands again and held out one to lead Lady Holme to the platform. But she ignored it gently and went on alone. He followed, carrying the music and perspiring. As they disappeared Miss Schley got up and moved to a chair close by the screen that hid the platform. She beckoned to Leo Ulford and he followed her.
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