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And she added with the charming fellowship for which she was conspicuous at these hours: "You know I don't think any one yet has been quite so much struck with me as you." "Not even Peter Sherringham?" her host jested while he stepped back to judge of the effect of a line. "Oh Mr. Sherringham's different. You're an artist." "For pity's sake don't say that!" he cried.
Even when so established it struck him at first as precarious, in the light, or the darkness, of the inexpressive faces of the other ladies, seated in couples and rows on sofas there were several in addition to Julia and the Dormers; mainly the wives, with their husbands, of Sherringham's fellow-secretaries scarcely one of whom he felt he might count upon for a modicum of gush when the girl should have finished.
Lady Agnes wore much of the time the countenance she might have shown at the theatre during a play in which pistols were fired; and indeed the manner of the young reciter had become more spasmodic and more explosive. It appeared, however, that the company in general thought her very clever and successful; which showed, to Sherringham's sense, how little they understood the matter.
His originality had always been that he appeared to have none; and if in the first instance he had introduced his bright, young, political prodigy to Miriam and her mother, that was an exception for which Peter Sherringham's interference had been mainly responsible.
"Oh yes," the girl rejoined to this, "with Mr. Sherringham's sister, Mrs. what's her name? I always forget." And when he had pronounced the word with a reluctance he doubtless failed sufficiently to conceal he hated to talk of Julia by any name and didn't know what business Miriam had with her she went on: "That's the one the beauty, the wonderful beauty. I shall never forget how handsome she looked the day she found me here. I don't in the least resemble her, but I should like to have a try at that type some day in a comedy of manners. But who the devil will write me a comedy of manners? There it is! The danger would be, no doubt, that I should push her
"He used to look greasy, all the same" Grace bore on it with a dull weight. "His name ought to have been Tallow." "You're not saying what Julia would like, if that's what you are trying to say," her brother observed. "Don't be vulgar, Grace," said Lady Agnes. "I know Peter Sherringham's birthday!" Biddy broke out innocently, as a pacific diversion.
Sherringham's whole profession has been that he rejoices in her as she is, and that the theatre, the organised theatre, will be, as Matthew Arnold was in those very days pronouncing it, irresistible; and it is the promptness with which he sheds his pretended faith as soon as it feels in the air the breath of reality, as soon as it asks of him a proof or a sacrifice, it is this that excites her doubtless sufficiently arrogant scorn.
"I couldn't have held out if I hadn't been so sure of Miriam," said Mrs. Rooth. "Well, you needn't hold out any longer." "Don't you trust her?" asked Sherringham's hostess. "Trust her?" "You don't trust yourself. That's why you were silent, why we might have thought you were dead, why we might have perished ourselves."
This conviction was the one artless thing that glimmered like a young joy through the tragic mask of Constance, and Sherringham's heart beat faster as he caught it in her face. It only showed her as more intelligent, and yet there had been a time when he thought her stupid!
Miriam looked from one of her interlocutors to the other as if there were joy for her in this report of Sherringham's remarks joy accompanied and partly mitigated, however, by a quicker vision of what might have passed between a secretary of embassy and a creature so exquisite as Mademoiselle Voisin. "Ah you're wonderful people a most interesting impression!" she yearningly sighed.
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