"It will have to be ready by the 31st," she stipulated, and then she smiled as she invariably did when she remembered Ned Blackborough.
Myfanwy Jones took in the smile with critical shrewdness. Had she been asked, she would have said it was not exactly the smile of a married woman, although Aura had given her name as Mrs. Cruttenden.
What of that? Myfanwy's notions were decidedly broad, and if she could compass a good time, as she herself counted a good time, for this lovely girl, the lovely girl should have one.
"Miss Moore! Madam's measure!" she called in queenly fashion, and searched in her beaded-satchel--pockets would have disturbed the elegant set of her dress--for a pencil. It had slipped inside a folded paper, and as Myfanwy removed it, she smiled in her turn. For she had caught a glimpse of the writing and printing inside the paper.
"Miss Alicia Edwards," "Messrs. Williams and Edward," "per M. Jones."
Only that morning Myfanwy had paid the bill and received her commission on the sales; so there it was awaiting developments.
"If Madam will come for one fitting," suggested Myfanwy superbly. She was going to stake her reputation on this dress, and she meant not to lose it.
The result exceeded even her expectations.
Aura looked at herself in the long glass and then at Myfanwy, who, with infinite condescension, had insisted on seeing Madam dressed.
"What have you done to me?" she asked, "I don't know myself."
Was it the long, straight, brilliant, moonshiny folds that made her look so tall and slim? Was it the tiny, scarcely-seen silver threads outlining the flowing curves of dead-white velvet about the hem which made one think of moonlit clouds? Was it the cunningly devised drapery of lace which made the bodice seem a loose sheath to loveliness?
Myfanwy Jones looked at Aura with undisguised pity. "It is only that Madam is so seldom dressed; she is only clothed; but to-night she will be the best-dressed person in the rooms." She looked at her doll with a sphynx-like expression not without some malice in it. "If Madam will allow me," she said, and her deft fingers were in the bronze hair: "so--the shape of Madam's head is heavenly--and--and not the diamond brooch--the dress requires nothing but Madam's self. That is right! I trust Madam will enjoy herself."
Aura went downstairs to show herself to her husband, with a queer new feeling of power tingling in every vein. Why at two-and-twenty should she hold herself derelict? A ship need not always steer straight to the pole.
Ted had been extremely busy and rather irritable ever since she had returned; not irritable with her--he never was that--but _distrait_ and careless. In a way it had been a relief, since it had given her time to try and adjust herself to her new outlook. She had not even spoken to him regarding that new outlook; she was almost doubting if she should. Her silence would, no doubt, be a bar to perfect confidence; but was such a thing as perfect confidence possible between two people so dissimilar as she and Ted? Perhaps it was better to drift on. Whither?
The question would come with a pang, sometimes bringing the thought that it might have been better if she and the little one--the little daughter they told her--had gone out hand in hand to wander in the "groves of asphodel." That was Ned's phrase; and with that would come another pang.
What would she do without Ned? He had been so kind. He had lent her books to read, he had taken her out in the motor, he had even talked of the dead baby almost as if he understood how dear a memory it had to be.
Ted looked at her from head to foot, and a slow smile crept over his good-looking sensible face.
"That is something like," he said. "By Jove! you look most awfully fetching! A little ice-bergy," he continued, bending to kiss the white shoulder above the Mechlin lace: "but--but that's your style. Only I wish you had more colour. If this 'biz' of mine comes off, we'll take a holiday somewhere--Monte Carlo, perhaps--the Hirsches are going there. Now we ought to be starting. You don't mind my dancing, do you dearest? I do wish you'd learn. It looks so odd your sitting out with the old fogies."
"I shall sit out with Ned," she replied lightly.
For the first time in her life Ted frowned at her. "It seems to me,"
he said quite nastily, "that you have done a lot of sitting-out with Ned lately. I don't half like it."
She stared at him, and all the way to New Park sat thinking of what he had said. Was it possible he was going to be jealous of her? Of her who had married him to get rid of the very possibility.
A ray of light from a gas-lamp lit up her face, and she found Ted's eyes fastened on her.
"You are most awfully fetching to-night--you look so jolly mysterious somehow," he said joyously, putting his cheek against hers. "Give me a kiss, wifelet."
She gave him one. She would have given him a dozen of the trivial things had he asked for them! Then she laid her hand on his.
"You weren't serious about Ned, were you?" she asked.
"Not--not altogether," he admitted with a smile; "but you can't be too careful, my child. People are the devil to talk. And you mustn't forget that he did want to marry you."
She must not forget! And all her efforts had been to forget it utterly. What a queer world it was!
"Here we are," said Ted cheerfully. "By Jove! Blackborough is doing it well!"
For once, indeed, New Park looked habitable. Ned, remembering the East, had had it illuminated in Indian fashion, and even the heavy-browed architraves and the stucco columns looked passable outlined by rows of little lamps. Great cressets blazed following the ground plan of the huge pile, the balustrades of the formal terraces shone in lines of light. The wide portico, carefully enclosed, was full of palms, and festooned with vines from which hung great clusters of grapes. Within, it was impossible to recognise the formal suites of rooms. They seemed to have vanished, taking with them all the stiff furniture, the gorgeous clogging carpets. In their places were airy pavilions, orange gardens, great groves of tall lilies. Money had been spent lavishly in getting rid of all traces of money. And in the centre of it all stood Ned Blackborough with Helen Tressilian, looking years younger, beside him, as she received congratulations on her approaching marriage, all the time keeping a watchful eye lest Peter Ramsay should weary after his recent illness; but he looked alert and keen as ever.
"A small and early, and you come at a quarter past nine!" said Ned, then paused, absolutely dazzled by the shiny folds, the moonlit clouds, the parted sheath of the bodice concealing surely the most beautiful thing in the world. His vagrant mind reverted on the instant with a quaint admixture of regret and exultation to the adornment he had ordered for the select supper-table at which Aura was to be entertained. This woman was beyond such simplicities as a little purple iris. For her, white roses, tuberoses, gardenias, stephanotis; all the deadly sweet white things in the world, even the poisonous _dhatura!_
"I have put my name down for some dances later on," he said, handing her a programme; "I shall be busy at first, but--let me see--Lord Scudamore, I am going to give you the honour of being presented to Mrs. Cruttenden. Remember, you are engaged to me for supper."
"Is that wise? What will _they_ say?" asked Helen doubtfully, as Aura and her cavalier--a diplomatic-looking wearer of an immaculate dress-suit, with some sort of a ribbon across the shirt--moved off.
"_They_, my dear Helen, will by that time be envying me my good luck, at least all the men will, and I will tell the cavilling women she is a bride. Did you ever see such a fairly bewildering dress? She is the whole Dream of Fair Women rolled into one."
"Let us go into the Winter Palace. Have you seen it?" said Aura's diplomat, and she went with him nothing loth. Ten minutes afterwards, however, she complained of a draught, and left it somewhat hurriedly, she with fine flaming cheeks and he somewhat sulkily. That was the worse of rustics; they could not understand the most ordinary _persiflage_.
"Where would you like to sit? I am afraid I am engaged for this dance," he said icily.
"Oh I anywhere, I like to be alone," replied Aura.
It was not long her fate. Mr. Hirsch spied her out and bore down upon her, white waistcoat and all. His open admiration was almost a relief, mixed up as it was with still more boundless adoration of his daughter, who came flitting past in Ted's arms. They were too much absorbed in their waltz and their enjoyment of it to notice the sitters out, but Mr. Hirsch waxed enthusiastic over their appearance.
They were a couple to be proud of, and he really _was_ becoming quite proud of Ted, who promised to be a very rich man. He felt quite like a father towards him; he had indeed fathered him into the world of speculation, and--ha--ha--ha--then he waxed exceedingly hilarious--if Mr. Cruttenden hadn't been in such a terrible hurry to get married, who knows but what a family arrangement--she must excuse him, but really if she would look so superlatively beautiful she must expect the world to go crazy.
"What are you laughing at so loudly, papa?" asked Miss Hirsch, pulled up in the next round by her parent's laughter. "I'm sure he must be boring you terribly, Mrs. Cruttenden. And there is Mr. Leveson, papa, just dying to be introduced--he told me so just now--do go and fetch him. You'll find him awfully amusing, Mrs. Cruttenden, he has seen so much life."
He had seen too much for Aura. She came out from the conservatory white with anger. By this time half the men in the room were looking at her, and it was no longer any question of being alone. She was beginning to feel frightened, she looked vainly for Ted, but he having seen her, as he phrased it self-complacently, "well-started," was amusing himself. So, in the crush of smiling, flattering faces, she saw Ned Blackborough's, and caught almost convulsively at his arm, and his quiet decorous claim.
"Our dance, I think."
"Oh! Ned!" she said hurriedly, "do let us go to some quiet place where we can get away from everybody."
The suggestion was but too welcome. Free for a time from his duties as host, he cast all prudence to the winds. The sort of thing that had been going on was all very well, but it must end in the inevitable way. When she was happy, he might have been a fool. Now, he would not be one. It was not as if he would be doing Ted any real harm. If he was free of her he would be free to marry and have sons to inherit his money, he could even marry Miss Hirsch!
The library whither they escaped looked snug and comfortable, all untouched by the babel without. The reading lamp by the blazing fire; Ned's book as he had left it.
"This is nice," she said with a little shiver of satisfaction, and taking up the book crouched down in her usual fashion by the fire to see what it was.
Ned's pulses were bounding. It was all he could do to keep his voice steady.
"You oughtn't to do Cinderella in that lovely gown!" he said.
Aura looked at him critically. "I feel like Cinderella," she said. "I believe I want to go home before twelve; and I don't think I like the gown; it makes me something I never was before."
There was a silence. Ned Blackborough was telling himself he was a fool.
"I shall put out the light if you insist on trying to read a bad French novel instead of speaking to me," he said. "There!--" the click of the electric button sounded clear. "It's much nicer with the firelight. Give that thing to me."