Drake glanced toward Nell, saw that she was surrounded, exchanged a
smile with her, then went off with Sir William to the smoking room. They
were in the middle of their cigars, and talking cattle and horses, when
Drake heard a carriage drive up.
"That's the Chesney people, I dare say," said Sir William, and
continued to dilate on a new rule which he was anxious that the
Agricultural Society should adopt, and Drake and he discussed it
exhaustively.
Nell had just finished a dance when she saw Lady Maltby hurry across the
room to receive four persons, two ladies and two men, who had just
arrived. It was the belated Chesney party. Their entrance attracted a
good deal of attention, and Nell herself was startled into interest and
curiosity by the appearance of one of the new arrivals. She thought that
she had never imagined--she had certainly never seen--so beautiful a
woman, or one so magnificently dressed.
A professional beauty in all her war paint is somewhat of a rara avis in
a quiet country house, and this professional beauty was the acknowledged
queen of her tribe. Her hair shone like gold, and it had been dressed by
a maid who had acquired her art at the hands of a famous Parisian
coiffeur; her complexion, of a delicate ivory, was tinted with the blush
of a rose; her lips were the Cupid-bow lips which Sir Joshua Reynolds
loved to paint. Naturally graceful, her figure was indebted to her
modiste for every adventitious aid the art of modern dressmaking can
bestow. Nell knew too little of dress to fully appreciate the exquisite
perfection of the _toilette de la danse_; she could only admire and
wonder. It was of a soft cream silk, rendered still softer in appearance
by cobweb lace, in which, as if caught by the filmy strands, as in a
net, were lustrous pearls. Diamonds glittered in the hair which served
them as a setting of gold. Her very gloves were unlike those of the
other women, and seemed to fit the long and slender hands like a fourth
skin.
"How beautiful!" she said involuntarily, and scarcely aware that she had
spoken aloud.
The man who was sitting beside her smiled.
"Like a picture, is she not?" he said. "In fact, I never see her but I
am reminded of a Lely or a Lawrence; one of those full-length pictures
in Hampton Court, you know!"
"I don't know," said Nell. "I've never been there."
"Well, you won't think it a fair comparison when you do see them," he
said; "for there isn't one of them half as beautiful as Lady Luce."