After dinner, when the three men found their way to the drawing-room,
Mrs. Lenox had started Madeline on a career of song. She was already in
the midst of a curious weird Roumanian thing, and Norris made straight
for the piano. Lena, ethereal in pale blue, was sympathetically
listening to perfection. She had lost her look of incongruity with her
surroundings. The dreamy eyes and the transparent skin found their
setting in her filmy gown and the rich soft light. Dick drew in his
breath. He seemed never to get used to her. Naturally he found a seat
near her. She was his protégée.
"Don't you sing, Miss Quincy?" was his inevitable query.
And she replied with inward anguish, "Not at all."
"But I'm sure you do. You look like incarnate song," he persisted.
"You're playing modest."
Lena cast down her eyes and said, "I am a very truthful little girl."
"Have you had a good time here?"
Then she looked up with kindling face. "Oh, so good! You can't know how
I thank you, Mr. Percival. I know I owe it to you. I feel as though I
were breathing the air I belong in, at last. It's so different from--but
you know all about my life," said Lena brokenly. "And Mrs. Lenox is so
sweet and kind, I just love her!"
"And Miss Elton?"
Lena stiffened and made no reply for an instant.
"Miss Elton is quite as clever as you men, isn't she?" Lena asked, in
quite another tone of voice.
"Infinitely more so," said Dick cordially.
"Do you like it?" she asked in a breathless way.
"Why, yes, in Madeline," he answered. "She isn't a bit priggish, you
know, but just naturally interested in everything good. Why? Don't you
and she get on?"
Lena gave an uneasy little twist as though she did not enjoy the
question, and she sighed.
"Why, frankly, I don't wholly. It's my own stupid little fault, of
course. I'm not clever. She's very charming; but she gets a little
tiresome to me."
"Does she?" said Dick ponderingly.
"It's very hateful of me to say such things about your particular
friend," said Lena contritely. "Besides, I don't mean--what do I mean? I
never thought it out. But it's so easy to tell you everything, Mr.
Percival. And I think it's rather nice for a girl to be more silly and
inconsequential part of the time." She laughed in a gurgling little
fashion.
"I believe it is," said Dick speculatively, as he looked at her. "But
Madeline's awfully jolly, you know. I've had more good times with her
than with any other girl I know. No nonsense about her."
"That's it,--no nonsense," said Lena, and this time her laugh was not so
pleasant; and Dick glanced across at Madeline with a kind of resentment.
"It isn't like Madeline to go back on a fellow that way," he said to
himself. "Of course she's had all kinds of advantages over this poor
little thing; but it's small of her not to forget them. I trusted her to
make things sweet; and for the first time she has disappointed me." He
looked at Madeline with a distinct feeling of irritation as she rose
from the piano. Mr. Lenox came and absorbed Lena, whom he was teaching
to answer him saucily. Lena enjoyed this process, and it had inspired
her to a really clever device, namely, to say vulgar little things in a
whimsical way, as though she knew better all the time but wanted to be
humorous. A good many other people have had the same brilliant idea, but
it was none the less original to Lena, and it saved a lot of trouble and
pretense. Norris and Miss Elton were hobnobbing and laughing at the
other end of the room, and Dick followed them.