"Why, of course," he said to himself, "I promised Rosalind to make love to her. And I can't make love to her when that woman's there. Curse her! she spoils my plans."
He had shut himself up in the luxurious little smoking-room which Mrs. Romaine had arranged for him. She knew the value of a room in which a man feels himself at liberty to do what he likes. She never came there without especial invitation: she always said that she preferred seeing her brother in her own drawing-room--that she was not like Miss Brooke, and did _not_ smoke cigarettes. But that was one of the little ways in which Rosalind used to emphasize the difference between herself and the women whom she did not love.
At any rate, Oliver was alone. The curtains were drawn, the lamp was lighted, a bright fire burned in the grate. He had drawn up a softly-cushioned lounging chair to the fire, and was peacefully smoking a remarkably good cigar.
But his frame of mind was anything but peaceful. He had been troubled for some days, and he did not know what troubled him. He was now beginning to find out.
"What are my plans, I wonder?" he reflected. "To make Lesley fall in love with me?--I wish I could! She is as cold as ice; as innocent as a child: and yet I think there is a tremendous capacity for passion in those dark eyes of hers, those mobile, sensitive lips! What lips to kiss! what eyes to flash back fire and feeling! what a splendid woman to win and show the world! It would be like loving a goddess--as if Diana herself had stooped from Olympus to grace Endymion!"
"What a fool I am! Poetizing like a boy; and all about a girl who never can be my wife at all. That's the worst part of it. I am engaged--engaged! unutterably ridiculous word!--to marry little Ethel Kenyon, the pretty actress at the Novelty. The respectable, wealthy, well-connected actress, moreover--the product of modern civilization: the young woman of our day who aspires to purify the drama and vindicate the claims of histrionic art--what rubbish it all is! If Ethel were a ballet-dancer, or had taken to opera bouffe, she would be much more entertaining! But her enthusiasms, and her belief in herself and her mission, along with that _mignonne_, provoking, pretty, little face of hers, are altogether too incongruous! No, Ethel bores me, it must be confessed; and I have got to marry her--all for a paltry twenty thousand pounds! What a fool I was to propose before I had seen Brooke's daughter.