“Who can say? But I would distrust the post and Boney a thousand times, before ever I would doubt Ivor,” Jack answered firmly. “And Polly, if indeed she knows him, sure would feel the same. He is no man to change.”
“Nor, I think, is Polly the girl to change—either!”
“In this brilliant assemblage of rank and fashion, though lightened by the fire of genius and radiant with feminine charms, there is for me but one star of greatest magnitude, before which all lesser orbs fade into insignificance.”
So spoke Captain Albert Peirce in the ears of Polly Keene; and he felt that he had expressed himself with the utmost elegance. Gentlemen in those days were prone to more flowing speech than they are in these; and such speeches did not necessarily mean much.
Ninety years later the grandson or great-grandson of Captain Peirce would merely drag his moustache, and mutter, “Awfully pretty girl!” But the two modes of expression, though rather unlike, probably implied and imply much the same in the end.
Captain Peirce did not pull his moustache—partly because it was not the fashion to do so, but yet more for the sufficient reason that he had none to pull. He bent a little nearer to Polly; and that was the moment when Jack’s glance followed Molly’s in their direction.
Polly did not appear to repulse him. She did not even exert herself to turn her head away. She had so much of this sort of thing! One flowery speech more or less made very little difference. Had it not been for the persistent pressure put upon her by Mrs. Bryce, Polly would not have imagined that Captain Peirce meant or could mean anything seriously. She stood in one of her most graceful attitudes, toying with a large fan; and the light from innumerable wax candles fell upon her round fair arms.
“Can you by any chance divine who that star of greatest magnitude may be, sweet Polly?”
This was audacious, and Captain Peirce fully expected a rebuff in consequence.
It did not come so soon as he expected. A thrill ran through Polly, almost amounting to a shiver. She too was instantaneously carried back, as a few minutes earlier Molly had been, bridging at a leap four long slow years.
“Sweet Polly, may I speak?” Captain Ivor had said.