Quite suddenly the true light flashed upon me. I had been slow-sighted indeed! So that was what she had come here for to-day! Miss Hortense was going to pay her compliments to Miss La Heu. I believe that my sight might still have been slow but for that miraculous sweetness upon the face of Eliza. She was ready for the compliments! Well, I sat expectant--and disappointment was by no means my lot.
Hortense finished her lunch. “And so this interesting place is where you work?”
Eliza was continuously and miraculously sweet. “The Exchange includes that.”
“I shall hope you will be present to taste some of yours on the day it is mine.”
“I shall accept the invitation if my friends send me one.”
No blood flowed from Hortense at this, and she continued with the same smooth deliberation.
“The list is of necessity very small; but I shall see that it includes you.”
“You are not going to postpone it any more, then?”
No blood flowed at this, either. “I doubt if John--if Mr. Mayrant--would brook further delay, and my father seems stronger, at last. How much do I owe you for your very good food?”
It is a pity that a larger audience could not have been there to enjoy this skilful duet, for it held me hanging on every musical word of it. There, at the far back end of the long room, I sat alone at my table, pretending to be engaged over a sandwich that was no more in existence--external, I mean--and a totally empty cup of chocolate. I lifted the cup, and bowed over the plate, and used the paper Japanese napkin, and generally went through the various discreet paces of eating, quite breathless, all the while, to know which of them was coming out ahead. There was no fairness in their positions; Hortense had Eliza in a cage, penned in by every fact; but it doesn’t do to go too near some birds, even when they’re caged, and, while these two birds had been giving their sweet manifestations of song, Eliza had driven a peck or two home through the bars, which, though they did not draw visible blood, as I have said, probably taught Hortense that a Newport education is not the only instruction which fits you for drawing-room war to the knife.
Her small reckoning was paid, and she had drawn on one long, tawny glove. Even this act was a luxury to watch, so full it was of the feminine, of the stretching, indolent ease that the flesh and the spirit of this creature invariably seemed to move with. But why didn’t she go? This became my wonder now, while she slowly drew on the second glove. She was taking more time than it needed.