Coverton nodded and took him into a boyish confidence.
"Nor have I read it! The fact is, I didn't dare to do so—I was afraid I should be disappointed. I intend it to be the success of the season, Harswater."
He went to the play a night or two later, and there, in a box with people he knew, he saw Alicia Brookfield. He viewed her through his glass, decided that she was more positively "a beauty." To judge by the admiration of the man beside her, Coverton's opinion was not unshared. The sight of her with those people brought to his mind instantly where he had seen her name. It was in the Times's list of the dinner-guests at Lady Bayne's. He sought her as soon as he might. The common memory of an unusual meeting made a background for their renewed acquaintance piquant, humorous, intimate. Her timidity before him that afternoon had led him to think her very young; he had no regret in discovering she was more mature, more poised, far more woman of the world than he had dreamed.
In taking leave he said, "I am told—for I have asked—that you live in Paris."
"Yes."
"You are returning?"
"Soon."
"I should like to see you again."
"You will."
"When may I come?"
"Aren't we to be at Stoke-Poddington together? So I am told. Lady Bayne tells me we are on the same list?"
"I am delighted," he said—"delighted."
And at Stoke-Poddington he was all the more delighted in every hour that he could filch with her from golf and bridge and the fiddle-faddle with which fashionable boredom kills its leisure.
He had hitherto realized all his vulgar ambitions. Wealth, position, success, seemed to him vulgar, regarded alongside of his new ideal. But, spoiled creature of good fortune, Coverton was too secure in this beautiful possession. He toyed with his opportunity: in reality, he was dazzled by it, until, as though he played with light, it slipped through his fingers!
One morning as he came leisurely into the breakfast-room he was greeted by his hostess with the unwelcome news:
"Alicia, poor darling, has been telegraphed to go to her aunt, in Paris, post-haste. They're always pulling her back by a string when she's on the point of amusing herself."
"Pulling her back?" frowned the director of Murges. "Why doesn't she break the thread?"
