Part 11 (1/2)
”Yes, I rode well, otherwise I shouldn't regret it.” Katherine smiled with even more a.s.surance under the added intensity of the _pince-nez_.
”You enjoy the excelling, then, more than the feeling.”
”That sounds vain; I certainly shouldn't feel pleasure if I were conscious of playing second fiddle to anybody.”
”A very vain young lady,” Odd's smile was quite alertly interested, ”and a self-conscious young lady, too.”
”Yes, rather, I think,” Katherine owned; frankness became her, ”but I am very conscious of everything, myself included. I am merely one among the many phenomena that come under my notice, and, as I am the nearest of them all, naturally the most intimately interesting. Every one is self-conscious, Mr. Odd, if they have any personality at all.”
”And you are clever,” Peter pursued, in a tone of enumeration, his smile becoming definitely humorous as he added: ”And I am very impudent.”
Katherine was not sure that she had made just the effect she had aimed for, but certainly Mr. Odd would give her credit for frankness.
It was agreed that he should come for tea the next afternoon.
”After five,” Katherine said; ”Hilda doesn't get in till so late; and I know that Hilda is the _clou_ of the occasion.”
”Does Hilda take her painting so seriously as all that?”
”She doesn't care about anything, _anything_ else,” Katherine said gravely, adding, still gravely, ”Hilda is very, very lovely.”
”I hope you weren't too much disappointed,” Lady---- said to Odd, just before he was going; ”is she not a charming girl?”
”She really is; the disappointment was only comparative. It was Hilda whom I knew so well. The dearest little girl.”
”I have not seen much of her,” Lady---- said, with some vagueness of tone. ”I have called on Mrs. Archinard, a very sweet woman, clever, too; but the other girl was never there. I don't fancy she is much help to her mother, you know, as Katherine is. Katherine goes about, brings people to see her mother, makes a _milieu_ for her; such a sad invalid she is, poor dear! But Hilda is wrapt up in her work, I believe. Rather a pity, don't you think, for a girl to go in so seriously for a fad like that? She paints very nicely, to be sure; I fancy it all goes into that, you know.”
”What goes into that?” Odd asked, conscious of a little temper; all seemed combined to push Hilda more and more into a slightly derogatory and very mysterious background.
”Well, she is not so clever as her sister. Katherine can entertain a roomful of people. Grace, tact, sympathy, the impalpable something that makes success of the best kind, Katherine has it.”
Katherine's friendly, breezy frankness had certainly amused and interested Odd at the dinner-table, but Lady ----'s remarks now produced in him one of those quick and unreasoning little revulsions of feeling by which the judgments of a half-hour before are suddenly reversed.
Katherine's cleverness was that of the majority of the girls he took down to dinner, rather _voulu_, ba.n.a.l, tiresome. Odd felt that he was unjust, also that he was a little cross.
”There are some clevernesses above entertaining a roomful of people.
After all, success isn't the test, is it?”
Lady---- smiled, an unconvinced smile--
”You should be the last person to say that.”
”I?” Odd made no attempt to contradict the evident flattery of his hostess' tones, but his e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n meant to himself a volume of negatives. If success were the test, he was a sorry failure.
He was making his way out of the room when Captain Archinard stopped him.
”I have hardly had one word with you, Odd,” said the Captain, whose high-bridged nose and finely set eyes no longer saved his face from its fundamental look of peevish pettiness. ”Mrs. Brooke is going to take Katherine home. It's a fine night, won't you walk?”
Odd accepted the invitation with no great satisfaction; he had never found the Captain sympathetic. After lifting their hats to Mrs. Brooke and Katherine as they drove out of the Emba.s.sy Courtyard, the two men turned into the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore together.