Part 54 (1/2)

”It will have to be ready by the 31st,” she stipulated, and then she smiled as she invariably did when she remembered Ned Blackborough.

Myfanwy Jones took in the smile with critical shrewdness. Had she been asked, she would have said it was not exactly the smile of a married woman, although Aura had given her name as Mrs. Cruttenden.

What of that? Myfanwy's notions were decidedly broad, and if she could compa.s.s a good time, as she herself counted a good time, for this lovely girl, the lovely girl should have one.

”Miss Moore! Madam's measure!” she called in queenly fas.h.i.+on, and searched in her beaded-satchel--pockets would have disturbed the elegant set of her dress--for a pencil. It had slipped inside a folded paper, and as Myfanwy removed it, she smiled in her turn. For she had caught a glimpse of the writing and printing inside the paper.

”Miss Alicia Edwards,” ”Messrs. Williams and Edward,” ”per M. Jones.”

Only that morning Myfanwy had paid the bill and received her commission on the sales; so there it was awaiting developments.

”If Madam will come for one fitting,” suggested Myfanwy superbly. She was going to stake her reputation on this dress, and she meant not to lose it.

The result exceeded even her expectations.

Aura looked at herself in the long gla.s.s and then at Myfanwy, who, with infinite condescension, had insisted on seeing Madam dressed.

”What have you done to me?” she asked, ”I don't know myself.”

Was it the long, straight, brilliant, moons.h.i.+ny folds that made her look so tall and slim? Was it the tiny, scarcely-seen silver threads outlining the flowing curves of dead-white velvet about the hem which made one think of moonlit clouds? Was it the cunningly devised drapery of lace which made the bodice seem a loose sheath to loveliness?

Myfanwy Jones looked at Aura with undisguised pity. ”It is only that Madam is so seldom dressed; she is only clothed; but to-night she will be the best-dressed person in the rooms.” She looked at her doll with a sphynx-like expression not without some malice in it. ”If Madam will allow me,” she said, and her deft fingers were in the bronze hair: ”so--the shape of Madam's head is heavenly--and--and not the diamond brooch--the dress requires nothing but Madam's self. That is right! I trust Madam will enjoy herself.”

Aura went downstairs to show herself to her husband, with a queer new feeling of power tingling in every vein. Why at two-and-twenty should she hold herself derelict? A s.h.i.+p need not always steer straight to the pole.

Ted had been extremely busy and rather irritable ever since she had returned; not irritable with her--he never was that--but _distrait_ and careless. In a way it had been a relief, since it had given her time to try and adjust herself to her new outlook. She had not even spoken to him regarding that new outlook; she was almost doubting if she should. Her silence would, no doubt, be a bar to perfect confidence; but was such a thing as perfect confidence possible between two people so dissimilar as she and Ted? Perhaps it was better to drift on. Whither?

The question would come with a pang, sometimes bringing the thought that it might have been better if she and the little one--the little daughter they told her--had gone out hand in hand to wander in the ”groves of asphodel.” That was Ned's phrase; and with that would come another pang.

What would she do without Ned? He had been so kind. He had lent her books to read, he had taken her out in the motor, he had even talked of the dead baby almost as if he understood how dear a memory it had to be.

Ted looked at her from head to foot, and a slow smile crept over his good-looking sensible face.

”That is something like,” he said. ”By Jove! you look most awfully fetching! A little ice-bergy,” he continued, bending to kiss the white shoulder above the Mechlin lace: ”but--but that's your style. Only I wish you had more colour. If this 'biz' of mine comes off, we'll take a holiday somewhere--Monte Carlo, perhaps--the Hirsches are going there. Now we ought to be starting. You don't mind my dancing, do you dearest? I do wish you'd learn. It looks so odd your sitting out with the old fogies.”

”I shall sit out with Ned,” she replied lightly.

For the first time in her life Ted frowned at her. ”It seems to me,”

he said quite nastily, ”that you have done a lot of sitting-out with Ned lately. I don't half like it.”

She stared at him, and all the way to New Park sat thinking of what he had said. Was it possible he was going to be jealous of her? Of her who had married him to get rid of the very possibility.

A ray of light from a gas-lamp lit up her face, and she found Ted's eyes fastened on her.

”You are most awfully fetching to-night--you look so jolly mysterious somehow,” he said joyously, putting his cheek against hers. ”Give me a kiss, wifelet.”

She gave him one. She would have given him a dozen of the trivial things had he asked for them! Then she laid her hand on his.

”You weren't serious about Ned, were you?” she asked.