Part 11 (1/2)
His audacity was delightful. There was something so gracious and yet so masterful about him.
”Do you remember the day you carried me off--eloped with me, you know?”
said Drake.
”I? How charming of me! But when was that, I wonder?” said Glory.
”Never mind; say, do you remember?”
”Well, if I do? What a pair of little geese we must have been in those days!”
”I'm not so sure of that--_now_,'” said he.
”You didn't seem very keen about me _then_, as far as I can remember,”
said she.
”Didn't I?” said he. ”What a silly young fool I must have been!”
They laughed again. She could not keep her arm still, and he could almost feel its dimpled elbow.
”And do _you_ remember the gentleman who rescued us?” she said.
”You mean the tall, dark young man who kept hugging and kissing you in the yacht?”
”Did he?”
”Do you forget that kind of thing, then?”
”It was very sweet of him. But he's in the Church now, and the chaplain of our hospital.”
”What a funny little romantic world it is, to be sure!”
”Yes; it's like poetry, isn't it?” she answered.
Lord Robert came up to introduce Drake to Polly (who was not looking her sweetest), and he claimed Glory for the next dance.
”So you knew my friend Drake before?” said Lord Robert.
”I knew him when he was a boy,” said Glory.
And then he began to sing his friend's praises--how he had taken a brilliant degree at Oxford, and was now private secretary to the Home Secretary, and would go into public life before long; how he could paint and act, and might have made a reputation as a musician; how he went into the best houses, and was a first-rate official; how, in short, he had the promised land before him, and was just on the eve of entering it.
”Then I suppose you know he is rich--enormously rich?” said Lord Robert.
”Is he?” said Glory, and something great and grand seemed to s.h.i.+mmer a long way off.
”Enormously,” said Sir Robert; ”and yet a man of the most democratic opinions.”
”Really?” said Glory.