"Yes, I feel just as you do," he said eagerly, reverting at once to the conversation which had been interrupted by Lady Oxted's strictures. "I love the sense of being in the middle of millions of people, each of whom, just like you and me, have their own private paradise and joy of life, which the world probably never guesses."
"Have you a private joy, Lord Vail?" she asked. "Do tell me what it is. A thing that is private is always interesting."
"It is called the Luck," he said; "the Luck of the Vails."
"Are you really beginning to believe in that nonsense, Harry?" asked Lady Oxted.
"O Aunt Violet, how horrid you are!" cried Evie. "Do let Lord Vail tell me about it. It is private: I am dying to know."
"Shall I? I will make it short, then," said Harry, "for Lady Oxted's sake."
"I would rather that you made it long for mine," said the girl; "but that is as you please."
Lady Oxted gave a loud and quite voluntary sigh.
"Poor, dear Harry!" she said. "Geoffrey, let us talk about something extremely tangible the while. You are on the Stock Exchange. Speak to me of backwardation and contango. That may counteract the weakening effect of Harry's nonsense. Are you a bear?"
Harry smiled, and drew his chair closer to the girl's. "I will talk low," he said, "so that we shall not offend Lady Oxted, and you must promise to stop me if you get bored. Anyhow, you brought it on yourself, for you asked me about my private joy. This is it."
Blue eyes, deepened by the shaded light to violet, looked into his as he began his tale; into hers looked brown eyes, which seemed black. He told her of the ancient history of the cup, and she listened with interest to a story that might have claimed attention even from a stranger. Then he came to his own finding of it in an attic upon a winter's day; to the three accidents to himself, each trivial, which had followed the finding; and her eyes--which up till now had been at one time on his, at another had strayed with a certain consciousness and purpose (for he never looked elsewhere than at hers) now this way, now that, had superintended the disentangling of a piece of lace which had caught in her bracelet, or had guided her finger as it traced the intricate ivory of her fan handle--became absorbed. They saw only Harry's big, dark eyes, or, at their widest circuit, his parted lips, from which the words came. Her own mouth, thin, finely lipped, drooped a little at the centre with interest and expectation, and the even line of teeth showed in the red a band of ivory set in pomegranate. Once she impatiently swept back a tress of hair which drooped over her ear, but the playing of her fingers with her fan had become unconscious, and her eyes no longer followed them. And it would seem that Harry had forgotten his promise to make the story short for Lady Oxted's sake, and had rather acceded silently to the girl's request to make it long for hers, for the startling revelations about backwardations and bears had long languished before the tale was done.