Harold went slowly and in a singularly contemplative mood to his bedroom, whence he emerged in a space, wearing a smoking-jacket and carrying a pipe and tobacco pouch.
The smoking-jackets that glowed through the hall towards the last hour of the day at Castle Innisfail were a dream of beauty.
Lady Innisfail had given orders to have a variety of sandwiches and other delicacies brought to the hall for those of her guests who had attended the festivities at Ballycruiskeen; and when Harold found his way downstairs, he perceived in a moment that only a few of the feeble ones of the house-party--the fishermen who had touches of rheumatism and the young women who cherished their complexions--were absent from the hall.
He also noticed that his father was seated by the side of Beatrice Avon and that he was succeeding in making himself interesting to her.
He knew that his father generally succeeded in making himself interesting to women.
In another part of the hall Lady Innisfail was succeeding in making herself interesting to some of the men. She also was accustomed to meet with success in this direction. She was describing to such as had contrived to escape the walk to Ballycruiskeen, the inexhaustibly romantic charm of the scene on the Curragh while the natives were dancing, and the descriptions certainly were not deficient in colour.
The men listened to her with such an aspect of being enthralled, she felt certain that they were full of regret that they had failed to witness the dance. It so happened, however, that the result of her account of the scene was to lead those of her audience who had remained at the Castle, to congratulate themselves upon a lucky escape.
And all this time, Harold noticed that his father was making himself interesting to Beatrice Avon.
The best way for any man to make himself interesting to a woman is to show himself interested in her. He knew that his father was well aware of this fact, and that he was getting Beatrice Avon to tell him all about herself.
But when Lady Innisfail reached the final situation in her dramatic account of the dance, and hurried her listeners to the brink of the cliff--when she reproduced in a soprano that was still vibratory, the cry that had sounded through the mist--when she pointed to Miss Avon in telling of the white figure that had emerged from the mist--(Lady Innisfail did not think it necessary to allude to Helen Craven, who had gone to bed)--the auditors’ interest was real and not simulated. They looked at the white figure as Lady Innisfail pointed to her, and their interest was genuine.