Her eyes caught Armitage's with a little smile.
"It's easy to see where good stones go on the Ridge," he said. "And here am I--come hundreds of miles ... can't get anything like that piece of stuff in your brooch."
"And your ear-rings, Sophie!" Armitage said. "'Clare to goodness,' as my old nurse used to say, I didn't think you could look such a witch. But I always have said black opal ear-rings would make a witch of a New England spinster."
Sophie laughed. It was impossible not to respond to Mr. Armitage when he looked and smiled like that. His manner was so friendly and appreciative, Sophie was thawed and insensibly exhilarated by it.
Armitage sat talking to her. Sophie had always interested him. There was an unusual quality about her; it was like the odour some flowers have, of indescribable attraction for certain insects, to him. And it was so extraordinary, to find anyone singing arias from old-fashioned operas in this out-of-the-way part of the world.
John Lincoln Armitage had a man of the world's contempt for churlish treatment of a woman, and he was indignant that the Hentys should have permitted a girl to be so humiliated in their house. He had been paying Nina Henty some mild attention during the evening, but Sophie in distress enlisted the instinct of that famous ancestor of his in her defence. He determined to make amends as far as possible for her disappointment of the earlier part of the evening.
"May I have the next dance, Sophie?" he inquired.
Her averted face, the quiver of her lips, confirmed him in his resolution. He took in her dress, the black opals in her ear-rings swinging against her black hair and white neck. She had never looked more attractive, he thought, than in this unlovely dress and with the opals in her ears. The music was beginning for another dance. Across the room Henty was hovering with a bevy of girls.
"Why aren't you dancing, Sophie?" John Armitage asked.
His quiet, friendly tone brought the glitter of tears to her eyes.
"No one asked me to, until the dance before supper--then I didn't want to," she said.
"You'll have this one with me, won't you?"
John Armitage put the question as if he were asking a favour. "Please!" he insisted.
Putting her arm on his, Armitage led Sophie among the dancers. He held her so gently and firmly that she felt as if she were dancing by a will not her own. She and he glided and flew together; they did not talk, and when