"Hush!" Lady Grenside whispered. "Don't let Elisabeth hear you talk like that. Here she comes. I wonder--"
Lady Grenside stopped short. She was looking steadily at her daughter and her expression of doubt had a genuine impulse behind it. Carton was not so reticent.
"By Jove, she does look stunning!" he murmured.
Elisabeth, who seldom wore colours, was dressed in blue, with a necklace of turquoises. On the threshold she paused to make some laughing rejoinder to a man who was holding open the door for her. Her eyes were brilliant, her face was full of animation. Lady Grenside's face darkened as the unseen man came into sight. It was Maraton.
"Never saw Elisabeth look so ripping," Carton repeated. "Just my luck, not to take her in."
"To-morrow night," Lady Grenside promised.
"That's all very well," Carton grumbled. "I wish she didn't look so thundering pleased with herself."
Lady Grenside leaned a little towards him.
"Elisabeth is a dear girl," she declared. "She is doing all this for her uncle's sake. Mr. Foley is very anxious indeed to conciliate this man, and Elisabeth is helping him. You know how keen she is on doing what she can in that way."
Carton nodded a little more hopefully. His eyes were fixed now upon Maraton.
"Can't think how the fellow learnt to turn himself out like that. I thought these sort of people dressed anyhow."
"I believe," she said, "that this man is full of queer contradictions. Some one once told me that he was enormously wealthy; that he had been to an English public school and changed his name out in America. Rubbish, I expect. . . . Run and find Lily, there's a dear boy. We are going in now."
Dinner was served at a round table, and a good deal of the conversation was general. On Maraton's left hand, however, was a lady whose horror at his presence, concealed out of deference to her host, reduced her to stolid and unbending silence. Elisabeth, quickly aware of the fact, made swift atonement. While the others talked all around them of general subjects, she conversed with Maraton almost in whispers, lightly enough at first, but with an undernote of seriousness always there. Maraton would have been less than human if he had not been susceptible to the charm of her conversation.