Esther finished with a dramatic little gesture that set them all laughing, and in the general merriment Philip's gravity passed unchallenged.
The story, as told by Mrs. Newbold, with all her little artistic touches of gesture and inflection, haunted him strangely. He found himself constantly reverting to it, and always with an incongruous and almost jarring thought of Patty, running side by side with his unwilling sympathy for Mdlle. Lamien.
Miss James found him a very inattentive listener as, later in the evening, they sat together on the wide verandah, and looked across the broad stretch of lawn to where the faintest streak of shining grey marked the waters of the bay. The moonlight was flooding all things with reckless prodigality, until even the barest and tiniest twig grew luminous, and the budding roses became ethereal in the generosity of its rays.
Miss James would have dearly loved to sentimentalise a little; she was not at all adverse to a mild flirtation with this handsome grave man, whose very presence made her feel her own littleness of mental stature. Unconsciously she dropped her usual heroics, and was prepared to be as meek and coy as any new-fledged _débutante_. Unfortunately however, Philip's mind was not in tune, or she struck the wrong chords, for he failed miserably to be responsive. At length, after a rather awkward little silence, she requested him, a trifle sharply, to fetch her a shawl; she felt the evening growing chilly.
Almost too eagerly Philip sprang up and hastened to obey her, leaving her with tears of mortification in her eyes, and hot anger in her heart. Meantime, Mr. Tremain, quite oblivious to his shortcomings, made his way to the inner hall, where he had an indistinct remembrance of having seen something white and fluffy, and which bore about it a faint odour of white rose, Miss James's most affected scent. Surely, unless he was too awfully masculine, that soft white odorous mass was of the nature of a wrap.
As he crossed the entrance-hall on his quest, he caught sight of Mdlle. Lamien's tall figure in the little drawing-room which was especially consecrated to Marianne. She was standing by the window, her face pressed against the frame, her whole form shaken with suppressed emotion. Tremain, like most men, was acutely susceptible to tears. He stopped involuntarily, hesitated, and in another moment was at her side.