to-night... was it he? The ends of her blue sash lay across her lap, and she was lazily unravelling their fringes. “Blue and white!” she remembered. “They were the colours he wore round his hat.” And she gave a little laugh of coquetry. She laughed, and, long after, her lips were still parted in a smile.
So did she sit, smiling, wondering, with the fringes of her sash between her fingers, while the sun sank behind the opposite wall of the quadrangle, and the shadows crept out across the grass, thirsty for the dew.
III
The clock in the Warden’s drawing-room had just struck eight, and already the ducal feet were beautiful on the white bearskin hearthrug. So slim and long were they, of instep so nobly arched, that only with a pair of glazed ox-tongues on a breakfast-table were they comparable. Incomparable quite, the figure and face and vesture of him who ended in them.
The Warden was talking to him, with all the deference of elderly commoner to patrician boy. The other guests—an Oriel don and his wife—were listening with earnest smile and submissive droop, at a slight distance. Now and again, to put themselves at their ease, they exchanged in undertone a word or two about the weather.
“The young lady whom you may have noticed with me,” the Warden was saying, “is my orphaned grand-daughter.” (The wife of the Oriel don discarded her smile, and sighed, with a glance at the Duke, who was himself an orphan.) “She has come to stay with me.” (The Duke glanced quickly round the room.) “I cannot think why she is not down yet.” (The Oriel don fixed his eyes on the clock, as though he suspected it of being fast.) “I must ask you to forgive her. She appears to be a bright, pleasant young woman.”
“Married?” asked the Duke.
“No,” said the Warden; and a cloud of annoyance crossed the boy’s face. “No; she devotes her life entirely to good works.”
“A hospital nurse?” the Duke murmured.
“No, Zuleika’s appointed task is to induce delightful wonder rather than to alleviate pain. She performs conjuring-tricks.”
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