Manchester Square. There were a good many carriages at the door--a party
was going on; a circumstance which at the last gave him a slight relief,
for now he would rather see her in a crowd. People passed him on the
staircase; they were going away, going "on" with the hunted herdlike
movement of London society at night. But sundry groups remained in the
drawing-room, and it was some minutes, as she didn't hear him announced,
before he discovered and spoke to her. In this short interval he had
seen St. George talking to a lady before the fireplace; but he at once
looked away, feeling unready for an encounter, and therefore couldn't be
sure the author of "Shadowmere" noticed him. At all events he didn't
come over though Miss Fancourt did as soon as she saw him--she almost
rushed at him, smiling rustling radiant beautiful. He had forgotten what
her head, what her face offered to the sight; she was in white, there
were gold figures on her dress and her hair was a casque of gold. He saw
in a single moment that she was happy, happy with an aggressive
splendour. But she wouldn't speak to him of that, she would speak only
of himself.

"I'm so delighted; my father told me. How kind of you to come!" She
struck him as so fresh and brave, while his eyes moved over her, that he
said to himself irresistibly: "Why to him, why not to youth, to strength,
to ambition, to a future? Why, in her rich young force, to failure, to
abdication to superannuation?" In his thought at that sharp moment he
blasphemed even against all that had been left of his faith in the
peccable Master. "I'm so sorry I missed you," she went on. "My father
told me. How charming of you to have come so soon!"

"Does that surprise you?" Paul Overt asked.

"The first day? No, from you--nothing that's nice." She was interrupted