inter fire-flies.
At one o'clock, hearing Agatha Caithness speak to Leila's maid, he left
the window, and sitting down at the desk, telephoned to Desmond's; and
he was informed that Mortimer, hard hit, had signified his intention of
recouping at Burbank's. Then he managed to get Burbank's on the wire,
and finally Mortimer himself, but was only cursed for his pains and cut
off in the middle of his pleading.
So he wandered up-stairs into Mortimer's apartments, where he tubbed and
dressed, and finally descended, to find Agatha Caithness alone in
the library, spinning a roulette wheel and whistling an air from "La
Bacchante."
"That's pretty," he said; "sing it."
"No; it's better off without the words; and so are you," added Agatha
candidly, relinquishing the wheel and strolling with languid grace about
the room, hands on her hips, timing her vagrant steps to the indolent,
wicked air. And,
"'Je rougirais de men ivresse Si tu conservais ta raison!'"
she hummed deliberately, pivoting on her heels and advancing again
toward Plank, her pretty, pale face delicate as an enamelled cameo under
the flood of light from the crystal chandeliers.
"I understand that Mr. Mortimer is not coming with us," she said
carelessly. "Are you going to dance with me, if I find nobody better?"
He expressed himself flattered, cautiously. He was one of many who never
understood this tall, white, low-voiced girl, with eyes too pale for
beauty, yet strangely alluring, too. Few men denied the indefinable
enchantment of her; few men could meet her deep-lidded, transparent
gaze unmoved. In the sensitive curve of her mouth there was a kind of
sensuousness; in her low voice, in her pallor, in the slim grace of her
a vague provocation that made men restless and women silently curious
for something more definite on which to base their curiosity.
She was wearing, over the smooth, dead-white skin of her neck, a collar
of superb diamonds and aquamarines--almost an effrontery, as the latter
were even darker than her eyes; yet the strange and effective harmony
was evident, and Plank spoke of the splendour of the gems.
She nodded indifferently, saying they were new, and that she had picked
them up at Tiffany's; and he mentally sketched out the value of the
diamonds, a trifle surprised, because Leila Mortimer had carefully
informed him about the condition of the Caithness exchequer.
That youthful matron herself appeared in a few moments, very lus
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