I went through the house without meeting any one.  There was not a sound.  Often at this hour Lady Ardaragh had the boy with her; but if he had been there now I should have heard his shouts and laughter as I had heard them before.  However cold and strange she might be to her serious husband Lady Ardaragh was a lovely mother, and she never looked to greater advantage than when she was romping with her boy down on the floor, her beautiful hair pulled about her, flushed, happy, smiling, as I have seen her.

No, certainly the child was not there now.  As I crossed the large drawing-room I began to think there was no one there.  The pale yellow silk curtains that screened the arch by which one entered the inner room were drawn close.  Just outside them I paused for a second; I had almost turned back; then I heard a low laugh and there was the pleasant tinkle of teacups.

I raised the curtain to pass through, and found beyond it a French screen.  I was about to pass around it into the room when I glanced up at the wall, on which hung an old-fashioned convex mirror.  It reflected the room and its occupants with a minute delicacy.  Her Ladyship, more like a Dresden-china figure than ever in a teagown of flowered silk, lolled in a low chair.  She was holding a teacup in her pretty beringed hands.  In the mirror her colour seemed more than usually high.  She was very gay, animated and smiling.

There was a man with her.  His back was to the mirror and at first I did not notice him.  He was sitting on a tabouret, which must have been an uncomfortable seat for one of his height and length of limb.  He had an air of sitting at Lady Ardaragh’s feet.

I had an idea that my presence would be an intrusion, even before the man in the mirror turned his head and I recognized him.

My heart gave a great leap.  Fortunately they were talking and had not heard me.  Once beyond the curtain I fled as fast as my two feet would carry me back to Mickey and the phaeton.

CHAPTER XIII

ENLIGHTENMENT

The man I had seen was Richard Dawson, and I had not even known that Lady Ardaragh knew him, although I had suspected that she would know him in time.  And here he was on terms of such easy intimacy as the scene I had come upon implied.  I had been fond of Sybil Ardaragh, but for the moment I felt cold and angry towards her.  It was a degradation that she should be friends, should flirt, with a man like Richard Dawson.  What was she thinking of, the mother of Robin, the wife of Sir Arthur Ardaragh, who was a person of great wisdom and dignity, with a fame beyond our quiet circles?  It was not worthy of her.

We went on and called at Rosebower, the little house of the two Miss Chenevixes, elderly ladies who had been great beauties in their youth.  I used to think they were beauties still, with their fine, delicate features and skin no more withered than a rose of yesterday.