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198 Grahame. It was nearly midnight, and the crowd was concentrated in the music-room, where Herr Stahlmann was playing a new Sauterelle on his violoncello. The moon was shining over the sea yonder, gleaming upon the long white line of the breakwater; and the distant view of town and harbour looked even more Italian than in the daytime. Lady Valeria wore a long flowing gown of an almost Grecian simplicity, a gown of dead-white cashmere, bordered with a marvellous embroidery of peacocks' feathers, which fell in a slanting line from shoulder to hem, the brilliant colouring flashing in the moonlight, as the wearer slowly fanned herself with a large peacock-feather fan.

"Are you not afraid to wear so many peacocks' feathers?" asked a gentleman who was sitting at her elbow, a handsome man of about forty—a man who was not altogether good style in dress or manner, but who had a certain ease and authority which indicated good birth and the habits of fashionable society.

This was Sir George Varney, a personage in the racing world, but reputed to have been utterly broken for the last three years. In the racing world there is always a chance so long as a man can keep his head above water; and Sir George might still have a future before him. Although he was supposed to have spent his last farthing and mortgaged his last acre, he always contrived to get money when he wanted it; and he had contrived to lend money to Lady Valeria.

"Why should I not wear peacocks' feathers?" Lady Valeria asked languidly.

Her profile was turned to him, her eyes were looking towards the line of moonlight on the sea, the white walls of barracks and storehouses. She did not take the trouble to turn her face to her companion as she spoke to him. Pale, languid, dreamy, she seemed the very image of indifference.

"Because they are considered so"—casting about for a mild expression—"confoundedly unlucky. I remember the morning of the Oaks, the year my Cherryripe shut up like a telescope half a furlong from the winning-post, my sister Grace drove up to Hatchett's to meet the drag—I was to drive her and a lot of 'em to Epsom, don't you know—with an infernal pork-pie hat made out of a peacock's breast. 'What did you wear that damn thing for?' I asked. 'Because it's the fashion,' says she. 'Shouldn't wonder if my mare lost the race on account of your damn tile,' says I. Grace chaffed me for my superstition; but the mare made a most unaccountable mess of herself, don't you know, and the Devil himself or that peacock-feather hat must have been at the bottom of it."

"I don't think the peacocks' feathers will make any difference to me," replied Valeria wearily. "I have been unlucky all my life."

"Well, Fate has been rather hard upon you," said Sir George,