Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/539

 the happy and distracted person in the mirror over his dressing-table. "You better brush your hair, you little fool!" he said, omitting the "dear" Mme. Momoro had used when she called him that.

When he came downstairs presently, a new man, the tables about the central dancing space in the large room beyond the hallway were filled with diners sipping coffee and cordials while the orchestra thrillingly crooned an Argentine tango. From the doorway he saw where Olivia sat with her dominant big father and glittering mother to watch the intermittently gliding and pausing couples; and in the daughter's look there was a pathetic blankness;—it was the look of a girl hurt by some cruel omission.

When he came near her and she saw him, there was a change in her at first pathetically eloquent, then altogether lovely; one that showed how dangerous it is for a girl to be too personal (even abusively) in her contact with a young man easily mistaken by other girls for a Spanish poet. She sank a little into her chair; she seemed stricken and about to weep; then instantly she straightened;—she was all of a rosy and glowing gayety.

"Well, I should say so!" she answered, when he asked her if she would dance with him.