Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/32

24 The elder of the strange women had turned her back and was looking at some bronze figure, losing her shawl again as she did so; but the younger stood where their escort had quitted her, giving all her attention to his sudden sociability with others. Her arms hung at her sides, her head was bent, her face lowered, so that she had an odd appearance of raising her eyes from under her brows; and in this attitude she was striking, though her air was unconciliatory, almost dangerous. Did it express resentment at having been abandoned for another girl? Biddy, who began to be frightened—there was a moment when the forsaken one resembled a tigress about to spring—was tempted to cry out that she had no wish whatever to appropriate the gentleman. Then she made the discovery that the young lady had a manner, almost as much as her cicerone, and the rapid induction that it perhaps meant no more than his. She only looked at Biddy from beneath her eyebrows, which were wonderfully arched, but there was a manner in the way she did it. Biddy had a momentary sense of being a figure in a ballet, a dramatic ballet—a subordinate, motionless figure, to be dashed at, to music, or capered up to. It would be a very dramatic ballad indeed if this young person were the heroine. She had magnificent hair, the girl reflected; and at the same moment she heard Nick say to his interlocutor: "You're not in London—one can't meet you there?"

"I drift, I float," was the answer; "my feelings direct me—if such a life as mine may be said to have a direction. Where there's anything to feel I try to be there!" the young man continued with his confiding laugh.