This tacit embrace was typical in his mind of the way they hung together, these two young women. It had been forced upon his perceptions all the evening, that this fair-haired, beautiful, rather stately Lady Cressage, and the small, swarthy, round-shouldered daughter of the house, peering through her pince-nez from under unduly thick black brows, formed a party of their own.

Their politeness toward him had been as identical in all its little shades of distance and reservation as if they had been governed from a single brain-centre. It would be unfair to them to assume from their manner that they disliked him, or were even unfavourably impressed by him.

The finesse of that manner was far too delicate a thing to call into use such rough characterizations. It was rather their action as a unit which piqued his interest.

He thought he could see that they united upon a common demeanour toward the American girl, although of course they knew her much better than they knew him. It was not even clear to him that there were not traces of this combination in their tone toward Plowden and the Honourable Balder.

The bond between them had twisted in it strands of social exclusiveness, and strands of sex sympathy.

He did not analyze all this with much closeness in his thoughts, but the impressions of it were distinct enough to him.

He rather enjoyed these impressions than otherwise.

Women had not often interested him consecutively to any large degree, either in detail or as a whole.

He had formulated, among other loose general notions of them, however, the idea that their failure to stand by one another was one of their gravest weaknesses.

This proposition rose suddenly now in his mind, and claimed his attention. It became apparent to him, all at once, that his opinions about women would be henceforth invested with a new importance. He had scarcely before in his life worn evening dress in a domestic circle which included ladies--certainly never in the presence of such certificated and hall-marked ladies as these.

His future, however, was to be filled with experiences of this nature. Already, after this briefest of ventures into the new life, he found fresh conceptions of the great subject springing up in his thoughts. In this matter of women sticking together, for example--here before his eyes was one of the prettiest instances of it imaginable.

As he looked again at the two figures on the sofa, so markedly unlike in outward aspect, yet knit to each other in such a sisterly bond, he found the spectacle really touching.

Lady Cressage had inclined her classic profile even more toward the piano. Thorpe was not stirred at all by the music, but the spirit of it as it was reflected upon this beautiful facial outline--sensitive, high-spirited, somewhat sad withal--appealed to something in him.

He moved forward cautiously, noiselessly, a dozen restricted paces, and halted again at the corner of a table.

It was a relief that the Honourable Balder, though he followed along, respected now his obvious wish for silence.

But neither Balder nor anyone else could guess that the music said less than nothing to his ears--that it was the face that had beckoned him to advance.