She felt
out in the cold, as it were. Those ungloved critics, with their shabby
coats and dubious shirts, snuffy, smoky, everything they ought not to
be, seemed to her a race of barbarians.
Finding herself thus cold and lonely in the midst of the duchess's
splendour of peacock-blue velvet and peacock-feather decoration, Lesbia
was almost glad when in the middle of Madame Metzikoff's opening
gondolied--airy, fairy music, executed with surpassing delicacy--Mr.
Smithson crept gently into the _fauteuil_ just behind hers, and leant
over the back of the chair to whisper an inquiry as to her opinion of
the pianist's style.
'She is exquisite,' Lesbia murmured softly, but the whispered question
and the murmured answer, low as they were, provoked indignant looks from
a brace of damsels in Venetian red, who shook their Toby frills with an
outraged air.
Lesbia felt that Mr. Smithson's presence was hardly correct. It would
have been 'better form' if he had stayed away; and yet she was glad to
have him here. At the worst he was some one--nay, according to Lady
Kirkbank, he was the only one amongst all her admirers whose offer was
worth having.
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