Her chestnut-coloured hair lay in luscious waves over her forehead and round her perfectly shaped little head, and when she smiled her small white teeth would gleam through her full, parted lips.
Eschewing the fantastic pierrot costumes of the hour, rosemary Fowkes was dressed in a magnificent Venetian gown of the fifteenth century, the rich crimson folds of which set off her stately figure as well as the radiant colouring of her skin and hair. She wore a peculiarly shaped velvet cap, the wings of which fastened under her chin, thus accentuating the perfect oval of the face and the exquisite contour of forehead and cheeks.
"A woman so beautiful has no right to be clever," General Naniescu remarked with an affected sigh. "It is not fair to the rest of her sex."
"Miss Fowkes is certainly very gifted," Lady Orange remarked drily, her enthusiasm apparently being less keen on the subject of Rosemary than that of Miss Fairfax.
"And who is the happy man," M. de Kervoisin put in in his dry, ironic tone, "with whom the enchantress is dancing?"
"Peter Blakeney," Miss Fairfax replied curtly.
"Qui ça, Peter Blakeney?"
"Peter Blakeney, Peter Blakeney! He does not know who is Peter Blakeney!" Lady Orange exclaimed, and for this supreme moment she departed from her habitual vagueness of attitude, whilst her glance became more markedly astonished than before.
Two or three young people who sat at the back of the box tittered audibly, and gazed at the foreigner as if he were indeed an extraordinary specimen lately presented to the Zoo.
"Remember, dear lady," General Naniescu put in, wholly unperturbed by the sensation which his friend's query had provoked, "that M. de Kervoisin and I are but strangers in your wonderful country, and that no doubt it is our want of knowledge of your language that causes us to seem ignorant of some of your greatest names in literature or the Arts."
"It is not a case of literature or the Arts, mon cher general ," Lady Orange condescended to explain. "Peter Blakeney is the finest cover-point England ever had."
"Ah! political sociology?" M. de Kervoisin queried blandly.
"Political what?"
"The Secret Points, no doubt you mean, dear lady?" the general went on, politely puzzled. "Advanced Communism, what?" M. Blakeney is then a disciple of Lenin?"
"I don't know what you are talking about," Lady Orange sighed. "Peter Blakeney is the finest cricketer Eton and Oxford have ever produced."
"Cricket!" exclaimed the general, while M. de Kervoisin uttered a significant "Ah!"
There was a moment of quite uncomfortable silence. Naniescu was thoughtfully stroking his luxurious moustache, and a gentle, indulgent smile hovered round the thin lips of M. de Kervoisin.
"It is interesting," Naniescu said suavely after a moment or two, "to see two such world-famous people given over to the pleasure of the dance."
"They are excellent dancers, both of them," Lady Orange assented placidly, even though she had a vague sense of uneasiness that the two foreigners were laughing surreptitiously at something or at her.
"And we may suppose," the general continued, "that a fine young man like Mr. Blakeney has some other mission in life than the playing of cricket."
"He hasn't time for anything else," came in indignant protest from a young lady with shingled hair. "He plays for England, in Australia, South Africa, all over the world. Isn't that good enough?"
"More that enough, dear lady," assented Naniescu with a bland smile. "Indeed, it were foolish to expect the greatest-what did you call him?-secret point to waste his time on other trifling matters." "Cover-point, mon general," Lady Orange suggested indulgently, whilst the young people at the back broke into uproarious mirth. "Cover-point, not secret."
"Peter Blakeney rowed two years in the 'Varsity eights," one of the young people interposed, hot in the defence of a popular hero. Then he added with characteristic English shamefacedness when subjects of that sort are mentioned, "And he got a V.C. in the war."
"He is a jolly fine chap, and ever so good-looking," rejoined the pretty girl with the shingled hair. She shot a provocative glance in the direction of the two ignorant dagoes who had never even heard of Peter Blakeney, and then she added, "He couldn't help being jolly and fine and all that, as he is the great-grandson—"
"No, kid, not the great-grandson," broke in one of her friends.
"Yes, the great-grandson," the young girl insisted.
There was a short and heated argument, while General Naniescu and M. de Kervoisin looked courteously puzzled. Then Miss Fairfax was appealed to.
"Miss Fairfax, isn't Peter Blakeney the great-grandson of the 'Scarlet Pimpernel'?"
And Miss Fairfax, who knew everything, settled the point.
"Peter," she said, "is the great-grandson of Jack Blakeney, who was known as the Little Pimpernel, and was the Scarlet Pimpernel's eldest son. In face and in figure he is the image of that wonderful portrait by Romney of Sir Percy Blakeney."
"Hurrah for me!" exclaimed the one who had been right whilst the pretty girl with the shingled hair threw a glance at the handsome Roumanian which conveyed an eloquent "So there!"
General Naniescu shrugged amiably.
"Ah! he said, "now I understand. When one gets the youth of England on the subject of its Scarlet Pimpernel, one can only smile and hold one's tongue."
"I think," Miss Fairfax concluded, "that Peter is the best-looking and the best-dressed man in the hall to-night."
"You stab me to the heart, dear lady," the general protested with mock chagrin, "though I am willing to admit that the descendant of your national hero has much of his mother's good looks."
"Did you know Mrs. Blakeney, then?"
"Only by sight and before her marriage. She was a Hungarian lady of title, Baroness Heves," General Naniescu replied, with a shrug that had in it a vague suggestion of contempt. "I guessed that our young cricket player was her son from the way he wears the Hungarian national dress."
"I was wondering what that dress was," Lady Orange remarked vaguely, thankful that the conversation had drifted back to a more equable atmosphere. "It is very picturesque and very becoming."
"And quite medieval and Asiatic, do you not think so, dear lady? The Hungarian aristocrats used to go to their Court dressed in that barbaric fashion in the years before the war."
"And very handsome they must have looked, judging by Peter Blakeney's appearance to-night."
"I knew the mother, too," Miss Fairfax remarked gently; "she was a dear."
"She is dead, then?" M. de Kervoisin asked.
"Oh, yes, some years ago, my dear friend," the general replied. "It was a tragic story, I remember, but I have forgotten its details."
"No one ever knew it over here," was Miss Fairfax's somewhat terse comment, which seemed to suggest that further discussion on the subject would be unwelcome.
General Naniescu, nevertheless, went on with an indifferent shrug and that same slightly contemptuous tone in his voice. "Hungarian women are most of them ill-balanced. But by your leave, gracious ladies, we will not trouble our heads any longer with that man, distinguished though his cricket-playing career may have been. To me he is chiefly interesting because he dances in perfect harmony with Venus Aphrodite."
"Whose Vulcan, I imagine, he would gladly be," M. de Kervoisin remarked with a smile.
"A desire shared probably by many, or is the one and only Vulcan already found?"
"Yes, in the person of Lord Tarkington," Miss Fairfax replied.