Outside in the corridor Rosemary met Sir George Orange, who claimed her
then and there and dragged her willy-nilly to his wife's box. She never
looked back once to see what Peter was doing. He had become merged in
the crowd, and, anyway, this was the end.
She found herself presently being talked to, flattered, adulated by the
distinguished Roumanian who turned the full battery of his mellow eyes
and his persuasive tongue upon her, bent on making a breach in the wall
of her prejudices and her thinly veiled enmity.
She told no one, not even Jasper, the gist of her conversation with
Naniescu. He had put a proposal before her--a proposal which meant work
for Rosemary Fowkes--the Uno of the _International Review._ He had
proposed that she should go to Transylvania, study for herself the
conditions now prevailing in the territory occupied by Roumania, and
publish the result of her studies in the English and American Press. And
this was just the sort of work that Rosemary longed for, now, more than
at any other time of her life. Naniescu had played his cards well. He
had known how to flatter, insidiously, delicately, this popular writer
who had captured the public fancy and whose influence with pen and
personality was paramount with a vast section of review and newspaper
readers in England. What he had proposed could in no way hurt the most
delicate scruples of an over-sensitive conscience, and the proposal came
as a veritable Godsend to Rosemary at this moment when her whole soul
was in a turmoil of remorse, longing, and rebellion. That her love for
Peter Blakeney was not dead, she had known well enough all along, but
she had little dreamed until this hour how completely it still possessed
her, what power his glance, his touch, his nearness still had over her.
She had thought of her love as of a heap of smouldering ashes, and lo!
it proved itself to be a devastating fire that burned fiercely beneath.
And Peter?
Peter had set the future above the present; his pride above his love,
and she, wounded to the quick, had allowed ambition and pride to throw
her into Jasper Tarkington's arms. It was all done now. Irrevocably
done. But even at the moment when she most bitterly regretted the past,
she was resolved to keep her word loyally to Jasper. Sitting beside him
in the car that took her home from the Albert Hall ball, she allowed her
hand to rest contentedly in his. His arm was round her, and her cheek
rested against his shoulder. She did not speak for she was very tired,
but she listened, unshrinking, to the tender words which he whispered in
her ear. Dear, kind Jasper! He had thoughts only for her. From the
moment when she finally promised that she would be his wife, he had
loaded her with delicate attentions and exquisite gifts. Every word he
spoke was soothing and restful, so different to Peter's tempestuous
outbursts, his unrestrained, passionate eloquence that would leave her
limp and bruised, unable to understand his next mood, his sudden
indifference to everything save his own future pursuits.