It may also have been gathered that Mr. Dartmouth was a young
man of decidedly reckless proclivities. It is quite true that he never
troubled himself about any question of morals or social ethics; he
simply calculated the mathematical amount of happiness possible to the
individual. That was all there was in life. Had he lived a generation
or two earlier, he would have pursued his way along the paths of the
prohibited without introspective analysis; but being the intellectual
young man of the latter decades of the 19th century, it amused him
to season his defiance of certain conventional codes with the salt of
philosophy.
Miss Penrhyn reached the Legation a few moments after Dartmouth's
arrival, and he watched her as she entered the ballroom. She wore
a simple white gown, embroidered about the corsage with silver
crescents; and her richly-tinted brown hair was coiled about her head
and held in place by a crescent-shaped comb. She was a tall, slim,
shapely girl, with an extreme grace of carriage and motion, and a neck
and arms whose clear olive was brought out with admirable effect
by the dead white of her gown.
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