"Chicken a la Maryland in a chafing dish and a combination salad with that anchovy and sherry dressing you make so deliciously," I replied promptly. "The rest of the dinner I'll leave to you."
My mother-in-law glared at me.
"It strikes me there isn't much left to leave to him after an order of that kind," she said, tartly.
"You haven't eaten many of Dicky's dinners then," I said audaciously, with a little moue at him. "He orders the most perfect dinners of any one I know."
"Of course, with your wide experience, you ought to be a critical judge of his ability," my mother-in-law snapped back.
Her tone was even more insulting than her words. It tipped with cruel venom her allusion to the quiet, almost cloistered life of my girlhood.
I drew a long breath as I saw my mother-in-law adjust her lorgnette and proceed to gaze through it with critical hauteur at the other diners. I hoped that her curiosity and interest in the things going on around her would make her forget her imaginary grievances, but my hope was destined to be short lived.
It was while we were discussing our oysters, the very first offered of the season, that she spoke to me, suddenly, abruptly:
"Margaret, do you know that man at the second table back of us? He hasn't taken his eyes from you for the last ten minutes."
My heart almost stopped beating, for my intuition told me at once the identity of the gazer. It must be the man whose uncanny, mournful look had so distressed me when I was waiting for Lillian Underwood in the little reception room at the Sydenham the preceding Monday, the man who had followed us to the little tea room, who had even taken the same train to Marvin with me.