She was satisfied he admired her. The evening was hers to enjoy.
The Restaurant des Ambassadeurs was rapidly filling when they entered and made their way to the table reserved for them. With keen interest Esther looked about her at the groups of sleek, well-dressed people, English, French, Russian, Italian. There was a large party of Americans who had crossed on the same boat with Roger. Their voices rang out, their R's smacked of the Middle-West, Mommer and Popper seeing Europe, accompanied by a brace of coltish daughters, a reedy son with enormous spectacles, and the son's two college chums, who looked to be good at football. Farther along sat two Russians who never spoke, one an owlish young man with glassy eyes and damp hair raked smoothly back, his companion a woman much older than himself, with broad cheek-bones and a mouth that was a great blot of scarlet in the midst of her chalk-white face.
Esther spied the plump, hennaed woman whom she had seen speak to Lady Clifford that day weeks ago, sitting at a table with another Frenchwoman equally plump and two men, fat and bald, both wearing a good deal of jewellery. The younger man, incredibly, had round his pudgy wrist a bangle set with turquoises! On the other side of this hilarious party was a large, sober-faced Englishman who looked like a stockbroker, Roger said, and with him a little humming-bird of a girl, starry-eyed, infantile—belonging to musical comedy, no doubt. What a medley!
"Look! Over there——"
Esther touched her companion's arm suddenly.
"Do you see? There's Captain Holliday—and with his fat Spanish friend. Isn't she dreadful?"
Following her eyes, Roger discovered across the room the redoubtable Arthur, nonchalantly ordering dinner for his vis-à-vis, a colossal, swarthy creature, dripping with pearls and glittering with diamonds like a chandelier.
"Spanish, did you say?"
"Yes, from the Argentine. I've seen them together before. It is she who has offered him the job." She almost added, "And it is she whom your stepmother is jealous of," but she pulled herself up in time.
"What a lot you seem to know about Holliday," remarked Roger half-quizzically, half-seriously, eyeing her over the menu.