Mr. Priestley was in entire agreement. “Oh, no. Of course not. Good gracious, no!” While he was still speaking he knew vaguely there was something he wanted to ask; the next moment he realised what it was. Why, after all, did they not want to be overheard?
“What about the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace?” suggested the girl, before he could frame the question.
“Admirable!” said Mr. Priestley with enthusiasm, his question completely forgotten before his interest in the particularly delightful way in which his companion’s brows just did not meet as she frowned her perplexity over this serious matter. The thought occurred to him that for all he knew the world might have been full of feminine brows that delightfully just did not meet when their owners were charmingly perplexed, and he had never noticed this remarkable phenomenon. The next moment he knew for a certainty that there was only one possible pair of brows that could behave like that and his life hitherto had not been really wasted after all.
The next coherent thing that Mr. Priestley knew was that he was sitting before a small table in the Piccadilly Palace lounge and ordering coffee. To the waiter’s bland assumption that liqueurs would be required as well the girl shook her head in a decided negative; and Mr. Priestley, who detested platitudes almost as much as false quantities, reminded himself that enough was as good as a feast, and shook his head in a decided negative too.
The breathing space before the coffee arrived gave Mr. Priestley time to collect his hitherto somewhat scattered wits and conquer the dream-like state of his mind. This was not an illusion, he pointed out to himself half-incredulously during his companion’s fortuitous silence; he really was sitting in the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace with a particularly charming young woman who was labouring under the impression that he was some one else. Whom she had mistaken him for, or what she wanted to talk to him about, he could neither imagine nor very much cared; for once in his life he was living only in the present. The explanations which must inevitably come later, would be awkward no doubt, but they could take care of themselves; in the meantime he was going to take unscrupulous advantage of the situation for just as long as he possibly could. Did somebody once mention the word “limpet”?
The coffee, which arrived with singular promptitude, helped Mr. Priestley to dispel the slight mistiness from his brain. Glancing covertly at his companion, he now consciously perceived what had before been an unconscious impression, that her prettiness had a quality of wistful charm which was particularly appealing. One saw at once that her dainty fragility was not fitted to cope with the harsh realities of this world. She needed looking after. Somebody, Mr. Priestley decided with mild indignation, ought to be looking after her; it was extremely remiss of somebody not to be looking after her. A feeling that was not exactly paternal, not at all brotherly, and perhaps not so entirely disinterested as its owner imagined, took possession of him: he would look after this eminently protectable small person. The feeling was, in fact, that of the prowling knight-errant who comes across the prepossessing maiden who has been stripped and tied to the tree by robbers; he rescues her with eager zest, but he does not look upon her like a father.
At present the distressed maiden’s childlike features wore an expression of stern resolve which sat upon them, Mr. Priestley thought, with pathetic incongruity. She was quietly, but even to his uninitiated eyes, expensively dressed, in pleasant contrast with his late encounter, whose clothes had cleverly combined the maximum of loudness with the minimum of cost. Hitherto, except for a few murmured commonplaces regarding sugar and milk and such trifles, she had not spoken since they entered the place. Mr. Priestley awaited her next words with ill-suppressed eagerness.
She sipped at her coffee, set down the cup and turned to look at him fairly and squarely. “You know,” she said with a certain charming diffidence, “you’re not quite the sort of person I expected.”
“No?” beamed Mr. Priestley warily, drawing rapid deductions.
“In fact, if it hadn’t been for the carnation, I should certainly never have recognised you.”