“Her friend was, and I believe she was too. Something of the kind, anyhow.”
“You—you never saw the—the other person?”
“No; she kept out of the way. That looks bad, doesn’t it? No doubt she was a tawdry vulgar creature. But a man never notices that!”
At this moment two people were seen approaching. One of them was a man of middle height and perhaps five-and-thirty years of age; he was stout and thick-built; he had a fat face with bulging cheeks; his eyes were rather like a frog’s; he leant very much forward as he walked, and swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness, but neither of them indicated a spiritual or exalted mind.
By his side walked a girl, dressed, as Mrs. Marland enviously admitted, as really very few women in London could dress, and wearing, in virtue perhaps of the dress, perhaps of other more precious gifts, an air of assured perfection and dainty disdain. She was listening to her companion’s conversation, and did not notice Sigismund Taylor, with whom she was well acquainted.
“Dear me, who are those, I wonder?” exclaimed Mrs. Marland. “She’s very distinguie.”
“It’s Miss Glyn,” answered he.
“What—Miss Agatha, Glyn?”
“Yes,” he replied, wondering whether that little coincidence as to the Agatha’ would suggest itself to anyone else.
“Lord Thrapston’s granddaughter?”