“Isn’t it Lady Southminster?”
“Good heavens!” Audrey’s mind went back to the Channel packet and the rain squall and the scenes on the Paris train. “So it is! Whatever can have happened to her? Let’s go in.”
And in they went, Audrey leading, and demanding at once a bottle of the specific; Audrey had scarcely spoken when the left-hand girl in the window, who, of course, from her vantage had a full view of the shop, screamed lightly and jumped down from the window.
“Don’t give me away!” she whispered appealingly in Audrey’s ear. The next moment, not heeding the excitement of the shop manager, she had drawn Audrey and Miss Ingate through another door which led into the entrance-hall of the Majestic Hotel. The shop was thus contrived to catch two publics at once.
“If they knew I was Lady Southminster in there,” said Lady Southminster in a feverish murmur—she seemed not averse to the sensation caused by her hair in the twilight of the hotel—“I expect I should lose my place, and I don’t want to lose it. He’ll be coming by presently, and he’ll see me, and it’ll be a lesson to him. We’re always together. Race meetings, dances, golf, restaurants, bridge. Twenty-four hours every day. He won’t lose sight of me. He’s that fond of me, you know. I couldn’t stand it. I’d as lief be in prison—only I’m that fond of him, you know. But I was so homesick, and I felt if I didn’t have a change I should burst. This is Constantinopoulos’s old shop, you know, where I used to make cigarettes in the window. He’s dead, Constantinopoulos is. I don’t know what he’d have said to hair restorers. I asked for the place, and I showed ’em my hair, and I got it. And me sitting there—it’s quite like old times. Only before, you know, I used to have my face to the street. I don’t know which I like best. But, anyhow, you can see my profile from the side window. And he will. He always looks at that sort of thing. He’ll be furious. But it will do him no end of good. Well, good-bye. But come back in and buy a bottle, or I shall be let in for a shindy. In fact, you might buy two bottles.”
“So that’s love!” said Audrey when the transaction was over and they were in the entrance-hall again.
“No,” said Miss Ingate. “That’s marriage. And don’t you forget it.... Hallo, Tommy!”
“You’d better not let Mr. Gilman hear me called Tommy in this hotel,” laughed Miss Thompkins, who was attired with an unusual richness, as she advanced towards Miss Ingate and Audrey. “And what are you doing here?” she questioned Audrey.
“I’m staying here,” said Audrey. “But I’ve only just arrived. I’m advance agent for my husband. How are you? And what are you doing here? I thought you hated London.”
“I came the day before yesterday,” Tommy replied. “And I’m very fit. You see, Mr. Gilman preferred us to be married in London. And I’d no objection. So here I am. The wedding’s to-morrow. You aren’t very startled, are you? Had you heard?”