She is a charming woman, but she has two faults. One is that, with a son of thirty-two, she insists on remaining twenty-five. The other is that, unlike dear old Sydney, to whom the downfall of the Trant fortunes made absolutely no difference, she’s never really liked me since the “smash.”
Before that, she was quite eager to explain that I was “already” like a young daughter to her. But it’s two years since I heard the tone of effusive affection with which Sydney’s mother was speaking to the girl beside her.
“My dear child, aren’t you starving? I vote we begin. That naughty boy of mine is so late. We really can’t wait for Sydney!”
“For Sydney!” Goodness! Then presently Sydney himself would join them. He would take the chair that faced our table—to which his mother sat with her back turned. He would see me—he’d be sure to come across and speak!
My mind was in a whirl of wondering what Sydney Vandeleur would think when he saw the girl he admired lunching tête-à-tête at the Carlton with that big, imperturbable stranger. And then Sydney himself came in.
I was in the middle of a particularly ambrosial pêche Melba, and anyone would have thought I didn’t raise my eyes from it. But thank goodness, my eyelashes are long enough for the purpose they’re given a girl—to be looked up through, without a man seeing. In a flash I’d taken in all of Sydney that one could see; his general appearance of a Cavalier’s portrait; his look at the girl, his mood, a slightly different way he’d had his hair (longish) and his little Vandyke beard trimmed since I saw him last, the clothes he was wearing....
Of course nine girls out of ten never notice a man’s ordinary clothes. Evening-dress they recognize; and, of course, flannels, because those are white, and allow the man (especially after a hard game) to look a decent shape if he is one. Anything else is lost on them. But I’m the tenth girl. As Major Montresor once said, when he was huffy with me for telling him his new Norfolk jacket was “too undergraduatey” for him, “Little Monica notices like a valet!”
Sydney’s clothes one couldn’t help noticing; he’s so well-turned-out, but never in a stereotyped style; in fact, he refuses to be dressed, as he calls it, “through a stencil.” I’m sure he’d rather put on a false nose and walk down St. James’s Street in it than appear in that hideous conventional “rig” of the Governor’s. To-day, for the Carlton, Sydney wore grey of such an exquisite soft stuff that it was hard to believe it came from any ordinary man’s tailor; the tie below his bare throat was dove-colour shot with heliotrope, and his silk socks and the line in his shirt with its soft collar matched it exactly. There was one dark Russian violet in his button-hole.
All these details were familiar to me before Sydney so much as cast a glance at our table. Then, in a lull, when I refused coffee, he seemed to prick up his ears. With a quick turn from the girl in blue velvet, he looked straight across and saw me at last.