It was not a very amiable glance which Mr. Joscelyn bestowed upon the speaker, but he did not answer save by this glance. He turned instead to Aimée, and said:
“We seem to have lost the rest of our party. Shall we not go and look for them?”
Before Aimée could reply to this proposal, the entrance of a party of four made reply unnecessary, for it was at once apparent that these were the missing persons whom it was proposed to seek. Yet they had the appearance themselves of seeking, rather than of needing to be sought, for as they entered they all looked around, and perceiving the group before the Paradiso, eagerly advanced toward it.
The foremost of these newcomers was a tall, elaborately dressed young lady—young, at least by courtesy—whose commonplace prettiness was spoiled by an exceedingly artificial appearance and manner. With her were a faded, languid, elderly woman, possessing much natural elegance and traces of great beauty; a man of about sixty, carefully got up with padding and hair-dye to look not more than forty; and a rotund, florid, genial man of thirty-five or thereabouts. As these advanced the young lady spoke:
“I thought we should never find you! Where have you been hiding yourselves?”
“We have been hiding ourselves where you see us,” replied Mrs. Meredith. “When I lose people, I always make a rule of quietly sitting down and letting them find me, instead of running about trying to find them. So I have been sitting here for half an hour in a conspicuous position; and, as a reward, I have been found—not only by you, but by an old acquaintance who has most unexpectedly appeared.—Mrs. Joscelyn, let me present Mr. Kyrle.”
Mr. Kyrle bowed to the elderly lady, who at once put up her eyeglass to examine him, with an alacrity which indicated that his name was not unknown to her. He was then presented to Major Joscelyn, to Miss Joscelyn and to Mr. Meredith; and he was aware of being regarded with more or less active suspicion by all of them except Miss Joscelyn, who smiled as graciously as women of her order generally do upon an apparently eligible man.
“I—ah—hum—have heard of Mr. Kyrle,” observed Major Joscelyn, in a tone which intimated that he had heard no good of Mr. Kyrle. Then he fixed a pair of prominent eyes upon the young man and inquired if he had been long in Venice.
“Only a few days,” Lennox answered, carelessly.
“Ah—a few days! And you are leaving soon?”