When Alexandra knew where they were bound for diffidence seized on her. Maggy might be there. If she were, and saw her with a man, what would she think? Alexandra felt that there could be no two answers to that question. She entered the big, rose-colored room in fear and trembling.
Maggy, however, was not lunching at the Carlton that day. But Lander, the composer of Alexandra's new song, saw her and carried the news to De Freyne.
"Who do you think was lunching with Bernard Meer at the Carlton to-day?" he began.
"No woman," answered De Freyne. "He hates 'em. Thinks they've got fluff in their heads instead of brains, and that's why they're so light-headed. Told me so himself."
"It was a woman for all that. Nobody less than little Hersey! And, by Jove, it was quite fascinating to watch her. At first she hardly spoke a word; but before long she might have been alone with him in the restaurant. She seemed to have clean forgotten everybody else in the place. And he was just as taken up with her. They couldn't take their eyes off one another. Wonder what it means?"
"Oh, nothing. You've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, my dear chap. Why, she only met the fellow a fortnight ago. I sent her to him. Meer wouldn't look at one of my lot, except professionally."
However, when he saw Alexandra that evening he chaffed her.
"I hear you were lunching with Meer to-day," he said. "Was that part of his prescription?" Something in her face so entirely pure and at the same time so piteous, made him refrain from saying more. He had once seen much the same expression in his own daughter's face when she had shyly told him that some one had proposed to her and was coming for his consent. "Damn it all," he reflected. "She's going to fall in love like any ordinary girl!" Aloud he said, "Meer isn't a marrying sort, you know."
Alexandra bent her head as she passed him.
Bernard Meer was in the stalls that night. She saw him looking at her. Once he smiled, and, trembling, she smiled back, and despised herself for smiling, since now like nearly all the others she had "a friend" in the house.