CHAPTER IX
HAUNTINGS BY THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
1896
In this same year (1896) I remember another curious incident.
I was staying in London during the season, and some girl friends were very anxious that I should meet a lady whom they knew intimately and wished me to know also. As so often happens under these circumstances, we were not in the least degree interested in each other; but that has nothing to do with my story.
The girls had asked various other friends, but this special lady was the raison d'être of the tea-party, and they begged me to come in good time, because Mrs Halifax had several other engagements, and could not pay them a long visit.
So I dressed hurriedly in order to keep the appointment, and went to the house feeling rather bored by the whole arrangement, little dreaming that it would be the occasion of such an interesting personal experience. The lady turned out to be exceedingly prosperous and extremely uninteresting, from my point of view. Probably she would have given her ideas of me in much the same way! I realised that she had brought a son and a daughter with her, but did not know that another young man (whose face I have never seen) was also a son of hers. I talked to the mother for the conventional quarter of an hour, and then turned with relief to the other son whom she had mentioned, and with whom I found several old friends in common.
Meanwhile the room was filling up with guests; amongst these late comers I noticed the entrance of a man whose face did not impress me at all favourably. He looked dissipated and conceited. I did not speak to this man, but my strong impression about him is a factor in the story.
When the lady, par excellence, of the entertainment rose to leave the room, followed by her son and daughter, I noticed that a second young man was also in her train; but I had not seen him previously, for the very good reason that he had been sitting behind my back all the afternoon.