Miss Forster liked her too.
Lydia did not exactly flatter Miss Forster, but she had a tactful way of introducing the topic of Miss Forster’s great friends, Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret, and was always ready to hear about the Bridge parties that Miss Forster frequented at their house in Lexham Gardens.
Hector Bulteel, the pallid youth whose days were passed in Gower Street, had at first been too shy even to speak to Lydia, but one day she asked for his advice on a point of accountancy, and thereafter they occasionally discussed the higher mathematics or the distinctions between organic and inorganic chemistry.
Lydia did not really think very highly of Hector’s capabilities, but criticized him as shrewdly as she did everyone else with whom she came into contact.
She was always careful, however, to keep her rather caustic judgments to herself, and she knew that both at Madame Elena’s and at the boarding-house the reputation that had been hers at school still prevailed: Lydia Raymond never said an unkind thing about anyone.
Even old Miss Lillicrap, who seldom uttered a word that was not either spiteful or complaining, looked at Lydia in a comparatively friendly silence on the evening that the Greek gentleman first took her to the Polytechnic.
Lydia wore a new, pale-pink blouse, and her best dark-brown cloth coat and skirt.
For the first time, she decided that she really was pretty.
The conviction lent exhilaration to the evening’s entertainment, which on the whole she found rather dull. She was not very much amused by the cinematograph films displayed, and when, towards the end of the evening, Mr. Margoliouth fumbled for her hand in the darkness and held it, Lydia was principally conscious that hers was still sticky from the chocolates that he had given her, and failed to derive any thrill from the experience.