Her accustomed seat at the far end of the table, next to the Greek, was empty, but on Margoliouth’s other side sat a strange woman, whom Lydia was at no pains to identify, even had Miss Forster’s description not at once returned to her mind. “Very dark—and stout—and dressed like a foreigner.”
Mrs. Margoliouth was all that.
Lydia saw the room and everyone in it, in a flash, as she closed the door behind her.
Miss Lillicrap, clutching her knife and fork, almost as though she were afraid that her food might be snatched from her plate while she peered across the room with eager, malevolent curiosity—Miss Nettleship, suddenly silent in the midst of some babbled triviality, and evidently undecided whether to get up or to remain seated—Mrs. Bulteel, her sharp gaze fixed upon Lydia and her pinched mouth half open—Miss Forster, also staring undisguisedly—Mrs. Clarence, with her foolish, red-rimmed eyes almost starting from her head—the youth, Hector Bulteel, his mouth still half-full and a tumbler arrested in mid-career in his hand—his father’s sallow face turned towards the door, wrinkled with an evident discomfiture.
Mrs. Margoliouth herself had raised a pair of black, hostile-looking eyes, set in a heavy, pasty face, to fix them upon Lydia.
Irene had stopped her shuffling progress round the table, and turned her head over her shoulder.
Only Margoliouth remained with his head bent over his plate, apparently absorbed in the food that he was sedulously cutting up into small pieces.
In the momentary silence Lydia advanced. Her heart was beating very quickly, but she was conscious of distinct exhilaration, and she remembered to tilt her chin a little upward and to walk slowly.
There was the sudden scraping of a chair, and pale, ugly Mr. Bulteel had sprung forward, and come down the room to meet her.
The unexpected little act of chivalry, which obviously came as a surprise to himself as to everybody else, nearly startled Lydia out of her predetermined composure.