She laughed.
“After all, why should he be surprised?” she remarked. “Of course, one lives differently in Paris, but then—Paris is Paris. I think that a boarding-house is the very best place for a woman who wants to develop her sense of humour. Only I wish that it did not remind one so much of a second-hand clothes shop.”
Sydney looked at her doubtfully.
“Now I suppose Brendon understands exactly what you mean,” he remarked. “He looks as though he did, at any rate. I don’t! Please enlighten me.”
She laughed gaily—and she had a way when she laughed of throwing back her head and showing her beautiful white teeth, so that mirth from her was a thing very much to be desired.
“Look round the table,” she said. “Aren’t we all just odds and ends of humanity—the left-overs, you know. There is something inconglomerate about us. We are amiable to one another, but we don’t mix. We can’t.”
“You and I and Brendon get on all right, don’t we?” Sydney objected.
“But that’s quite different,” replied Anna. “You are neither of you in the least like the ordinary boarding-house young man. You don’t wear a dinner coat with a flower in your button-hole, or last night’s shirt, or very glossy boots, nor do you haunt the drawing-room in the evening, or play at being musical. Besides——”
She stopped short. She herself, and one other there, recognized the interposition of something akin to tragedy. A thickly-set, sandy young man, with an unwholesome complexion and grease-smooth hair, had entered the room. He wore a black tail coat buttoned tightly over his chest, and a large diamond pin sparkled in a white satin tie which had seen better days. He bowed awkwardly to Mrs. White, who held out her hand and beamed a welcome upon him.