Not to the church, however, was his attention directed, but to the house immediately opposite to it. A big, red-faced, old-fashioned house, fresh painted and pointed, with plate-glass windows in its lower stories, and bronzed knockers, and shining bell-pulls, looking like a portly dowager endeavouring to assume modern airs and graces. Carriages kept driving up, and depositing old and young ladies, and the door, on which was an enormous brass plate with "Madame Clarisse," in letters nearly half a foot long, was perpetually being flung open by a page with a very shiny face, produced by a judicious combination of yellow soap and friction--a page who, in his morning-jacket ruled with red lines, looked like a page of an account-book. Paul Derinzy knew many of these carriage-brought people--for Madame Clarisse was the fashionable milliner of London, and had none but the very greatest of fine ladies in her clientèle--and many of them knew him; but on the present occasion he carefully shrouded himself from observation behind one of the pillars of the church portico. There he remained in an agony of impatience, fidgeting about, looking at his watch, glaring up at the bright-faced house, and anathematising the customers, until the clock in the church-tower above him chimed the half-hour past two. Then he became more fidgety than ever. Before, he had taken short turns up and down the street, always returning sharply to the same spot, and looking round as though he had expected some remarkable alteration to have taken place during his ten seconds' absence; now, he stood behind the pillar, never attempting to move from the spot, but constantly peering across the way at Madame Clarisse's great hall-door.
Within five minutes of the chiming of the clock, the great hall-door was opened so quietly that it was perfectly apparent the demonstrative page was not behind it. A young woman, simply and elegantly dressed in a tight-fitting black silk gown, and a small straw bonnet trimmed with green ribbon, with a black lace shawl thrown loosely across her shoulders and hanging down behind, after a French fashion then in vogue, passed out, closing the door softly behind her, and started off in the direction of the Park. Then Paul Derinzy left his hiding-place, and, at a discreet distance, followed in pursuit.
There must have been something very odd or very attractive in the personal appearance of this young woman, for she undoubtedly attracted a vast deal of attention as she passed through the streets. It would require something special, one would imagine, to intervene between a man and the toothache; and yet a gentleman seated in a dentist's ante-room in George Street, with a face swollen to twice its natural size, and all out of drawing, and vainly endeavouring to solace himself, and to forget the coming wrench, with the pleasant pages of a ten-years'-old Bentleys Miscellany, flung the book aside as he saw the girl go by, and crammed himself into a corner of the window to look after her retreating figure. Two sporting gentlemen standing at the freshly-sanded door of Limmer's Hotel, smoking cigars, and muttering to each other in whispers of forthcoming "events," suspended their conversation and exchanged a rapid wink as she flitted by them. The old boys sunning themselves in Bond Street, pottering into Ebers' for their stalls, or pricing fish at Groves's, were very much fluttered by the girl's transient appearance among them. The little head was carried very erect, and there must have been something in the expression of the face which daunted the veterans, and prevented them from addressing her. One or two gave chase, but soon found out that the gouty feet so neatly incased in varnished boots had no chance with this modern Atalanta, who sailed away without a check, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Nor were men her only admirers; ladies sitting in their carriages at shop-doors would look at her half in wonderment, half in admiration, and whisper to each other: "What a pretty girl!" and these compliments pleased her immensely, and brought the colour to her face, adding to her beauty.
She crossed into the Park through Grosvenor Gate, and taking the path that lay immediately in front of her, went straight ahead about half-way between the Serpentine and the Bayswater Road, then through the little iron gate into Kensington Gardens, and across the turf for some distance until she came in sight of a little avenue of trees, through which glimmered the shining waters of the Round Pond, backed by the rubicund face of stout old Kensington Palace. Then she slackened her pace a little, and began to look around her. There were but few, very few people near: two or three valetudinarians sunning themselves on such of the benches as were in sufficient repair; a few children playing about while their nursemaids joined forces and abused their employers; a shabby-genteel man eating a sandwich of roll-and-sausage--obviously his dinner--in a shamefaced way, and drinking short gulps out of a tin flask under the shadow of his hat; and a vagabond dog or two, delighted at having escaped the vigilance of the park-keeper, and snapping, yelping, and performing acrobatic feats of tumbling, out of what were literally pure animal spirits. Valetudinarians, children, nursemaids, and dogs were evidently not what the girl had come to see, for she stopped, struck the stick-handle of her open parasol against her shoulder, and murmured, "How provoking!" Just at that instant Paul Derinzy, who had been following her tolerably closely, touched her arm. She started, wheeled swiftly round, and her eyes brightened and the flush rose in her cheeks as she cried:
"Oh, Mr. Douglas!"
"'Mr. Douglas,' Daisy!" said Paul Derinzy, with uplifted eyebrows; "'and why this courtesy,' as we say in Sir Walter Scott?"
"I mean Paul," said the girl; "but you startled me so, I scarcely knew what I said."
"Ah, 'Paul' is much better. The idea of your calling me anything else!"
"I don't know, I rather think you're 'Mr. Douglas' just now. You're always 'Mr. Douglas,' recollect, when I'm at all displeased with you, and I've lots of things for you to explain to-day."
"Fire away, child! Let's turn out of the path first, in amongst these trees. So--that is better. Now then, what is the first?--by Jove, pet, how stunning you look to-day!"