"Pshaw," he returned, much pleased, and furtively twisting his moustache, "the fitter company then for a little princess like yourself," he added, with old-fashioned gallantry.
Hazel glanced in naïve amazement at her simple cotton gown. "A princess," she said amusedly, "dressed in stuff that cost sixpence-three-farthings a yard."
"No one would notice your dress with——" he ended abruptly and changed the subject. "With that face," he had been on the point of adding, but he disapproved of such outspoken compliments, and was afraid of making the girl vain. One of the chief charms of Hazel's unusual beauty was her complete unconsciousness of it—a charm that Percival Desborough fully appreciated.
Arrived at the lodging-house, Hazel made her way in alone. "I shall not keep you long," she told her companion, "but I have made up my mind to speak to the landlady privately."
"I am Miss Le Mesurier," she announced to Mrs. Walters, who herself opened to Hazel.
"The young gentlemen's sister, Miss, I presume?" the woman inquired respectfully. Indeed the sight of the liveried servants and handsome bays quite awed her, and set her wishing that she had sent Caroline, despite her dirty working apron, to open the door, instead of doing that service herself.
"Yes, and I should like to see their rooms, if you please," Hazel returned, "and I have a letter that I wish to leave on Mr. Edward's table."
"Certainly Miss, certainly," the landlady replied soothingly, manifestly anxious to assure the visitor that nothing could be more reasonable.
She led the way upstairs. "This is the sitting-room, Miss," Mrs. Walters informed her, throwing open the first door on a landing above, "and that is Mr. Gerald's room opening out of it—Mr. Edward sleeps upstairs, as did Mr. Hugh before he left."
The girl looked about her with much interest. It was a poor little room enough, but clean and sunny. Oilcloth covered the floor, with an occasional cheap rug stranded here and there. White lace curtains draped the little bow window, and a struggling geranium wrestled with existence in too small a pot, with pale, caked earth, on a little flower-stand with a green woolly mat. The inevitable horsehair sofa and chairs predominated, covered with the equally inevitable white cotton crochet antimacassars, and a hideously designed clock ticked harshly on the little shiny black mantelpiece, behind which a wonderfully dim and speckled mirror had its place. Upon the walls hung photographs of Mrs. Walters at all ages, sometimes alone, sometimes one of a self-conscious group, attired in ugly large-hipped costumes.