“I hope you will like him. We saw a good deal of him in Italy, and will probably see a good deal of him here.”
“I’m certain to like him: you like him.”
“Ah, that’s what you said to the young women who put off their colors and took to sackcloth in the presence of Mr. Holland. Don’t be too sure that you will like any man because other women like him. Now, I have, as usual, remained too long with you. I’m greatly impressed with the situation of the moment. I don’t say that I think you are wrong, mind you. Girls should always be on the side of the Bible. At any rate you have, I repeat, la physionomie du role, and you can’t be far astray if you act up to it. Good-bye, my dearest.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE DEFENSE OF HOLLAND.
Ella Linton drove to a certain shop not far from Piccadilly,—the only shop where the arranging of feathers is treated as a science independent of the freaks of fashion,—and at the door she met a tall man with the complexion of mahogany but with fair hair and mustache. People nudged one another and whispered his name as they walked past him before standing at the shop window, pretending to admire the feathers, but in reality to glance furtively round at the man.
The name that they whispered to one another after the nudge was Herbert Courtland.
He took off his hat—it was a tall silk one, but no one who knew anything could avoid feeling that it should have been a solar toupee—when Mrs. Linton stepped from her victoria.
“Oh, you here!” said she. “Who on earth would expect to see you here?”