The young man invoked aloud the divinity of Jingo.
“A minute later,” he continued to himself, “and we should have come face to face with her. A chance meeting, of course; why shouldn’t people have met by chance? But I’m glad she didn’t see us together.”
A miserable, drizzly day; the sky and earth a uniform mud colour. Lacour watched his boots degenerating. He consulted his watch; it was half an hour past noon. An engagement to lunch with a friend at one stood before him; he disregarded it, and went in pursuit of the lady.
“Come to see Hecuba’s kitchen-pots, no doubt,” he mused. “Yes, there she is! She has a good figure, seen from behind, and she always dresses well. I wonder what countenance she will show me; there’s no foreseeing.”
Ada Warren happened to raise her eyes, and beheld Lacour approaching, a smile of frank surprise on his handsome face. She was startled, and could not help showing it. Lacour, on the other hand, was very much at his ease, talked in a lightly facetious way of the antiquities in the case before them, now and then putting in a personal question.
“You are in town?” he asked by parenthesis.
“I am, for one day.”
“I hope Mrs. Clarendon is well? Turning her thoughts, no doubt, to fox-hunting. You don’t hunt, I believe? No more do I. Fortunate I haven’t the taste, isn’t it?”
Ada made no reply, continuing her inspection of the contents of the case, or appearing to do so. He moved a little away, as if to examine other cases, but was presently at her side again. Her curiosity seemed to be satisfied, and she let her eyes wander rather vaguely.
“Do you often come here?” she asked, as they passed from a little group of people to an uninvaded spot a few yards away. She spoke as though against her will, merely to escape from embarrassment.