“How were you able to guess that?”
Miss Cass had been able to guess that because the Saturday Sentinel said she had insight. But modesty, of course, forbade her to say that to Lady Elfreda, who was looking at her now with an intentness greater and more curious than she had ever noticed in any human countenance.
Of what was she thinking, the daughter of the marquis? The mind of Miss Cass could not stop to inquire. For that deep, delicious voice, that seemed to treat each individual syllable of the English language as a work of art, was saying: “As a matter of fact, that is what happens in the play, but it is all so extraordinarily stupid that one simply loathes——”
The stern critic had suddenly caught the look of pain in the eyes of the lady opposite. Then it was she realized that to some minds the situation itself and even the vulgarly obvious working out of it might not be intolerable.
IV
The conversation, which was becoming full of perilous possibilities, was interrupted by the stopping of the train at Newbury. From her place by the window Elfreda observed a consequential little man strutting along the platform in the direction of their compartment. He was looking for a vacant seat. She recognized at once by a portrait in the Society Pictorial now open on her knee, that he was no less a person than Sir Toby Philpot, the author of the play; and to judge by the quantity of luggage in charge of his servant it was not unreasonable to suppose that he was on his way to the scene of action at Clavering St. Mary’s.
He looked a harmless little donkey enough, but among Elfreda’s own friends he had the reputation of a bounder. It was this fact in the first instance which may have led her to judge “The Lady of Laxton” so harshly; at all events the piece could scarcely have been as bad as she thought it was or it would never have held together. But at least it went far to account for the depth of her resentment against her father and mother who, without giving her any option in the matter, had so high-handedly let her in for something she was going to dislike intensely.
A sense of disgust pervaded Elfreda. Really there was hardly anything about the little man to call for such an emotion, but it was his misfortune to be the central figure just now of the world she was hating.
“Pikey!” Her imperiousness was almost savage in the ear of the Werewolf opposite. “Put your head out.” Elfreda lowered the window fiercely. “Look your largest.” She might have been addressing a very favorite grizzly whom she had been clever enough to tame. “Let him see you.... Let him really see you.”
As soon as Pikey grew alive to the situation she rose and thrust forth her head in all its man-hating ruthlessness. She was only just in time. Sir Toby, having caught a glimpse already of a decidedly attractive occupant, was making a bee-line for the carriage door. But the sight of Pikey, grim as a gargoyle and breathing latent ferocity, gave pause even to a recently elected member of the Old Buck House Club. Swollen with self-importance Sir Toby undoubtedly was, but in point of inches he was a very small man indeed, and he was confronted with the jaws of a man-eating tiger and the nose of a crocodile.