Who was this large, lean, top-hatted creature striding towards her in a pair of aggressively checked trousers? Where had she seen that freckled face, those bold eyes, those prognathous jaws? As he came on he caught her gaze and fixed it; but she dropped her eyes at once, adroitly giving him only the line of her cheek to look at. Whoever he was, he was not a gentleman!
In the next moment, however, she had begun to realize that he was outside and beyond any trite symbol of that kind. He was less a man than a natural force; moreover, as soon as he had passed her, he stopped abruptly and turned round to follow her with his eyes. She did not need to turn round herself to verify her sense of the act, even had personal dignity not intervened to prevent her.
She felt annoyed. Again she asked herself who he could be. When and where had she seen him? And then a light broke. It may have been the checked trousers, it may have been the prognathous jaws, but her mind was suddenly flung back upon that recent visit to Beaconsfield Villas, and a certain unforgettable scene. This slightly fantastic figure was no less a person than Lady Muriel’s fiancé, the new Home Secretary.
II
Crossing to Broad Place she could not check a laugh. Wounded, angry, humiliated by the pressure of a recent event, there still lurked in her a true appreciation of the human comedy. What a pill for Bridport House to have to swallow! It was poetic justice that the pride which strained at a gnat so harmless as herself should have to gulp a real live camel in the person of the Right Honorable Gentleman.
But the laugh, after all, was hollow. Tears of vexation leaped to her eyes. And they owed more to the perception of her own inadequacy in this smarting hour than to the act of Fate. “Wretch that I am!” She was ready to chasten herself with scorpions as she crossed the familiar path into Albert Gate.
Within a very few yards were the loyal, warm-hearted friends of her own orbit. And there, alas! was the rub. Her own orbit could not satisfy her now. She craved something that all their kindness, their cheerfulness, their frank affection could not give. “Just common or garden snobbishness, my dear, that’s the nature of your complaint,” whispered a monitor within. “You are no better than anyone else when you are invited to call on a duke in Mount Street.”
That might be true, or it might not, but sore and rebellious as she was, she was strongly inclined to dispute the verdict. After all, her feeling went infinitely deeper. It was futile, however, to analyze it now. This was not the place nor was there present opportunity. She glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was one o’clock.
The watch on her wrist was as hostile as everything else in her little world just now. Even one o’clock had a sharp sting of its own. “Don’t be late for lunch,” had been Milly’s parting words. “Charley Cheesewright is coming. And he’s dying to meet you.”
She managed to navigate the vortex of Knightsbridge without knowing that she did so; and then, all at once, she realized that she was within twenty yards of Victoria Mansions, and that a rather overdressed young man was a few yards ahead.