“A mere coincidence, I think. What would be her object in telling this story to you between three and four o’clock, and meeting me at five to recover the lost document.”
“Search me! I’m sure only of this: there are too many women in this affair, Mr. Harleston, too many women! Man is a reasoning being and somewhat consistent; but women—” a gesture ended the remark.
“Just so!” Harleston laughed. “And now for the Lady of Peacock Alley!”
VII—Surprises
Peacock Alley was in full gorgeousness when Harleston, just at five o’clock, paused on the landing above the marble stairs inside the F Street entrance and surveyed the motley throng—busy with looking and being looked at, with charming and being charmed, with wondering and being wondered at, with aping and being aped, with patronizing and being patronized, with flattering and being flattered, with fawning and being fawned upon, with deceiving and being deceived, with bluffing and being bluffed, with splurging, with pretending, with every trick and artifice and sham and chicanery that society and politics know, or can fancy.
Harleston was familiar with it all for too many years even to accord it a glance of contemptuous indifference—when he had anything else to occupy his mind; and just now his mind was on a lady in black with three American Beauties on the gown.
He went slowly down the steps to the main corridor and joined the buzzing, kaleidoscopic crowd.
Somewhere on the floor above, an orchestra was playing for the dansant; and the music came fitfully through the chatter and confusion. He nodded to some acquaintances, bowed formally to others, shook hands when it could not be avoided; all the while progressing slowly down the corridor in search of three red roses on a black gown.
And near the far end he saw, for an instant through a rift in the crowd, the three roses on a black gown, but not the face above them; the next instant the rift closed. However, he knew now that she was here and where to find her, and he made his way through the press toward where she was waiting for him.
Then the crowd suddenly opened—as crowds do—and he saw, on the same side of the corridor and scarcely ten feet apart, two slender women in black and wearing red roses; one was Mrs. Winton, the other he had never seen.