She had been quick to see the man behind the misleading little moustache. And already she was beginning to count that amusement tame which Karslake did not share.
Mrs. Waring was undeniably a dear. Sofia could hardly be grateful enough to the happy chance which had cast that lady for the rôle of her chaperone; lacking her guidance the girl must have been innocently guilty of many a gaucherie in ways new and strange to untried, faltering feet. And it was to her alone that Sofia owed the slow but constant widening of her social horizon. For Sybil Waring, it seemed, quite literally “knew everybody”; and Sofia soon learned to count it an off day when Sybil failed to present her protégée to the notice of somebody of position and influence.
Most of these persons were women with sounding names and the solid backing of much money conspicuously in evidence—matrons of the younger and more giddy generation which was just then so busily engaged in providing material for the most hectic chapters of London’s post-war social history. But Sofia was scarcely qualified to be critical or to guess that they were climbers equally with herself, and that if their footing had been of older establishment the name of Vassilyevski would have rung sinister echoes in their memories, deafening them to the rich allure inherent in the title of princess.
So she was fain to accept them all at their own valuation, and thought most of them entirely charming. And though she had hardly had time as yet to progress beyond the introductory stages of chance meetings and informal little teas in public, she began clearly to descry enchanting vistas of better days to come, when the Princess Sofia Vassilyevski would have not only teas but dinners and dances given in her honour, and would be asked to spend gay week-ends in the country houses of the people with whom she contracted the stronger friendships.
But for the immediate present, and especially in the paramount business of having a good time, Karslake was fairly a necessity. He thought of everything and forgot nothing, was ever fertile of fresh expedient if the pastime of a moment began to pall, and was capable of sustained fits of irresponsible gaiety which enchanted Sofia, so well did they chime with her own eagerness for sheer fun.
Decidedly she would have been lost without Sybil Waring; but without Karslake she would have been forlorn.
XI
HEARTBREAK
Not yet prepared to admit it even to herself, in her heart Sofia knew she prized the companionship of Karslake for something more than the mere amusement it afforded her: there was a deeper feeling she would not name. For all that, her times of solitude knew dreams quick and warm with the thought of Karslake, his words and ways, the gracious little attentions he had accustomed her to expect of him and which his manner subtly invested with a personal flavour inexpressibly delightful, indispensably sweet.
Nor did she ever quite forget how long he had worshipped with unostentatious devotion at her lowly shrine of the caisse in the Café des Exiles, and how shabbily she had rewarded his admiration—never once, in those many months, with so much as a smile—and how unresentful had been his acceptance of her half-feigned, half-real indifference to his existence.
But whenever her reflections took that back-turning she would recall the man who had talked to Karslake in the café, that day so long ago, of his own humble past as a ’bus-boy in Troyon’s in Paris, and who on leaving had given Sofia herself that odd look of half-recognition tempered by bewilderment.