“Yes, milady.”
James ran downstairs, opened the door, bowed as Lady Dyke passed into Portman Square, and then confidentially informed Buttons that “the missus” was in a “rare old wax” about something.
“She nearly jumped down my bloomin’ throat when I asked her if she would have the carriage,” he said.
Her ladyship’s mood did not soften when she drifted from the fixed tenure of Wensley House, Portman Square, into the chaos of Oxford Street and fog at 5.30 on a November evening.
Though not a true “London particular,” the fog was chilly, exasperating, tedious. People bumped against each other without apology, ’buses crunched through the traffic with deadly precision, pair-horse vans swept around corners with magnificent carelessness.
In the result, Lady Dyke, who meant to walk, as she was somewhat in advance of the time she had fixed on for this very important engagement, took a hansom. In her present mood slight things annoyed her. Usually, the London cab-horse is a thoughtful animal; he refuses to hurry; when he falls he lies contented, secure in the knowledge that for five blissful minutes he will be at complete rest. But this misguided quadruped flew as though oats and meadow-grass awaited him at Victoria Station on the Underground Railway.
He raced down Park Lane, skidded past Hyde Park Corner, and grated the off-wheel of the hansom against the kerb outside the station within eight minutes.
In other words, her ladyship, if she would obey the directions contained in the voluminous letter, was compelled to kill time.
As she stepped from the vehicle and halted beneath a lamp to take a florin from her purse, a tall, ulster-wrapped gentleman, walking rapidly into Victoria Street, caught a glimpse of her face and well-proportioned form.
Instantly his hat was off.