Then she drove to a hotel, and, her luggage deposited there to await her departure, her thoughts turned very naturally towards lunch. Her scamper round London in the crisp, clear, frosty air had converted the recollection of her early morning coffee and roll into something extremely nebulous and unsupporting, and it was with the healthy appetite of an eager young mind in an eager young body that she faced the several courses of the table d’hote.
She glanced about her with interest, the little snatches of English conversation which drifted to her from other near-by tables giving her a patriotic thrill of pure delight. These were typically English people lunching in a typically English hotel, and she, hitherto a stranger to her own mother-country, was doing likewise. The knowledge filled her with ridiculous satisfaction.
Nor were English people—at home in their own country—anything like as dull and dowdy as Glyn Peterson’s sweeping criticisms had led her to expect. The men were immensely well-groomed and clean-looking. She liked the “morning-tub” appearance they all had; it reminded her of the Englishman at Montavan. Apparently it was a British characteristic.
The women, too, filled her with a species of vicarious pride. They were so well turned-out, with a slim, long limbed grace of figure she found admirable, and with splendid natural complexions—skins like rose and ivory.
Two of them were drifting into the room together now, with a superbly cool assurance of manner—rather as though they had bought the hotel—which brought the sleek head-waiter automatically to their side, bowing and obsequious.
Somewhat to Jean’s satisfaction he convoyed them to the table next her own, and she was pleasantly conscious, as they passed her, of a provocative whisper of silk and of the faint fragrance of violets subtly permeating the atmosphere.
Conscious that perhaps she had been manifesting her interest a little too openly, she turned her attention to a magazine she had bought en route from Dover and was soon absorbed in the inevitable happy-ever-after conclusion of the story she had been reading.
“Lady Anne? Oh, she lives at Staple now. Didn’t you know?”
The speaker’s voice was clear and resonant, with the peculiar carrying quality which has replaced in the modern Englishwoman of the upper classes that excellent thing in woman which was the proud boast of an earlier generation.
The conjunction of the familiar words “Lady Anne” and “Staple” struck sharply on Jean’s ears, and almost instinctively she looked up.