Mrs Jefferson started. The gentleman who had spoken was a recent arrival. She only knew him as Colonel Estcourt. He was a singularly interesting-looking man, home from India on sick leave, and the maidens, and wives, and widows, of this polyglot assemblage at the Hotel were all inclined to admiration of his physical perfections, and to dissatisfaction at a certain coldness and disdainfulness of themselves, which, to use their mildest form of reproach, was “odd and unmilitary.”
Mrs Jefferson started slightly. “Oh, it’s you, Colonel,” she said. “Yes, we did talk about all those subjects, and I surmise if all of you people here heard her carry on against the way you live your lives, you’d feel rather small.”
“Did you?” asked Mrs Masterman unkindly.
The bath had not improved her complexion, and her left foot was paining her excessively. These two facts had not combined to sweeten the natural acerbity of her temper. Mrs Ray Jefferson did not heed the question, or the smile it provoked on one or two feminine lips.
“I should like to know who she is,” she persisted. “She’s been in India too. I suppose you never met her, Colonel Estcourt? No one could forget her who had!”
That cold impassive face changed ever so slightly. “India,” he said, “is a somewhat vague term, and covers a somewhat large area for a possible meeting-place. Your description, Mrs Jefferson, is tantalising in the extreme to a male mind, but I fail to recognise its charming original as any personal acquaintance.”
“I suppose so,” said the little American, discontentedly. “I’m just dying to know who she is, and therefore no one can tell me. Seems I shall have to call her ‘the Mystery,’ until she condescends to throw off this incognita business.”
“But we are sure to see her,” interposed Orval Molyneux, the young poet. “She must go out sometimes, I suppose.”
“If you’ll take my advice,” said Mrs Jefferson brusquely, “you won’t try to see her, for it’s my belief that she’s not the woman any man can look at and forget, and you poets are mostly impressionable.”
“Such a warning is only adding zest to temptation,” said Colonel Estcourt, with a grave smile. “You really have aroused my curiosity in no small degree. But perhaps the mysterious beauty may not be so obdurate as you imagined. Why should she not show herself among us? It is contrary to all known rules of Nature for a beautiful woman to hide herself from the admiration her charms would exact. When those charms are coupled with mental gifts of so diverse and unusual a nature as Mrs Jefferson has described, the probability is that seclusion is only a whim, unless indeed—”