“I didn’t say the Gare du Nord looked like a lover.”
“Don’t be utterly ridiculous.”
“I don’t care where they were stolen—your old dowager’s Gew-gaws. Depend upon it they were stolen by some man she’d been mixed up with, and she knew it, and didn’t dare to prosecute. I can’t see any mystery in the matter.”
“Perhaps you are right.”
“Of course I am right.”
Miss Van Tuyn said nothing for two or three minutes. Her mind had gone from Lady Sellingworth to Craven, and then flitted on—she did not know why—to the man who had gazed at her so strangely in the Cafe Royal. She had been feeling rather neglected, badly treated almost, and his look had restored her to her normal supreme self-confidence. That fact would always be to the stranger’s credit. She wondered very much who he was. His good looks had almost startled her. She began also to wonder what Garstin had thought of him. Garstin seldom painted men. But he did so now and then. Two of his finest portraits were of men: one a Breton fisherman who looked like an apache of the sea, the other a Spanish bullfighter dressed in his Sunday clothes with the book of the Mass in his hand. Miss Van Tuyn had seen them both. She now found herself wishing that Garstin would paint a portrait of the man who had looked at her. But was he a Cafe Royal type? At present Garstin painted nothing which did not come out of the Cafe Royal.
“That man—” she said abruptly.
“I was just wondering when we should get to him!” interjected Garstin. “I thought your old dowager wouldn’t keep us away from him for long.”
“I suppose you know by this time, Dick, that I don’t care in the least what you think of me.”
“The only reason I bother about you is because you are a thoroughly independent cuss and have a damned fine head.”