‘If you were a little more stupid,’ said Mamma, ‘you might make a success of a London season even at this late date. You’ve got the looks. You are stupid—stupid enough, I should think, to ruin all your own chances—but you’re not stupid all through. You’re like your father: he was a brilliant imbecile. I never intended to put you into the marriage-market—but I’ll do so if you like. If you haven’t already decided to marry one of those young Fyfes.... They’re quite a good family, I suppose.’
She appeared to expect no answer and received none.
Judith laughed at Mamma’s epigrammatic dictums and was a social success. She motored, chattered, danced and played tennis, at first with effort—with Roddy rising up now and again to make all dark and crumbling; then gradually with a kind of enjoyment, snapping her fingers at the past, plunging full into the comedy, forgetting to stand aside and watch: silly all through—stupid even: stupider every day.
Demurely she passed through the lounges: they all knew her and looked her up and down as she went, discussed her frocks in whispers, with smiling or stony faces. In the streets they stared, and she liked it; she admired her own reflection in the shop windows. An elderly French count, with two rolls of fat in the back of his neck, entreated Mamma for her daughter’s hand in marriage. It was a very good joke.
Then, one evening after dinner, while she sat in the lounge with Mamma and discussed the clothes of her fellow-visitors, she saw Julian walk in. He wore an old white sweater with a rolled collar, and his long hair was wild upon his pale chiselled forehead. His face, hands and clothes were grey with dust, his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright with extreme weariness. He stood alone by the door, unself-conscious and deliberate, his gaze roving round to find her among the staring, whispering company. Even before she recognized him, her heart had leapt a little at sight of him; for his fine-drawn blonde length and grace were of startling beauty after a fortnight of small dapper men with black moustaches and fat necks.
‘It’s Julian!’
She ran across the room and took his hand in both her own, joyfully greeting him. A friend from England! He was a friend from England. How much that meant after all! He had, romantically, kept his promise and come to find her, this distinguished young man at whom they were all staring. He and she, standing there hand in hand, were the centre of excited comment and surmise: that was flattering. She was pleased with him for contriving so dramatic an entry.
He had motored from Paris, he said, going all day over execrable roads in stupefying heat. He had found her hotel at the first guess.
He booked a room and went off to have a bath and to change. Judith went back to explain to Mamma, who asked for no explanations. It was, she remarked, pleasant to see a new face; and those Fyfes had always looked well-bred. She was glad Judith would now have a congenial companion while she finished her cure. If to her cat-deep self she said: “So that’s the one!” her diamond-like eyes did not betray her.
He came down half an hour later, elegant in his dinner-jacket, sat down beside Mamma and started at once to entertain her with the easy, civilized, gossiping conversation she enjoyed.