Even below the awning the light outside was so much stronger than the comparative obscurity within the smoke-room that at first I could not distinguish much. Parsons left me at the door and I was about to sit down when I discovered to my surprise that I was not alone. At a desk set in one of the two recesses which flanked the doorway a girl was sitting. She was dressed in a plain white silk tennis shirt and white piqué skirt and her panama hat lay on a chair by her side. She was writing letters. In the stillness of the room I could hear her pen scratching across the paper. So engrossed was she in her writing that she did not turn round.
I felt a little embarrassed. I felt it would be too farcical to cough mildly, in the manner of a stage comedian, in order to announce my presence; while, on the other hand, to make some violent noise like dropping on the floor one of the books which were lying around might, I conceived, unduly frighten the young lady. So I sat where I was, enjoying the pleasant half-light of the room after the heat and glitter outside, and amused myself by guessing at the appearance of the stranger from her back.
She had beautiful hair of a glossy golden brown, "bobbed" after the modern fashion, but so exquisitely brushed and tended that I decided she must have a good maid. Her figure was admirable, her neck very white and slender and matchless in the grace of its poise as she inclined her head to the paper. Her clothes, simple as they were, were faultless both in their cut and the way she wore them. I suppose there are fashions in a tennis blouse and skirt the same as there are in other kinds of women's clothes. At any rate, there was a flawless chic about this girl's appearance which told me that she was Paris-clad.
Presently the scratching of the pen stopped. A white hand stole up and patted the golden brown hair.
Then some intuitive sense told me that the girl knew there was someone in the room. It was as though our two minds communed in that still, cool place. At the same moment she swung round on her chair and, seeing me, rose abruptly to her feet.
As she confronted me I realised that I must have divined her beauty; for it came as no surprise to me to find her extremely good-looking. I have met many women in my time and, as is not uncommon in my profession, many were of the "charmer" order.
But the girl who stood facing me, a little perturbed, somewhat nonplussed by the unexpected apparition, had an indefinite quality of beauty which would have made her remarkable in any society. A beautifully shaped head, an oval face, delicately pencilled eyebrows throwing into relief the large grey eyes, a fine white skin and unusually good teeth—all these attributes of beauty she possessed. But with them went a curiously strong attraction, some quality of magnetism, which, to speak quite personally, made me want to see her radiantly happy, to conjure up a smile which I felt must be unusually sweet.
"Oh," she exclaimed and blushed very prettily, "I didn't hear you come in. How do you do? I am Marjorie Garth. Does Daddy know you're here?"
With the empressement of the exiled Briton, to whom the vision of a fresh young English girl is as the first violets of spring or the fragrance of the forest after summer rain, I took the slim, cool hand she offered me.
"The steward," I said, "has gone to tell him!"