It was evident that The Sparrow, who was her friend and Hugh’s, was a most elusive person.
She recollected the White Cavalier at the ball at Nice, and how she had never suspected him to be the deputy of the King of the Underworld—the man whose one hand was gloved.
Within half an hour of the departure of her visitor from Scotland Yard, the maid announced Mr. Sherrard.
Dorise, with a frown, arose from her chair, and a few seconds later faced the man who was her mother’s intimate friend, and who daily forced his unwelcome attentions upon her.
“Your mother told me you would be alone, Dorise,” he said in his forced manner of affected elegance. “So I just dropped in. I hope I’m not worrying you.”
“Oh! not at all,” replied the girl, sealing a letter which she had just written. “Mother has gone to Warwickshire, and I’m going out to lunch with May Petheridge, an old schoolfellow of mine.”
“Oh! Then I won’t keep you,” said the smug lover of Lady Ranscomb’s choice. He was one of those over-dressed fops who haunted the lounges of the Ritz and the Carlton, and who scraped acquaintance with anybody with a title. At tea parties he would refer to Lord This and Lady That as intimate friends, whereas he had only been introduced to them by some fat wife of a fatter profiteer.
Sherrard saw that Dorise’s attitude was one of hostility, but with his superior overbearing manner he pretended not to notice it.
“You were not at Lady Oundle’s the night before last,” he remarked, for want of something better to say. “I went there specially to meet you, Dorise.”
“I hate Lady Oundle’s dances,” was the girl’s reply. “Such a lot of fearful old fogies go there.”