A Revelation.
Although many days passed, no word of apology came from my mysterious correspondent for not having kept the appointment. I watched every post for nearly a fortnight, and as I received no explanation, my suspicion regarding Mabel’s connexion with the strange affair became, of course, strengthened.
With heart-sinking I had taken leave of her on the kerb in Kensington High Street on that well-remembered evening, feeling that the likelihood of our frequent meeting was very remote, especially now that she apparently held me in suspicion. In this case, however, I was mistaken, for within a week we met again quite accidentally in Bond Street, and, finding her disposed to accept my companionship, I accompanied her shopping, and spent an extremely pleasant afternoon. Her mother was rather unwell, she explained, and that accounted for her being alone.
She was dressed entirely in black, but with a quiet elegance that was surprising. I had never known before that day how smart and chic a woman could appear in a gown of almost funereal aspect. Her manner towards me retained nothing of its previous suspicion; she was bright and merry, without that cloud of unhappiness that had so strangely overshadowed her on the last occasion we had been together. She possessed a clever wit, and gossiped and joked amusingly as we went from shop to shop, ordering fruit for dessert, and flowers for table-decoration. That her mother was wealthy appeared certain from the extravagant prices which she gave for fruits out of season and choice hothouse flowers. She bought the best she could procure, and seemed utterly regardless of expense.
I remarked how dear were some grapes which she had ordered, but she only smiled and gave her shoulders a little shrug.
This recklessness was not done to impress me, for I was quick to detect that the shopkeepers knew her as a good customer, and brought forward their most expensive wares as a matter of course.
Although at first she declined my invitation, as though she considered it a breach of the convenances, I at length persuaded her to take some tea with me at Blanchard’s, and we continued our gossip as we sat together at one of the little tables surrounded by other ladies out shopping with their male encumbrances.
I had, rather unwisely, perhaps, passed a critical remark regarding a lady who had entered in an unusually striking toilette, in which she looked very hot and extremely uncomfortable, and laughing at what I had said, she replied—
“You are certainly right. We women always overweigh ourselves in our garments, to say nothing of other and more fatiguing things. Half of life’s little worries accrue from our clothes. From tight collar to tight shoe, and not forgetting a needlessly befeathered hat, we take unto ourselves burdens that we should be much happier without.”
“I agree entirely,” I said, smiling at her philosophy. “Some blatant crank bent on self-advertisement might do worse than found an Anti-ornamental Dress League. Just think how much of life’s trials would at once slip off a man if he wore neither collar nor tie—especially the dress-tie!”