Also the more dignified request put forward in: GREAT CENTRAL: Gentleman who saw lady in bonnet 9 Monday morning in
Great Central Hotel lift would greatly value opportunity of obtaining
introduction.
This exhausted the joys of the Agony Column for the day, and West, like
the solid citizen he really was, took up the Times to discover what
might be the morning's news. A great deal of space was given to the
appointment of a new principal for Dulwich College. The affairs of the
heart, in which that charming creature, Gabrielle Ray, was at the moment
involved, likewise claimed attention. And in a quite unimportant corner,
in a most unimportant manner, it was related that Austria had sent an
ultimatum to Serbia. West had read part way through this stupid little
piece of news, when suddenly the Thunderer and all its works became an
uninteresting blur.
A girl stood just inside the door of the Carlton breakfast room.
Yes; he should have pondered that despatch from Vienna. But such a girl!
It adds nothing at all to say that her hair was a dull sort of gold; her
eyes violet. Many girls have been similarly blessed. It was her manner;
the sweet way she looked with those violet eyes through a battalion of
head waiters and resplendent managers; her air of being at home here
in the Carlton or anywhere else that fate might drop her down.
Unquestionably she came from oversea--from the States.
She stepped forward into the restaurant. And now slipped also into
view, as part of the background for her, a middle-aged man, who wore the
conventional black of the statesman. He, too, bore the American label
unmistakably. Nearer and nearer to West she drew, and he saw that in her
hand she carried a copy of the Daily Mail.
West's waiter was a master of the art of suggesting that no table in the
room was worth sitting at save that at which he held ready a chair. Thus
he lured the girl and her companion to repose not five feet from where
West sat. This accomplished, he whipped out his order book, and stood
with pencil poised, like a reporter in an American play.
"The strawberries are delicious," he said in honeyed tones.
The man looked at the girl, a question in his eyes.
"Not for me, dad," she said. "I hate them! Grapefruit, please."
As the waiter hurried past, West hailed him. He spoke in loud defiant
tones.
"Another plate of the strawberries!" he commanded. "They are better than
ever to-day."
For a second, as though he were part of the scenery, those violet eyes
met his with a casual impersonal glance. Then their owner slowly spread
out her own copy of the Mail.