Like most men who lie but seldom, he lied well. Drummond smoked his
cigarette meditatively. He remembered that he had heard stories about
the wonderful likeness between these two sisters, one of whom was an
artist and a recluse, whilst the other had attached herself to a very
gay and a very brilliant little _coterie_ of pleasure-seekers. There
was a bare chance that he had been mistaken. He thought it best to let
the matter drop. A few minutes later Sir John left the room.
He walked out into the Champs Elysees and sat down. His cigar burnt
out between his fingers, and he threw it impatiently away. He had
seldom been more perturbed. He sat with folded arms and knitted brows,
thinking intently. The girl had told him distinctly that her name was
Anna. Her whole conduct and tone had been modest and ladylike. He went
over his interview with her again, their conversation at dinner-time.
She had behaved in every way perfectly. His spirits began to rise.
Drummond had made an abominable mistake. It was not possible for him
to have been deceived. He drew a little sigh of relief.
Sir John, by instinct and training, was an unimaginative person. He
was a business man, pure and simple, his eyes were fastened always
upon the practical side of life. Such ambitions as he had were
stereotyped and material. Yet in some hidden corner was a vein of
sentiment, of which for the first time in his later life he was now
unexpectedly aware. He was conscious of a peculiar pleasure in sitting
there and thinking of those few hours which already were becoming to
assume a definite importance in his mind--a place curiously apart from
those dry-as-dust images which had become the gods of his prosaic
life. Somehow or other his reputation as a hardened and unassailable
bachelor had won for him during the last few years a comparative
immunity from attentions on the part of those women with whom he had
been brought into contact. It was a reputation by no means deserved. A
wife formed part of his scheme of life, for several years he had been
secretly but assiduously looking for her. In his way he was critical.
The young ladies in the somewhat mixed society amongst which he moved
neither satisfied his taste nor appealed in any way to his affections.
This girl whom he had met by chance and befriended had done both. She
possessed what he affected to despise, but secretly worshipped--the
innate charm of breeding. The Pellissiers had been an old family in
Hampshire, while his grandfather had driven a van.
As in all things, so his thoughts came to him deliberately. He
pictured himself visiting the girl in this shabby little home of her
aunt's--she had told him that it was shabby--and he recalled that
delicious little smile with which she would surely greet him, a smile
which seemed to be a matter of the eyes as well as the lips. She was
poor. He was heartily thankful for it. He thought of his wealth for
once from a different point of view. How much he would be able to do
for her. Flowers, theatre boxes, carriages, the "open sesame" to the
whole world of pleasure. He himself, middle-aged, steeped in
traditions of the City and money-making, very ill-skilled in all the
lighter graces of life, as he himself well knew, could yet come to her
invested with something of the halo of romance by the almost magical
powers of an unlimited banking account. She should be lifted out of
her narrow little life, and it should be all owing to him. And
afterwards! Sir John drew his cigar from his lips, and looked upwards
where the white-lights flashed strangely amongst the deep cool green
of the lime-trees. His lips parted in a rare smile. Afterwards was the
most delightful part of all!...