Before a week had elapsed he met Miss Fancourt in Bond Street, at a private view of the works of a young artist in "black-and-white" who had been so good as to invite him to the stuffy scene. The drawings were admirable, but the crowd in the one little room was so dense that he felt himself up to his neck in a sack of wool. A fringe of people at the outer edge endeavoured by curving forward their backs and presenting, below them, a still more convex surface of resistance to the pressure of the mass, to preserve an interval between their noses and the glazed mounts of the pictures; while the central body, in the comparative gloom projected by a wide horizontal screen hung under the skylight and allowing only a margin for the day, remained upright dense and vague, lost in the contemplation of its own ingredients. This contemplation sat especially in the sad eyes of certain female heads, surmounted with hats of strange convolution and plumage, which rose on long necks above the others. One of the heads Paul perceived, was much the so most beautiful of the collection, and his next discovery was that it belonged to Miss Fancourt. Its beauty was enhanced by the glad smile she sent him across surrounding obstructions, a smile that drew him to her as fast as he could make his way. He had seen for himself at Summersoft that the last thing her nature contained was an affectation of indifference; yet even with this circumspection he took a fresh satisfaction in her not having pretended to await his arrival with composure. She smiled as radiantly as if she wished to make him hurry, and as soon as he came within earshot she broke out in her voice of joy: "He's here - he's here - he's coming back in a moment!"
"Ah your father?" Paul returned as she offered him her hand.
"Oh dear no, this isn't in my poor father's line. I mean Mr. St. George. He has just left me to speak to some one - he's coming back. It's he who brought me - wasn't it charming?"
"Ah that gives him a pull over me - I couldn't have 'brought' you, could I?"
"If you had been so kind as to propose it - why not you as well as he?" the girl returned with a face that, expressing no cheap coquetry, simply affirmed a happy fact.
"Why he's a pere de famille. They've privileges," Paul explained. And then quickly: "Will you go to see places with me?" he asked.
"Anything you like!" she smiled. "I know what you mean, that girls have to have a lot of people - " Then she broke off: "I don't know; I'm free. I've always been like that - I can go about with any one. I'm so glad to meet you," she added with a sweet distinctness that made those near her turn round.
"Let me at least repay that speech by taking you out of this squash," her friend said. "Surely people aren't happy here!"
"No,
Do you like this chapter?
Recommend to friends
