The Agony Column

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.