The boat-train was due to leave in ten minutes, and the platform at

Victoria Station (how changed since then!) showed that scene of

discreet and haughty excitement which it was wont to exhibit about

nine o'clock every evening in those days. The weather was wild. It had

been wet all day, and the rain came smashing down, driven by the great

gusts of a genuine westerly gale. Consequently there were fewer

passengers than usual, and those people who by choice or compulsion

had resolved to front the terrors of the Channel passage had a

preoccupied look as they hurried importantly to and fro amid piles of

luggage and groups of loungers on the wind-swept platform beneath the

flickering gas-lamps. But the porters, and the friends engaged in the

ceremony of seeing-off, and the loungers, and the bookstall

clerks--these individuals were not preoccupied by thoughts of intimate

inconveniences before midnight. As for me, I was quite alone with my

thoughts. At least, I began by being alone.

As I was registering a particularly heavy and overfed portmanteau to

Paris, a young woman put her head close to mine at the window of the

baggage-office.

"Mr. Foster? I thought it was. My cab set down immediately after

yours, and I have been trying to catch your eye on the platform. Of

course it was no go!"

The speech was thrown at me in a light, airy tone from a tiny, pert

mouth which glistened red behind a muslin veil.

"Miss Deschamps!" I exclaimed.

"Glad you remember my name. As handsome and supercilious as ever, I

observe. I haven't seen you since that night at Sullivan's reception.

Why didn't you call on me one Sunday? You know I asked you to."

"Did you ask me?" I demanded, secretly flattered in the extremity of

my youthfulness because she had called me supercilious.

"Well, rather. I'm going to Paris--and in this weather!"

"I am, too."

"Then, let's go together, eh?"

"Delighted. But why have you chosen such a night?"

"I haven't chosen it. You see, I open to-morrow at the Casino de

Paris for fourteen nights, and I suppose I've got to be there. You

wouldn't believe what they're paying me. The Diana company is touring

in the provinces while the theatre is getting itself decorated. I hate

the provinces. Leeds and Liverpool and Glasgow--fancy dancing there!

And so my half-sister--Carlotta, y'know--got me this engagement, and

I'm going to stay with her. Have you met Carlotta?"

"No--not yet." I did not add that I had had reason to think a good

deal about her.

"Well, Carlotta is--Carlotta. A terrific swell, and a bit of a Tartar.

We quarrel every time we meet, which isn't often. She tries to play

the elder sister game on me, and I won't have it. Though she is

elder--very much elder, you now. But I think her worst point is that

she's so frightfully mysterious. You can never tell what she's up to.

Now, a man I met at supper last night told me he thought he had seen

Carlotta in Bloomsbury yesterday. However, I didn't believe that,

because she is expecting me in Paris; we happen to be as thick as

thieves just now, and if she had been in London, she would have looked

me up."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024