Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/84

 little curiously. It was not usual for the guests to remain at the breakfast-table for two hours.

When at length Beresford rose, it was with the firm conviction that the Rain-Girl was not staying at the Ritz-Carlton. In spite of this he loitered about the hotel until noon, when he took another stroll up Piccadilly and along Bond Street, and through the most frequented thoroughfares of the West-End.

Perhaps she was away for a long week-end, he told himself, and would be back to lunch. She might even be confined to her room with a chill. At this thought he smiled. The warm, mellow sunshine seemed to negative all possibility of any one contracting a chill.

As he wandered through the streets thinking of all the things that could possibly have prevented her from being at three consecutive meals, he found himself becoming more hopeful, and looking forward to lunch-time as presenting another chance of a possible meeting.

Suddenly a thought struck him, so forcibly in fact as to bring him to a standstill. Had she and her aunt a private suite of rooms in which their meals were served? That was it. Therein lay the explanation of why he had not seen her. She was just the type of girl who would dislike a hotel dining-room, he told himself, in fact she had implied as much when speaking of the London Season. Had she not said how much she disliked it, and how she