Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/113

THE SPECIAL TYPE to make her easy. But the thing," he went on with a drop back to the less mitigated real—"the thing, hang it! is first to find her."

"Surely," I concurred; "for she should have to lack, you see, no requirement whatever for plausibility. She must be, for instance, not only 'squareable,' but—before anything else even—awfully handsome."

"Oh, 'awfully'!" He could make light of that, which was what Mrs. Cavenham was.

"It wouldn't do for her, at all events," I maintained, "to be a bit less attractive than"

"Well, than who?" he broke in, not only with a comic effect of disputing my point, but also as if he knew whom I was thinking of.

Before I could answer him, however, the door opened, and we were interrupted by a visitor—a visitor who, on the spot, in a flash, primed me with a reply. But I had of course for the moment to keep it to myself. "Than Mrs. Dundene!"

 III

nothing more than that to do with it, but before I could turn round it was done; by which I mean that Brivet, whose previous impression of her had, for some sufficient reason, failed of sharpness, now jumped straight to the perception that here to his hand for the solution of his problem was the missing quantity and the appointed aid. They were in presence on this occasion, for the first time, half an hour, during which he sufficiently showed me that he felt himself to have found the special type. He was certainly to that extent right that nobody could—in those days in particular—without a rapid sense that she was indeed "special," spend any such time in the company of our extraordinary friend. I couldn't quarrel with his recognising so quickly what I had myself instantly  101