Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/211

Rh was what, doubtless, had led me to put a question about her; the fact of her having the kind of distinction that is quite independent of beauty. Her friend, on the other hand, whose clustering curls were fair, whose moustache and whose fixed monocular glass particularly, if indescribably, matched them, and whose expanse of white shirt and waistcoat had the air of carrying out and balancing the scheme of his large white forehead—her friend had the kind of beauty that is quite independent of distinction. That he was her friend—and very much—was clear from his easy imagination of all her curiosities. He began to show her the company, and to do much better in this line than my own companion did for me, inasmuch as he appeared even to know who we ourselves were. That gave a propriety to my finding, on the return from a dip into the lobby in the first entr'acte, that the lady beside me was at last prepared to identify him. I, for my part, knew too few people to have picked up anything. She mentioned a friend who had edged in to speak to her and who had named the gentleman opposite as Lord Yarracome.

Somehow I questioned the news. 'It sounds like the sort of thing that's too good to be true.'

'Too good?'

'I mean he's too much like it.'

'Like what? Like a lord?'

'Well, like the name, which is expressive, and—yes—even like the dignity. Isn't that just what lords are usually not?' I didn't, however, pause for a reply, but inquired further if his lordship's companion might be regarded as his wife.

'Dear, no. She's Miss Delavoy.'

I forget how my friend had gathered this—not from the informant who had just been with her; but on the spot I accepted it, and the young lady became vividly interesting. 'The daughter of the great man?'

'What great man?'

'Why, the wonderful writer, the immense novelist: the one