Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/18

 coat, which looked as if a woman dressmaker had made it, with loathing. How could any man’s coat-collar look so home-made, so en famille!

Villiers remained with a fixed, abstract look on his thin face, rather like a death’s head. All his American will was summoned up, the bald eagle of the north bristling in every feather. The fellow should not sit there.—But how to remove him?

The young man sat tense with will to annihilate his beetle-like intruder, and Kate used all her Irish malice to help him.

“Don’t you wonder who was his tailor?” she asked, with a flicker in her voice.

Villiers looked at the femalish black coat of the and made an arch grimace at Kate.

“I should say he hadn’t one. Perhaps did it himself.”

“Very likely!” Kate laughed venomously.

It was too much. The man got up and betook himself, rather diminished, to another spot.

“Triumph!” said Kate. “Can’t you do the same, Owen?”

Owen laughed uncomfortably, glancing down at the man between his knees as he might glance at a dog with rabies, when it had its back to him.

“Apparently not yet, unfortunately,” he said, with some constraint, turning his nose away again from the Mexican, who was using him as a sort of chair-back.

There was an exclamation. Two horsemen in gay uniforms and bearing long staffs had suddenly ridden into the ring. They went round the arena, then took up their posts, sentry-wise, on either side the tunnel entrance through which they had come in.

In marched a little column of four toreadors wearing tight uniforms plastered with silver embroidery. They divided, and marched smartly in opposite directions, two and two, around the ring, till they came to the place facing the section of the Authorities, where they made their salute.

So this was a bull-fight! Kate already felt a chill of disgust.

In the seats of the Authorities were very few people, and certainly no sparkling ladies in high tortoise-shell combs and lace mantillas. A few common-looking people, bourgeois