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He donned evening dress, loudly cursing the formality, and brought her to a fashionable restaurant, where he gently cursed the abject civility of the waiters beneath his breath. "They're not men," he said to his sister; "they're worms of the underworld, waiting for the corpse to be lowered its regulation six feet." Mrs. Durlacher shuddered.
Three times he went to Sloane Street in the afternoon before he was placed in possession of all the subtle details and never once did he meet Durlacher. Durlacher, himself, was always away. It must be admitted that Traill was interested in these intricate details. They gave him insight into the vagaries, the pitfalls and the fallacies of the life with which he had to deal in the divorce courts.
Durlacher looked above her in a perfect simulation of amazement. Then she stepped into the cab. "Jack," she said, when she was seated. "What?" She prefaced her words with a little laugh. "I wouldn't be a little milliner at your mercy for all I could see." Traill snorted contemptuously. "She's not a little milliner," he said, cutting each word clean with irony.
Durlacher descended to the dining-room. The gown she wore would not have pleased a man to infatuation; but a woman would have realized its beauty, known its value. With deft fingers, she arranged the flowers. In a chair by the fire, hiding herself from view to any one outside the window, she sat and watched the table being laid, giving orders how the vases were to be placed on the old oak table.
Durlacher, then at that part of the handkerchief that her lips had touched. "One of the reasons? Oh no. I only noticed it. That's all right now. I believe you look better without it." "Well, I felt so fagged this evening." "I know; that's wretched. If you were a man, you'd drink; being a woman, you make up. It's much more respectable really.
A man who owns such a place in the country as Apsley Manor, yet prefers to live the life of the Bohemian in town, shunning society, reaping none of the benefits that should naturally accrue to him from such a position, can quite easily be surrounded with a halo of interest if his narrative be placed in the hands of a skilful raconteur. Mrs. Durlacher spared no pains in the telling of her story.
Durlacher offered, as they stood by the side of the shivering taxi. "I'm going out to Sloane Street." "Oh no, thank you; it's very good of you. I'm going to catch a train at Waterloo." She shook hands, then held out her hand quietly to Traill. "Good-bye, Mr. Traill." He took her hand and held it with meaning. "Good-bye."
Durlacher's lips tightened; but Traill took no notice. He turned to Sally. "Like to lay your hat on the spot where her gracious Majesty was supposed to have rested a weary head, aching with finance?" he asked. Sally smiled. Admiration for him then was intense. Mrs. Durlacher smiled as well; but for one instant, she winced first.
"When you thought her innocent?" "Why not?" he retorted. "Society wants to be purged of that sort of woman, and it's full of 'em." Mrs. Durlacher deftly changed the subject. "I've got a box to-morrow night, Jack, at some theatre or other," she said casually. "Harold's going out to dinner, will you dine with us and drag us along there?" "Who's us?" "Miss Standish-Roe and myself.
You can be almost certain of the jump but of the direction never. "Why?" Traill insisted, and then Mrs. Durlacher turned her gaze to the window, looked far away across the stretch of fields ploughed and green, beyond the blue, rising land that lifts above Wycombe, into that distance which holds all the intricate mysteries of a woman's being.
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