This was the girl he had noticed;
her father was the man who sat on boards in the city. He bowed with
his eyes on her face.
"Surely you're not going to go yet, Jack," said Mrs. Durlacher. Her
eyes were feverishly watching his hands as he began slowly to draw
on his gloves. He hesitated. Miss Standish-Roe took the seat he had
vacated and looked questioningly up into his face as though it were
she who had made the request.
"Very well," he said. "Then I'll have another cup of tea with you."
From that moment, and Mrs. Durlacher's heart had leaped with
exultation, she began to play for his humour, baiting the line that
she cast with those little turns of phrase, those little feathers
of speech which she knew would tempt him to rise to the surface of
his mood. In a few moments, he was entertaining them with his tirades
against conventional institutions.
"Conventionality," he exclaimed; "I'd sooner have the honest vice
of the man who pleads guilty; I'd a thousand times sooner defend his
case, than urge for a woman who just holds on to the virtue of
conventionality with the tips of her fingers."
"You gave that lady a bad time the other day, Mr. Traill," said Miss
Standish-Roe, admiringly.
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