the taste of stale follies
The removal of his companion’s hat, besides provoking thisreflection, gave him his first full sight of her face; andthis was so favourable that the name she now pronounced fellon him with a quite disproportionate shock of dismay.
"Oh, Mrs. Murrett’s–was it THERE?"He remembered her now, of course: remembered her as one ofthe shadowy sidling presences in the background of thatawful house in Chelsea, one of the dumb appendages of theshrieking unescapable Mrs. Murrett, into whose talons he hadfallen in the course of his head-long pursuit of Lady UlricaCrispin. Oh, the taste of stale follies! How insipid itwas, yet how it clung!
"I used to pass you on the stairs," she reminded him.
Yes: he had seen her slip by–he recalled it now–as hedashed up to the drawing-room in quest of Lady Ulrica. Thethought made him steal a longer look. How could such a facehave been merged in the Murrett mob? Its fugitive slantinglines, that lent themselves to all manner of tender tiltsand foreshortenings, had the freakish grace of some younghead of the Italian comedy. The hair stood up from herforehead in a boyish elf-lock, and its colour matched herauburn eyes flecked with black, and the little brown spot onher cheek, between the ear that was meant to have a rosebehind it and the chin that should have rested on a ruff.
When she smiled, the left corner of her mouth went up alittle higher than the right; and her smile began in hereyes and ran down to her lips in two lines of light. He haddashed past that to reach Lady Ulrica Crispin!
"But of course you wouldn’t remember me," she was saying.
"My name is Viner–Sophy Viner."Not remember her? But of course he DID! He was genuinelysure of it now. "You’re Mrs. Murrett’s niece," he declared.
She shook her head. "No; not even that. Only her reader.""Her reader? Do you mean to say she ever reads?"Miss Viner enjoyed his wonder. "Dear, no! But I wrotenotes, and made up the visiting-book, and walked the dogs,and saw bores for her."Darrow groaned.
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