Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/100

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

seen the day before or upon embarking; but Mme. Momoro, her son, her two elderly friends, and Macklyn and Albert Jones were all invisible. Not even the execrable Tinker nor any of his fellow rioters appeared; and the lounge and the other public rooms, when he walked through them, were almost vacant; no one at all was in the smoking-room, not even the studious bartender. The hour for lunch arrived without his having seen a familiar face.

He went into the dining salon a little late, and the tables were well filled, including his own; for as he came near it he perceived that three of the four chairs were now occupied. Two of the people to be his companions there for the rest of the voyage were ladies; and as he approached, with other groups and passing stewards intervening between the table and himself, his first impression was confused and not strongly favourable. The two ladies were obviously Americans, and in dress and looks resembled other American mothers and daughters on board; they were well dressed in the prosperous American fashion of "smartness"; and they were both rather good-looking "in the American way," he thought, discriminating instantly in favour of a French manner of being beautiful. The mother was a dimly pretty exposition of