So it was that she had very willingly assented to do him the trifling
favour of spending some further hours in his company.
As they wandered about the old city, and lingered awhile in the great
Minster, neither of them said a word that the whole world might not have
overheard. They visited some of the curiosity shops for which York is
famed, and Katty's companion, with that new generosity which sat on him
so strangely, bought a beautiful, and very costly, old cut-glass pendant
for Rosedean.
They did not meet a soul that either of them knew, excepting, yes,
stop----After they had said goodbye (Godfrey, with a rather shocked
look on his face, for Katty, imprudent, foolish Katty, had woman-like
seemed to expect that he would kiss her in a corner of an empty
waiting-room where at any moment they might have been surprised by some
acquaintance of one or the other of them!)--after, as arranged, they had
said good-bye, and Katty was engaged in taking her ticket for the branch
line station for which she was bound, a curious thing happened.
She suddenly heard a voice, a man's voice, which sounded pleasantly
familiar.
Who could it be? The association evoked was wholly agreeable, but Katty
could not place, in the chambers of her memory, the owner of the rather
peculiar accents which were engaged in asking when the next train back
to London would start.
She had turned round quickly, only to see a small queue of people behind
her, among them surely the owner of that peculiar voice. But no, she did
not know any one there--though among them a man attracted her attention,
for the simple reason that he was staring at her very hard. He was
obviously a foreigner, for his skin was olive-tinted, and he had a
small, black, pointed beard. He stared at Katty with an air of rather
insolent admiration. And then he broke away from the queue, and walked
quickly off, out of the booking-office.
Katty always enjoyed admiration, whatever its source, and yet a queer
kind of shiver had gone through her when this impertinent stranger's
glance rested full on her face. She had had the odious sensation that
the man saw something to be jeered at, as well as admired, in her neat
and attractive self.
* * * * *
At last, reluctantly, Katty got up and went into her well-warmed
comfortable bathroom. It was nice to be home again, at no one's orders
but her own. After she had dressed, she rang, and very soon came her
breakfast, daintily served by the devoted Harber, also the one daily
paper she felt she could afford to take.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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