Читать книгу The Peacock Feather. A Romance онлайн

46 страница из 53

Apparently there were many people in the Park that morning whom General Carden knew. A big car hummed past with a small woman in it, a woman who looked almost tiny in the car’s capacious depths. She had a pointed little face and masses of fair hair. Off came General Carden’s hat. This was Muriel Lancing. He had known her as Muriel Grey, when she was a small girl in short skirts. She had married a certain Tommy Lancing a refreshing young man with red hair and freckles and a comfortable private income. General Carden’s eyes smiled at the girl. In spite of a certain airy up-to-dateness, he liked her. She was so dainty, so piquante, and such an inscrutable mixture of child, woman of the world, and elfin. One never knew which of the three might not appear on the surface. Also he liked Tommy, who always contrived to put a certain air of deference into his manner towards the General, which secretly pleased that critical white-haired, old veteran immensely.

After a few moments he saw another of his friends, and again the hat came off, this time with perhaps even something more of courtliness. The woman in the victoria was very nearly a contemporary [Pg 60]his. Quite a contemporary, General Carden reflected—ignoring the fifteen years which lay between them, and which were, it must be stated, to the advantage of Mrs. Cresswell. She was a woman with white hair rolled high, somewhat after the style of a Gainsborough portrait, and a clear-cut aristocratic face. She belonged unquestionably to his school, and their conversations were an invariable delicate sword-play of words. Even if she were generally the victor—and in the art of conversation he was willing to concede her the palm—yet he flattered himself he was no mean opponent, and he had a pleasurable memory of some very pretty turns of repartee on his own part. She was a friend of long standing, and one he valued.