It was composed, he saw at
once, of Peyton's friends; as he entered three young men rose
punctiliously--Christian Wager, with hair growing close like a mat on a
narrow skull and a long irregular nose; Gilbert Bromhead, a round
figure and a face with the contours and expression, the fresh color, of
a pleasant and apple-like boy; and Peyton. They had been at their
university together; and, Lee Randon saw, they were making, with a
characteristic masculine innocence, an effort to secure their wives in
the same bond of affectionate understanding that held them.
Claire, who had smiled acknowledgingly with her eyes when Lee
approached, returned to a withdrawn concentration upon the section of
table-cloth immediately before her; she answered the remarks directed
to her with a temporary measure of animation vanishing at once with the
effort. Christian Wager, who was in London with a branch of an American
banking firm, had married an English girl strikingly named Evadore. She
was large, with black hair cut in a scanty bang; but beyond these
unastonishing facts there was nothing in her appearance to mark or
remember. However, a relative of hers, he had been told, distant but
authentic, had been a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Gilbert Bromhead's
wife was southern, a small appealing compound of the essence of the
superlatively feminine.
Lee Randon, in a chair drawn up for him at the table, studied the
women, arbitrarily thrown together, with a secret entertainment.
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