Her Faithful Knight — page 116: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

II2 Mr. Darcy’s Comedy Company. Coles, as the three men leaned out, smoking, from the private room on the first floor of the palatial red-brick ho- tel, where they had dined. The strains of a band as it played the “Cavalleria In- termezzo,” then in its first emotional freshness, fell har- moniously upon their ears; they had all dined well, and the more or less direct admiring glances thrown by pass- ing shop-girls at the three smart-looking young men in evening dress, and in particular at the boyishly beautiful face of Darcy, completed their sense of bodily satisfac- tion. Through the crowds below them at that moment a woman was passing, at whom all the men and a few wo- men here and there turned to gaze with interest. In movement she was exceptionally graceful, and in face and figure too beautiful to walk about alone in an English ‘town, it being characteristic of a section of the male popu- lation in England that they cannot distinguish between - those ladies who desire their attentions and those others who do not. More than one specimen of ’Arry in a blazer had al- ready turned in his course to follow Miss Knight in her rapid walk toward the quieter portion of the sea front. In her shabby old serge gown and dowdy hat and veil, her good looks had been far less conspicuous; but now the Hon. Darcy, who from his place at table had been at- tentively scanning the crowd for the past hour and a half in search of her, instantly recognized her from a distance, and, springing from his seat, seized his hat and light over- coat, and, nodding a good-by to his friends, darted down the stairs and out at the hotel door on his leading lady’s track. Wyverly and Coles looked at each other and burst out laughing. “He’s dotty!” remarked the latter, knocking the ash off his cigarette on the window ledge. Eomichboo cS (E)