He was soberly dressed in black coat and waistcoat, the latter showing a
white triangle of hard-polished shirt and a black bow tie, with indefinite
gray trousers and square-toed boots by no means new. His middle was crossed
by a thick silver watch-chain, and curious, old-fashioned buttons of agate
set in square frames of gold fastened his round stiff cuffs of yesterday.
He carried a well-brushed bowler as unfashionable as unseasonable.
When Mr. Karslake entered, the polished pattern of a young gentleman of
means, slenderly well set-up in an exquisitely tailored brown lounge suit,
wearing a boater and carrying a slender malacca stick in one chamois-gloved
hand, the butler stood up at his table, quietly acknowledged his
greeting--"Ah, Nogam! you here already?"--and waited for the younger man to
be seated before resuming his own chair: a stoop-shouldered symbol of
self-respecting respectability, not too intelligent, subdued by definite
and unresentful acceptance of "his place."
Their table was the one immediately beyond the buffet; and the cafe was
very quiet, with only three other patrons, two of whom were playing chess
while the third was reading an old issue of the Echo de Paris. So Sofia
could, if she had cared to eavesdrop, have overheard everything that passed
between Mr. Karslake and the man Nogam. But she didn't; their first few
speeches failed to excite her curiosity in the least.
She heard Mr. Karslake, who was becomingly affable to one of inferior
station, express the perfunctory hope that he hadn't kept Nogam waiting
long, and Nogam reply to the simple effect of "Oh, not at all, sir.
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