And yet he was no tailor's model. A gentleman, beyond a
doubt, Tavernake decided, watching grudgingly the courteous
movement of his head, listening sometimes to his well-bred but
rather languid voice. Beatrice laughed often into his face. She
admired him, of course. How could she help it! Grier sat at her
other side. He, too, talked to her whenever he had the chance.
It was a new fever which Tavernake was tasting, a new fever
burning in his blood. He was jealous; he hated the whole party
below. In imagination he saw Elizabeth with her friends, supping
most likely in that other, more resplendent restaurant, only a
few yards away. He imagined her the centre of every attention.
Without a doubt, she was looking at her neighbor as she had
looked at him. Tavernake bit his lip, frowning. If he had had
it in his power, in those black moments, to have thrown a
thunderbolt from his place, he would have wrecked every table in
the room, he would have watched with joy the white, startled
faces of the revelers as they fled away into the night. It was a
new torture, indescribable, bitter. Indeed, this curiosity of
his, of which he had spoken to Beatrice as they had walked
together down Oxford Street on that first evening, was being
satisfied with a vengeance! He was learning of those other
things of life. He had sipped at the sweetness; he was drinking
the bitters!
An altercation by his side distracted him. Again there was the
head waiter and a protesting guest.
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