Read "Appearances" by May Sinclair online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was a fine night, and the lounge was almost deserted. Thesiger, searching it for some one he could speak to, counted four old ladies and their middle-aged companions, three young governesses and their charges only less young, and one old gentleman, fixed by an extreme corpulence in his armchair, asleep over _Le Figaro_, while one ponderous hand retained upon his knee _Le Petit Journal_. Nowhere any sign of the transatlantic mystery and her companions. It occurred to Thesiger that it might interest him to know her name (he hadn't heard it), and even the number of her room.
He strolled to the racks on each side of the great staircase where the visitors' names were posted, and after a prolonged investigation he came upon the three: Miss Roma Lennox, Mr. Frank Bingham-Booker, and Mr. Theobald G. Tarbuck, of New York City, U. S. A. Their respective numbers were 74, 75, and 80. What was odd, the opulent Tarbuck (number 80) occupied a small room looking over the garage at the back, while 74, Mr. Frank Bingham-Booker, who was visibly impecunious, and 75, Miss Roma Lennox, luxuriated. -- Thesiger shook his head over the social complication and gave it up.