While they were buying the replacement vase he told her, by way of conversation, that he could not decide what to give his sister. Nora suggested a colorful umbrella, and then she insisted on helping him choose it.
Finally he took her home in a hansom. She told him she lived with her father, a traveling salesman of patent medicines. Her mother was dead. The neighborhood where she lived was rather less respectable than he had guessed, poor working class rather than middle class.
He assumed he would never see her again, and all day Sunday at Folkestone he brooded about Maisie as always. On Monday at the bank he got a note from Nora, thanking him for his kindness: her handwriting was small, neat and girlish, he noticed before screwing the note up into a ball and dropping it into the wastepaper basket.
Next day he stepped out of the bank at midday, on his way to a coffeehouse for a plate of lamb cutlets, and saw her walking along the street toward him. At first he did not recognize her, but simply thought what a nice face she had; then she smiled at him and he remembered. He doffed his hat and she stopped to talk. She worked as an assistant to a corset maker, she told him with a blush, and she was on her way back to the shop after visiting a client. A sudden impulse made him ask her to go dancing with him that night.
She said she would like to go but she did not have a respectable hat, so he took her to a milliner's shop and bought her one, and that settled the matter.
Much of their romance was conducted while shopping. She had never owned much and she took unashamed delight in Hugh's affluence. For his part he enjoyed buying her gloves, shoes, a coat, bracelets, and anything else she wanted. His sister, with all the wisdom of her twelve years, had announced that Nora only liked him for his money. He had laughed and said: "But who would love me for my looks?"
Maisie did not disappear from his mind--indeed, he still thought of her every day--but the memories no longer plunged him into despair. He had something to look forward to now, his next rendezvous with Nora. In a few weeks she gave him back his joie de vivre.
