Part 1 (2/2)

Annesley's heart seemed to drop out of its place, to go ”crossways,” as her old Irish nurse used to say a million years ago.

Without stopping to think again, or even to breathe, she flew back to the hotel entrance, as a migrating bird follows its leader, and slipped through the revolving door behind the fugitives.

”It's fate,” she thought. ”This must be a _sign_ coming just when I'd made up my mind.”

Suddenly she was no longer afraid, though her heart was pounding under the thin cloak. Fragrance of hot-house flowers and expensive perfume from women's dresses intoxicated the girl as a gla.s.s of champagne forced upon one who has never tasted wine flies to the head. She felt herself on the tide of adventure, moving because she must; the soul which would have fled, to return to Mrs. Ellsworth, was a coward not worthy to live in her body.

She had room in her crowded mind to think how queer it was--and how queer it would seem all the rest of her life in looking back--that she should have the course of her existence changed because burglars had broken some panes of gla.s.s in the Strand.

”Just because of them--creatures I'll never meet--I'm going to see this through to the end,” she said, flinging up her chin and looking entirely unlike the Annesley Grayle Mrs. Ellsworth knew. ”To the _end_!”

She thrilled at the word, which had as much of the unknown in it as though it were the world's end she referred to, and she were jumping off.

”Will you please tell me where to leave my wrap?” she heard herself inquiring of a footman as magnificent as, and far better dressed than, the Apollo Belvedere. Her voice sounded natural. She was glad. This added to her courage. It was wonderful to feel brave. Life was so deadly, worse--so _stuffy_--at Mrs. Ellsworth's, that if she had ever been normally brave like other girls, she had had the young splendour of her courage crushed out.

The statue in gray plush and dark blue cloth came to life, and showed her the cloak-room.

Other women were there, taking last, affectionate peeps at themselves in the long mirrors. Annesley took a last peep at herself also, not an affectionate but an anxious one. Compared with these visions, was she (in Mrs. Ellsworth's cast-off clothes, made over in odd moments by the wearer) so dowdy and second-hand that--that--a stranger would be ashamed to----?

The question feared to finish itself.

”I _do_ look like a lady, anyhow,” the girl thought with defiance.

”That's what he--that seems to be the test.”

Now she was in a hurry to get the ordeal over. Instead of hanging back she walked briskly out of the cloak-room before those who had entered ahead of her finished patting their hair or putting powder on their noses.

It was worse in the large vestibule, where men sat or stood, waiting for their feminine belongings; and she was the only woman alone. But her boat was launched on the wild sea. There was no returning.

The rendezvous arranged was in what _he_ had called in his letter ”the foyer.”

Annesley went slowly down the steps, trying not to look aimless. She decided to steer for one of the high-back brocaded chairs which had little satellite tables. Better settle on one in the middle of the hall.

This would give _him_ a chance to see and recognize her from the description she had written of the dress she would wear (she had not mentioned that she'd be spared all trouble in choosing, as it was her only _real_ evening frock), and to notice that she wore, according to arrangement, a white rose tucked into the neck of her bodice.

She felt conscious of her hands, and especially of her feet and ankles, for she had not been able to make Mrs. Ellsworth's dress quite long enough. Luckily it was the fas.h.i.+on of the moment to wear the skirt short, and she had painted her old white suede slippers silver.

She believed that she had pretty feet. But oh! what if the darn running up the heel of the pearl-gray silk stocking should show, or have burst again into a hole as she jumped out of the omnibus? She could have laughed hysterically, as the escaping women had laughed, when she realized that the fear of such a catastrophe was overcoming graver horrors.

Perhaps it was well to have a counter-irritant.

Though Annesley Grayle was the only manless woman in the foyer, the people who sat there--with one exception--did not stare. Though she had five feet eight inches of height, and was graceful despite self-consciousness, her appearance was distinguished rather than striking. Yes, ”distinguished” was the word for it, decided the one exception who gazed with particular interest at that tall, slight figure in gray-sequined chiffon too old-looking for the young face.

He was sitting in a corner against the wall, and had in his hands a copy of the _Sphere_, which was so large when held high and wide open that the reader could hide behind it. He had been in his corner for fifteen or twenty minutes when Annesley Grayle arrived, glancing over the top of his paper with a sort of jaunty carelessness every few minutes at the crowd moving toward the restaurant, picking out some individual, then dropping his eyes to the _Sphere_.

For the girl in gray he had a long, appraising look, studying her every point; but he did the thing so well that, even had she turned her head his way, she need not have been embarra.s.sed. All she would have seen was a man's forehead and a rim of smooth black hair showing over the top of an ill.u.s.trated paper.

What he saw was a clear profile with a delicate nose slightly tilting upward in a proud rather than impertinent way; an arch of eyebrow daintily sketched; a large eye which might be gray or violet; a drooping mouth with a short upper lip; a really charming chin, and a long white throat; skin softly pale, like white velvet; thick, ash-blond hair parted in the middle and worn Madonna fas.h.i.+on--there seemed to be a lot of it in the coil at the nape of her neck.

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