Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/296

278 "You oughtn't to trust my face," I finally told him.

"But I do," he said with the utmost solemnity. "I trust it more than you do yourself."

I couldn't quite catch what he meant by that. But I didn't think any the less of him for saying it.

"Go on," I mocked. "Tell me all about myself."

He seemed to jump at the chance.

"All right, I will. And you can tell me whether I'm right or wrong. You've always rather liked nice things. If I'm not greatly mistaken, you always secretly revolted, even as a young girl, at the thought of life in a pigeonhole on one of the side-streets. You've always had a sort of ache to be in touch with the splendor of life—to swim with the swell push, as some of our Center Street friends might express it."

He declined to countenance my interruption.

"Now, pull down those Elsie Ferguson eyebrows until I finish, please," he went on. "I don't mean the white lights and lobster-palace floaters and fifteen-carat diamond rings, by the splendor of life. But no girl is as fastidious as you are about her clothes, and about her hair, and about herself altogether, without having that streak of fineness extending right up into her mind. It has