Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/197

 could see that he had taken her unawares, for over one arm she carried a low-necked gown of white chiffon cloth embellished with dotted net and lace and ribbon-flowers. This she must have been about to pack away in a travelling-bag, for one stood open in a shabby Morris-chair on the far side of the room. He noticed, too, that she was dressed for the street, and it did not surprise him to catch sight of her hat and gloves standing close beside the travelling-bag. Then he looked once more back at her face.

On the brow beneath the heavily massed chestnut hair was a small frown of wonder. The dark-lashed violet-blue eyes were wide with a vague incredulity. There was, too, a touch of timorousness in her pose, but she made no move to withdraw.

"You wanted to see me," was Kestner's casual reminder, as he advanced a trifle, that the door might not be swung between him and the one woman he desired to see. Even as she looked at him her self-possession seemed to return to her.

"I asked if I might come to see you," she amended, with her wide-irised eyes still fixed on his face.

"But you said it was urgent," argued her visitor.

"It is urgent," she admitted.

Kestner could not help noticing the deepened shadows about the heavily-lashed eyes, the sense of nervous strain about the softly-curving lips. The oval face, with its accentuated note of tragedy, reminded him of some pictorial figure which at first he could not place. It was several minutes before his mind reached the goal towards which it had been groping. He knew, then, that her shadowy face was