Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/35

Rh would have attracted my admiring attention, but she made a singularly vivid impression on my mind in its receptive condition. I saw with that clearness of vision which sometimes comes of nerves a little irritated, that her large eyes were bright with hardly-restrained tears, that her lips were pressed together out of their natural fulness to check their quivering, that her slender, pliant figure drooped and that she walked with a heaviness out of keeping with her years. Indeed, my plastic mind received an amazingly full and intimate picture of her, one likely to abide in it for a long while. I stood on the steps of Morton's office and looked after her. She went into the gardens and sat down.

I went into the office and sent in my name to Morton. A clerk ushered me quickly into his room, and I saw at once that his usual placidity had been ruffled, and that he was in a bad temper.

We exchanged greetings. I sat down and said, "I have come to talk to you about Mr. Albert Amsted Pudleigh." "You have, have you? I've just been talking about him, hang him!" said Morton, with pleasing but unprofessional warmth.

"If you once come across a man like Pudleigh, you're always coming across him. What has he been doing now?" "It's still that Pavis business, the Quorley