Page:Hornung - Raffles the Further Adventures (Scribner, 1906).djvu/86

 the last word advisedly. I fancy it is one which I have never used before in writing of A. J. Raffles, for I cannot at the moment recall any other occasion upon which its use would have been justified. On resuming, however, he was not only calm, but cold; and this flying for safety to the other extreme is the single instance of self-distrust which the present Achates can record to the credit of his Impious Æneas.

"I called the girl Eve," said he. "Her real name was Faustina, and she was one of a vast family who hung out in a hovel on the Inland border of the vineyard. And Aphrodite rising from the sea was less wonderful and not more beautiful than Aphrodite emerging from that hole!

"It was the most exquisite face I ever saw or shall see in this life. Absolutely perfect features; a skin that reminded you of old gold, so delicate was its bronze; magnificent hair, not black but nearly; and such eyes and teeth as would have made the fortune of a face without another point. I tell you, Bunny, London would go mad about a girl like that. But I don't believe there's such another In the world. And there she was wasting her sweetness upon that lovely but desolate little corner of it! Well, she did not waste it