Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/200

THE IVORY TOWER Cissy Foy as looking, in the conditions, these including the air of the big bedimmed palace room, for all the world like a sort of "happy Hamlet". For so happy indeed our young man at once proclaimed himself at sight of his visitor, for so much the most interesting thing that had befallen or been offered him within the week did he take, by his immediate testimony, his reunion with this character and every element of the latter's aspect and tone, that the pitch of his acclamation clearly had, with no small delay, to drop a little under some unavoidable reminder that they met almost in the nearest presence of death. Was the reminder Morton's own, some pull, for decorum, of a longer face, some expression of his having feared to act in undue haste on the message brought him by Davey?—which might have been, we may say, in view of the appearance after a little that it was Horton rather than Gray who began to suggest a shyness, momentary, without doubt, and determined by the very plenitude of his friend's welcome, yet so far incongruous as that it was not his adoption of a manner and betrayal of a cheer that ran the risk of seeming a trifle gross, but quite these indications on the part of the fortunate heir of the old person awaiting interment somewhere above. He could only have seen with the lapse of the moments that Gray was going to be simple—admirably, splendidly simple, one would probably have pronounced 186