Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/106

 Ogle made two inclinations of the head and these salutes were acknowledged with a distant formality a little surpassing his own. Indeed, he found in theirs something that appeared to be not so much reserve as a personal reproach, Mrs. Tinker seeming to include every member of her husband's sex in her disapproval, and the daughter perhaps desiring to make it clear that she wished nothing from any person contaminated by her father's introduction. Her dark lashes separated widely for an instant, disclosing beautiful and resentful eyes in which blue fires smouldered; colour came abruptly upon her unrouged cheeks; then she looked down again, and Ogle was surprised by the revelation that this sulky Miss Libby Tinker was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen.

The discovery failed to please him with her, however, "Middle-West belle" being the depreciative phrase that came instantly into his mind. He had no interest in representatives of that type, although as a playwright he was curious about what he felt certain he had accurately perceived in her—that deep and settled anger with her father. It was, in fact, an enmity, one beyond ordinary family-quarrel animosities, he was sure. It was too fixed and too pro-