Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/393



S OGLE sat after dinner, finishing his coffee and beginning a cigar in the public room of the hotel, a long, orientalized apartment with a cosmopolitan population prevalently English, two ladies entered at a door and stood looking about them as if in search of a friend. More accurately, one of them wore the expression of a person looking for a missing friend, though apprehensively; while the other had the air of an aroused feudist trailing an enemy. Her dilated eyes swept fiercely over the room; her lips were bitterly compressed; her colour was that of war. She saw Ogle, who sat in profile to her, unaware of her; and after hurriedly conferring with her daughter, she departed swiftly by way of the door they had just entered.

Olivia came to a vacant chair beside Ogle and occupied it before he knew she was near.

"May I sit here a little while?" she said, and though she looked anxious, she smiled brightly upon him. "I've been instructed to find out something