Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/175

 then, with considerably less assurance, she stole a glance at her face. Little puffs, pencilled with fine lines, had formed under her eyes, but the happiness in her heart, she knew, would soon drive these away, as it had before. O, she was happy!

Only an apparition and a few words, but what a handsome lad! How different from the others! He had thought of her; he had questioned her about herself. He was the first to do this (the first man, at least; she had not quite forgotten Lennie Colman) since she had arrived in Maple Valley. No one else; not one of her old friends or new acquaintances had seemed to be at all interested in her. They wanted her to flatter the town; they wanted to exploit her for their own glory. To think that here, in this God-forsaken hole full of stupid fools, she had experienced again the only emotion which was precious to her. To think that, in her impatience and despair, her utter hopelessness, she had been on the point of leaving this place and going away. She shivered as she considered what the consequences of this rash act might have been.

Drawing a dressing-gown over her shoulders, she extinguished the lights, applied a match to a cigarette, and sat down in front of the open window, drawing back the shutters to allow the summer breeze to play through the heavy, starched lacecurtains, which hung from a brass rod overhead and swept the carpet beneath. Had Mayme Townsend noticed anything? she wondered. The