Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/210

 his own. Also it was touched ever so gently with humor. A pair of gravely-searching eyes met the hooded, serious, half-ironical orbs of his Grace.

"Nice of you to come and see an invalid," he said slowly, very slowly, with a good deal of manner.

"A great pleasure," she smiled from the topmost inch of her remarkable height.

While these brief, and on his part decidedly painful maneuvers had been going on, the man of the world had been busily seeking something of which so far he had not been able to find a trace. In manner and bearing there was not a flaw.

Already the expert's eye had been struck by a look of distinction that was extraordinary. She was undoubtedly handsome, nay, more than handsome; she had the subtle look of race which gives to beauty a cachet, a quality of permanence. Her height was beyond the common, but every line of the long, slim frame was a thing of elegance, of molded delicacy. She was perhaps a shade too thin, but it gave her an indefinable style which charmed, in spite of himself, this shrewd, instructed observer. Then her dress and her hat, her neat gloves and boots, although they were models of reticence, were all touched by a subtle air of fashion which seemed somehow to reflect their wearer.

The "Chorus Girl" was in the nature of a surprise. The Duke indicated a chair, on the edge of which she perched, straight as a willow, her chin held steadily, her amused eyes veiled with a becoming gravity. As the Duke painfully reseated himself he felt a cool scrutiny upon him. And that very quality of coolness was a little provocative. In the circumstances of the case it