I took her hand. “Yes, I am surprised,” I answered.
“You are not changed much. Older, broader, more manly, of course, and much handsomer, too.”
“The change in my looks may not be very great.” It was a fatuous thing to say, for it gave her a chance which her ready wit seized at once.
“I have not changed even in looks,” she said, with a sigh and droop of the eyes and a little graceful gesture of the hands. She did herself less than justice, however. The seven years had ripened her beauty of form and face; the girl had become a woman; and the woman more than fulfilled the promise of the girl. She was faultlessly dressed, too, with exquisite taste; and had achieved that combination of apparent simplicity and suggestion of costly extravagance after which so many American women strive not always with success.
She knew I was looking very closely at her and she paused long enough to give me ample opportunity. Then she glanced up and smiled: hers was one of the most dangerous smiles ever given to a woman.
“Well?” she asked, as if challenging me. Was she anxious to establish our relations upon something of the old footing?
“To what do I owe the favour of this visit?” I asked in a formal and precise tone.
But she only laughed. “Is it a favour, really, do you think? Do you say that only as a preface to dismissing me?”
“It is, at any rate, as I said, a surprise.”
“Why? Why should it be a surprise that I wished to see you again, and that hearing a great financier, Chase F. Bergwyn, was coming here, I rushed here the first moment I could to make sure that it was you?”