He had been told, of course, of the futile attempts of the other boarders to make friends with her, but he had faith in his own attractiveness and in his methods of procedure.
Pinky Payne, too, had told of the interview he had on the bridge. His account of the girl’s beauty and charm had first roused Lockwood’s interest, and now he was making a study of the whole situation.
Idly he counted the buttons again. There were thirteen across the collar. The vertical rows he could not be sure of as the back of the seat cut off their view.
“Thirteen,” he mused; “an unlucky number. And the poor child looks unlucky. There’s a sadness in her eyes that must mean something. Yet there’s more than sadness,—there’s a hint of cruelty,—a possibility of desperate deeds.”
And then Lockwood laughed at himself. To romance thus about a girl to whom he had not said half a dozen sentences in his life! Yet he knew he was not mistaken. All that he had read in Anita Austin’s face, he was sure was there. He knew physiognomy, and rarely, if ever, was mistaken in his reading thereof.
After the lecture was over, Miss Austin went home as quickly as possible.
Lockwood would have liked to escort her, but he had to remain to report to Doctor Waring, who might have some orders for him.
There were none, however, and after a short interview with his employer, Gordon Lockwood went home.
As he went softly upstairs to his room in the Adams house, he passed the door of what he knew to be Miss Austin’s room. He fancied he heard a stifled sob come from behind that closed door, and instinctively paused to listen a moment.
Yes, he was not mistaken. Another sob followed, quickly suppressed, but he could have no doubt the girl was crying.