Still, she was undoubtedly a nice-looking girl, quite pretty enough to be the belle of a country place, and, on the whole, I was rather relieved to find her attractions of so ordinary a kind. There could scarcely be anything dangerous, I thought, in this good-humoured doll’s face; she did not appear to have the daring or character to lead her boyish admirer over the borders of a spooning sentimentality. At any rate, that was not written in her face. A blunt physiognomist would probably have declared that there was not enough of the devil in her to fire the blood even of an impetuous, generous boy and urge him on to recklessness. It seemed so to me and I was glad of it.
Just at present there were traces of tears in her face and a generally woe-begone expression. Her companion, too, looked upset and sympathetic; but he glanced up with a bright smile when we entered.
“You’re Philip Morton, I suppose?” he exclaimed, holding out his hand. “Glad to see you! Heard of you from my uncle, you know!” I shook hands with him and he introduced me formally to the young woman at his side, calling her Miss Hart. Then he turned to me again.
“I quite meant to have been at the station to meet you,” he said; “but we called here first and I—I was detained.”
“It’s of no consequence at all,” I assured him. “Mr. de Cartienne was there.”
“And Mr. de Cartienne having had to wait half an hour in the rain at that infernal old shed they call a station, requires a little refreshment,” chimed in the person named. “Will the fair Millicent condescend, or shall I ring?”
She rose and, crossing the room, opened the door into the bar.
“Brandy-and-soda for me,” ordered de Cartienne. “Cis is drinking whisky, I see, so he’ll have another one, and we’ll have a large bottle of Apollinaris between us. Morton, what’ll you have?”
I decided upon claret and hot water, never having tasted spirits. de Cartienne made a wry face, but ordered it without remark.
“I say, Morton, I don’t know what you’ll think of us shacking about in a public-house like this, and bringing you here, your first night, too!” exclaimed Silchester, dragging his chair up to mine. “Bad form, isn’t it? But it is so dull in the evenings and Milly’s no end of a nice girl. No one could help liking her. Besides, she’s in dreadful trouble just now,” he continued, dropping his voice. “Her father has disappeared suddenly. Awfully mysterious affair and no mistake. We can’t make head or tail of it.”