"'That face!'" Napier mocked. "I suppose, out of pure contentiousness, you'll be saying it's pretty."
"'Pretty!' Pretty faces are cheap. That one has got the fineness of a wood anemone. And the faith of a St. Francis. Did you ever see such faith in any pair of eyes? Ye gods! If I could believe in life as that child does, if I were as serenely sure of everybody's good will,"—he threw out his walking-stick at the prison wall between him and such freedoms, such innocent securities. "It's pathetic—a person like that. Think of the knocks she'll get. Think—"
"What I'm thinking of—I can't get it out of my mind! Every time I go back to it, it seems to me stranger—the expression on the von Schwarzenberg's face when the girl recognized Pforzheim."
"What sort of expression?" said Julian, absently.
"I wish you'd seen it! And the way she looked after Carl with a sort of cowering apology, before she plunged into the car. Now leave off quarreling with me about the Mercury cap, and just tell me: Why the devil should that woman have pretended she'd never seen the Pforzheims before she met them at Kirklamont? I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself that question."
"How do you know she pretended—?"
"I was there. I saw them introduced."
CHAPTER III
That hall at Kirklamont was for Gavan Napier, as he looked back, forever associated with the most decisive hours in his own fate, as well as that of his closest friend. It meant to him, perhaps more than anything, the abiding memory of that morning after the arrival of Miss Greta's "little friend."