His pale eyes dwelt contemplatively on the girl before him. She was very slim and young, and plainly very nervous. There was no beauty about Ernestine Cardwell, only a certain wild grace peculiarly charming, and a quick wit that some people found too shrewd. When she laughed she was a child. Her laugh was irresistible, and there was magic in her smile, a baffling, elusive magic too transient to be defined. Very sudden and very fleeting was her smile. Rivington saw it for an instant only as she met his look.
"Do you know," she said, colouring deeply. "I thought you were much older than you are."
"I am fifty," said Rivington.
But she shook her head.
"It is very good of you to say so."
"Not at all," smiled Rivington. "You, I fancy, must be about twenty-one. How long since the bull episode?"
"Oh, do you remember that, too?" She uttered a faint laugh.
"Vividly," said Rivington. "I have a lively memory of the fleetness of your retreat and the violence of your embrace when the danger was over."
She laughed again.
"It was years and years ago—quite six, I should think."