“This is dear Adam Gregg, Madeleine,” was her lover’s introduction, “and there’s nobody like him, and never will be.”
The girl stopped, the overhead light falling on her dainty hat and trim figure; her black eyes in comprehensive glance taking in Adam standing against a hazy background of beautiful things with both hands outstretched.
“And I am so glad to be here and to know you,” she said, walking straight towards him and laying her little hands in his.
“And so am I,” answered Adam. “And I know everything about you. Phil says you can ride like the wind, and dance so that your toes never touch the floor, and that you——”
“Yes, and so do I know every single thing about you”—here she looked at him critically—“and you—yes, you are just as I hoped you would be. Phil’s letters have had nothing else in them since you bewitched him and I’ve just been wild to get home and have him bring me here. What a lovely place! Isn’t it wonderful, Phil?... And is that the portrait? Oh! what a beautiful, beautiful woman!”
She had left Gregg now—before he had had time to say another word in praise of her—and was standing under the picture, her eyes gazing into its depths. Adam kept perfectly still, completely charmed by her dainty joyousness. He felt as if some rare bird had flown in which would be frightened away if he moved a hair’s breadth. Phil stood apart watching every expression that crossed her happy face. He had been waiting weeks for this moment.
“You haven’t her eyes or her hair, Phil,” she continued without turning her head, “but you look at me that way sometimes. I don’t know what it is—she’s happy, and she’s not happy. She loved somebody—that’s it, she loved somebody and her eyes follow you so—they seem alive—and the lips as if they could speak.
“And now, Mr. Gregg, please show me every one of these beautiful things.” She had already, with her quick intuition, seen through Adam’s personality at a glance, and found out how thoroughly she could trust him.
He obeyed as gallantly and as cheerfully as if he had been her own age, pulling open the drawers of the cabinets, taking out this curio and that, lifting the lid of the old Venetian wedding-chest that she might herself pry among the velvets and embroideries; she dropping on her knees beside it with all the fluttering joy of a child who had come suddenly upon a box of toys; Phil following them around the room putting in a word here and there, reminding Adam of something he had forgotten, or calling her attention to some object hidden in a shadow that even her quick absorbing glance had overlooked.