CHAPTER XVIII
WATCHING
It was not difficult for Jessie to guess the identity of the man who addressed her. Only a man who loved and felt sure that he was loved in return would have spoken to a girl like that. This was Charles Maxwell beyond a doubt. Nice-looking enough, Jessie thought, with a pleasing, amiable face—perhaps a trifle too amiable, but there was no mistaking the power in the lines of the mouth.
"What are you doing here like this?" he asked. "Heavens! has all the world gone mad to-night?"
The bitterness of despair rang in the speaker's voice. Jessie noticed that Maxwell was dressed not in the least like men in his position usually dress at that time of the night. He wore a grey flannel suit and a panama hat pulled down over his eyes.
"I came on urgent business," Jessie said. "I presume that you are Mr. Maxwell?"
"Why should I deny it?" the other asked. "I am Charles Maxwell, and the most miserable dog in London. But I am forgetting. Why do you ask me such a foolish question, Vera?"
"Because I want to be quite sure of my ground," Jessie said. "And because I am not Miss Vera Galloway at all. If you look at me very closely you will see that for yourself."
Maxwell stared at Jessie in a dull, wooden kind of way, as if the whole thing were past his comprehension.