"What name, please?"
"O'Neill."
... But Gareth had known it before she spoke. He had known at first sight of her, that the boy Pat O'Neill was a myth of his imagination. And that now and inevitably he was face to face with the consequences of a mean sin.
"Mr. Campbell is away."
She smiled ... and the tilted curve of her lips, slow, mocking, hauntingly sad, broke with startling contrast across the conception of jolly roguish smile one might have been led to expect by her spirited poise, and wide-set happy green eyes, streaked and spotted with gold, and veiled by the defiant upward-curling lashes of dusky gold. She was tall, as a goddess is tall; and broad-shouldered; with supple hips; and thick white skin that was powdered by a shower of tiny cowslip freckles round the bridge of her short blunt nose. Her hair, under its green leather slouch hat, was gold also, dull warm gold; and sprang back squarely from her forehead, to be coiled again in a square frame round her cheeks and neck. A magnificent creature; radiance and strength personified, even to the deep cleft in her chin ... until she challenged her own strength by that smile, and scorned her radiance.
"That dear little lad who tried to stop me at the foot of the stairs also told me Mr. Campbell was away," she remarked thoughtfully. "You stick to it?"
"Mr. Campbell is away."
Pat O'Neill regarded him steadily. Then with scornful deliberation crossed the room to the inner door marked Private, and flung it open.
The room beyond was empty of occupant.... She looked back at Gareth, recognized something gravely whimsical in his expression—and burst out laughing.
"I'm disappointed, Mr. Campbell. I frankly own it. I expected to expose you with fine dramatic effect—and all the while here you are quite tame, and ready to eat out of my hand."