Her form detached itself gradually from the fog, the effect of deliberation being due to the fact that she was dressed in gray, a long, loose coat and a round hat with a film of veil about it. She would have been a study in monochrome but for the color in the cheek turned to Berny, a glowing, rose-tinted cheek into which the damp had called a pink brighter than any rouge. Berny looked at it with reluctant admiration, and the woman turned and presented her full face, blooming as a flower, to the watcher’s eye. It was Rose Cannon.
If in these wan and dripping surroundings the young girl had not looked so freshly fair and comely, Berny might have let her pass unchecked. But upon the elder woman’s sore and bitter mood the vision of this rosy youthfulness, triumphant where all the rest of the world sank unprotesting under the weight of a common ugliness, came with a sense of unbearable wrong and grievance. As Rose passed, Berny, with a sudden blinding up-rush of excitement, leaned forward and rose.
“Miss Cannon,” she said loudly. “Oh, Miss Cannon,—just a moment.”
Rose turned quickly, looking inquiringly at the owner of the voice. She had had a vague impression of a figure on the bench but had not looked at it. Now, though the face she saw was unfamiliar, she smiled and said,
“Did you want to speak to me?”
The ingratiating amiability of her expression added to Berny’s swelling sense of injury and injustice. Thus did this siren smile upon Dominick, and it was a smile that was very sweet. The excitement that had seized upon the older woman made her tremble, but she was glad, fiercely, burningly glad, that she had stopped Miss Cannon.
“Yes,” she said, “just for a moment, if you don’t mind.”
Rose had never seen the woman before, and at the first glance supposed her to be some form of peddler or a person selling tickets. The daughter of Bill Cannon was eagerly sought by members of her own sex who had wares for sale, and it did not strike her as odd that she should be stopped in the plaza on a foggy afternoon. But a second glance showed her that the woman before her was better dressed, more assured in manner than the female vender, and she felt puzzled and interested.
“You had something to say to me?” she queried again, the questioning inflection a little more marked.
“Yes, but not much. I won’t keep you more than a few moments. Won’t you sit down?”