“Won’t you sit down?”
He sat at her bidding on the chair he had risen from, subsiding into the small, shrunken figure in the middle of enveloping folds of overcoat. One hand hung down between his knees holding his hat. He looked at Mariposa and then looked down at the hat.
“Cold afternoon, isn’t it?” he said.
“Very cold,” she responded, “but I like it. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
“Not very,” he looked up at her, blinking near-sightedly through the glasses; “I don’t know whether you know what my name is, Miss Moreau? It’s Shackleton—Winslow Shackleton. I forgot my card.”
Mariposa felt a lightning-like change come over her face, in which there was a sudden stiffening of her features into something hard and repellent. To Win, at that moment, she looked very like his father.
“Oh!” she said, hearing her voice drop at the end of the interjection with a note of vague disapproval and uneasiness.
“I’ve seen you,” continued Win, “once at The Trumpet office, when you were there with Mrs. Willers. I don’t think you saw me. I was back in the corner, near the table where Jack—that’s the boy—sits.”
Mariposa murmured:
“No, I didn’t see you.”