It was a good-sized room, evidently newly furnished and as neat as a bandbox. The empty book-case on which the lamp rested was of handsome quartered oak, which transiently struck him as curious. But in the next instant he turned away and forgot all about it.
The lady stood where she had risen and was regarding him without a word. The lamplight fell full upon her. He came nearer, and his waning assurance shook him like a pennant in the wind and was suddenly gone. The sense of camaraderie which the dark had given faded; his easy friendliness left him; and he was an embarrassed young man face to face with a girl whose sudden beauty seemed to overwhelm him with the knowledge that he did not so much as know her name.
"None of my thumbnail sketches," he faltered, "made you look like this."
She had rested her wet parasol against the table, where a slow pool gathered at the ferrule, and was pulling on more trimly her long white gloves. Now she looked at him rather quizzically, though her young eyes reflected something of his own unsteadying embarrassment.
"No," she said, "I shall not be sixty-two for—for some time yet. But of course it was a game—a pastime—where I had a—little the advantage. Do you know, I—I am not entirely surprised, after all."
"Oh, aren't you?" he said, completely mystified, but as charmed by her smile as he was by the subtle change in her manner which had come with the lighting of that match.
"And it was nice of you to tell me that polite story at the beginning," she said. "And quick—and clever. When I heard the front door burst open, the first thing I thought of, really, was that it must be you."
"I can't think," he said, unable to take his eyes off her, "what in the world you are talking about."
She laughed with something of an effort, and sat down exquisitely in a cruel cane chair. "Well, then—do you forgive me for taking possession of your house like this? You will, won't you? I can't be silly, now, and pretend not to know you. But really I never dreamed that you—"
"Is it possible," he broke in stormily, "that you are mistaking me for that insufferable Stanhope?"