“Please don’t move,” said a voice deep, clear, and musical, while he was still in the act of rising. “Oh, don’t—please!”
But without making any immediate reply the Duke poised himself as well as he could on one foot, more or less in the manner of an emu, and bowed rather grimly. The dignity of the whole proceeding was perhaps slightly over-emphasized, it was almost as if he intended to overawe his visitor with the note of the grand seigneur.
Whether this was the case or not the bow was returned; and slight as it was, it had a dignity that matched his own. Also it was touched ever so gently with humor. A pair of gravely-searching eyes met the hooded, serious, half-ironical orbs of his Grace.
“Nice of you to come and see an invalid,” he said slowly, very slowly, with a good deal of manner.
“A great pleasure,” she smiled from the topmost inch of her remarkable height.
While these brief, and on his part decidedly painful maneuvers had been going on, the man of the world had been busily seeking something of which so far he had not been able to find a trace. In manner and bearing there was not a flaw.
Already the expert’s eye had been struck by a look of distinction that was extraordinary. She was undoubtedly handsome, nay, more than handsome; she had the subtle look of race which gives to beauty a cachet, a quality of permanence. Her height was beyond the common, but every line of the long, slim frame was a thing of elegance, of molded delicacy. She was perhaps a shade too thin, but it gave her an indefinable style which charmed, in spite of himself, this shrewd, instructed observer. Then her dress and her hat, her neat gloves and boots, although they were models of reticence, were all touched by a subtle air of fashion which seemed somehow to reflect their wearer.
The “Chorus Girl” was in the nature of a surprise. The Duke indicated a chair, on the edge of which she perched, straight as a willow, her chin held steadily, her amused eyes veiled with a becoming gravity. As the Duke painfully reseated himself he felt a cool scrutiny upon him. And that very quality of coolness was a little provocative. In the circumstances of the case it had hardly a right to be there. To himself it was most proper, but in this young woman, a police constable’s daughter, who earned her living in the theater, a little embarrassment of some kind would have been an added grace. If anything however she had more composure than he; and in spite of the charm and the power of a personality that was vivid yet clear-cut, he could not help resenting the fact just a little.
When at last he had slowly resettled himself on his two chairs he turned eyes of ironical power full upon her. Yes, she was amazingly handsome, and she reminded him strangely of a face he had seen. “I wonder if you know why I have asked you to be so kind as to come here,” were the first words he spoke. And he seemed to weigh each one very carefully before he uttered it.
“I think I do, at least I think I may guess.” The note of absolute frankness was so much more than he had a right to look for that it pleased him more than it need have done.