"A perfect sthranger—to me. Be quick now."
She heard her father's footsteps go into the little sitting-room and then the hum of voices.
Without any apparent reason she suddenly felt a tenseness and nervousness. She walked out of her room and paused a moment outside the closed door of the sitting-room and listened.
Her father was talking. She opened the door and walked in. A tall, bronzed man came forward to greet her. Her heart almost stopped. She trembled violently. The next moment Jerry had clasped her hand in both of his.
"How are you, Peg?"
He smiled down at her as he used to in Regal Villa: and behind the smile there was a grave look in his dark eyes, and the old tone of tenderness in his voice.
"How are you, Peg?" he repeated.
"I'm fine, Mr. Jerry," she replied in a daze. Then she looked at O'Connell and she hurried on to say:
"This is my father—Sir Gerald Adair."
"We'd inthroduced ourselves already," said O'Connell, good-naturedly, eyeing the unexpected visitor all the while. "And what might ye be doin' in New York?" he asked.