Burton made an early call the next day at the house on Rowan Street. Leslie Underwood was in the garden when he came up, and he stopped for a moment at the gate to enjoy the picture she made. It would be impossible for any one with sensibilities not to enjoy a painted picture of a beautiful girl bending before a bed of pansies, her summer gown of blue lawn making an effective contrast to the green grass upon which its folds rippled, and her hair bare to the sun. It would therefore have merely argued brutish insensibility on Burton's part if he had not felt the charm of the real thing. Perhaps, however, it would not have been necessary for him to feel it so keenly that it seemed like a hand laid hushingly upon his heart. He stood staring in a forgetfulness of himself that would have been a valued tribute to any work of art. Some instinct warned the girl; she turned her head abruptly and then, when she saw him, she rose and came toward him, strewing the gathered pansies like many-colored jewels along the sod.
"He stopped for a moment at the gate to enjoy the picture she made." [Page 250.]
"Oh, you're back!" she exclaimed.
It was so indisputable a statement of fact that he did not attempt an answer. But perhaps she did not notice the omission, for as she withdrew her hand from his she asked gayly: "Well, what luck?"
"I'll tell you, to-morrow."
"Then you have found something?"
"This is the time, Miss Underwood, when I can properly assume the air of inscrutable mystery which belongs by all tradition to the astute detective. If I had really been up in my part I should have assumed it long ago, instead of revealing my actual ignorance so recklessly. It's rather late in the day to begin to be mysterious, I admit, but I am disposed to claim the privilege for the next twenty-four hours."
She watched him eagerly. "Something is brewing!"
"Hum,--possibly. But please observe that I don't say there is."