She had from the first appreciated the positive likeness between Mrs. Standish and the portrait in the library, even though her observation of the latter had been limited to the most casual inspection through the crack of the folding doors; there wasn't any excuse for questioning the identification. The woman before her, like the woman of the picture, was of the slender, blonde class--intelligent, neurotic, quick-tempered, inclined to suffer spasmodically from exaltation of the ego. And if she had not always been pampered with every luxury that money has induced modern civilisation to invent, the fact was not apparent; she dressed with such exquisite taste as only money can purchase, if it be not innate; she carried herself with the ease of affluence founded upon a rock, while her nervousness was manifestly due rather to impatience than to the vice of worrying.
"And now," Mr. Savage wound up with a graceless grin, "if you'll be good enough to explain what the dickens you're doing here instead of being on the way to Boston by the eleven-ten, I'll be grateful; Miss Manvers will quit doubting my veracity--secretly, if not openly; and we can proceed to consider something I have to suggest with respect to the obligations of a woman who has been saved the loss of a world of gewgaws as well as those of a man who is alive and whole exclusively, thanks to . . . Well, I think you know what I mean."
"Oh, as for that," said Mrs. Standish absently, "when you turned up missing on the train I stopped it at the Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street station and came back to find out what was the matter. I've been all through this blessed place looking for you--"
"Pardon!" Mr. Savage interrupted. "Did I understand you to say you had stopped the train?"
"Certainly. Why not? You don't imagine I was going to let myself be carried all the way to Boston in ignorance--"
"Then, one infers, the eleven-ten doesn't normally stop at One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street?"
"No. I had to speak to the conductor. Do be quiet. It doesn't matter. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing much, except that the clothes Miss Manvers stands in are hardly to be considered an adequate reward."
"True. But you mentioned some suggestion or other--"
"Without being downright about it, thereby sparing Miss Manvers any embarrassment, she might feel should you disapprove, as I'm confident you won't--"