On her part, she seemed to recognize him instantaneously. On his…. It may as well be admitted that Maitland's wits were gone wool-gathering, temporarily at least: a state of mind not unpardonable when it is taken into consideration that he was called upon to grapple with and simultaneously to assimilate three momentous facts. For the first time in his life he found himself nose to nose with a revolver, and that one of able bodied and respect-compelling proportions. For the first time in his life, again, he was under necessity of dealing with a housebreaker. But most stupefying of all he found the fact that this housebreaker, this armed midnight marauder, was a woman! And so it was not altogether fearlessness that made him to all intents and purposes ignore the weapon; it is nothing to his credit for courage if his eyes struck past the black and deadly mouth of the revolver and looked only into the blank and expressionless eyes of the wind-mask; it was not lack of respect for his skin's integrity, but the sheer, tremendous wonder of it all, that rendered him oblivious to the eternity that lay the other side of a slender, trembling finger-tip.
And so he stared, agape, until presently the weapon wavered and was lowered and the woman's voice, touched with irony, brought him to his senses.
"Oh," she remarked coolly, "it's only you."
Thunderstruck, he was able no more than to parrot the pronoun: "You—you!"
"Were you expecting to meet any one else, here, to-night?" she inquired in suavest mockery.
He lifted his shoulders helplessly, and tried to school his tongue to coherence. "I confess…. Well, certainly I didn't count on finding you here, Miss Wentworth. And the black cloak, you know—"
"Reversible, of course: grey inside, as you see—Handsome Dan!" The girl laughed quietly, drawing aside an edge of the garment to reveal its inner face of silken grey and the fluted ruffles of the grey skirt underneath.
He nodded appreciation of the device, his mind now busy with speculations as to what he should do with the girl, now that he had caught her. At the same time he was vaguely vexed by her persistent repetition of the obsolescent nickname.
"Handsome Dan," he iterated all but mechanically. "Why do you call me that, please? Have we met before? I could swear, never before this night!"
"But you are altogether too modest," she laughed. "Not that it's a bad trait in the character of a professional…. But really! it seems a bit incredible that any one so widely advertised as Handsome Dan Anisty should feel surprise at being recognized. Why, your portrait and biography have commanded space in every yellow journal in America recently!"