"Why don't you speak to me, Cousin Antony? Do you think I'm a ghost?"
(A ghost!)
Bella came forward as she spoke, and he saw that she wore a girlish dress, a long dress, a womanly dress. With her old affectionate gesture she held out her hand, and on her dark hair was a little red bonnet of some fashion too modish for him to find familiar, but very bewitching and becoming, and he saw that she was a lovely woman, nearly seventeen.
"I lost the precious little paper you gave me, Cousin Antony, that day at church, and I only found it to-day in packing. I'm going home for the Easter holidays."
He realized that she was close to him, and that she innocently lifted up her face. Fairfax bent and kissed her under the red hat on the hair.
"Now," she cried, nodding at him, "I've hunted you down, tracked you to your lair, and you can't escape. I want to see your work. Show me everything."
But Fairfax put his hand up quickly, and before her eyes rested on the bas-relief he had let the curtain fall.
"You're not an engineer any more, then, Cousin Antony?"
"No, Bella."