Emphasized, perhaps, by the incongruity of her conventional smartness, but a result of the past twenty-four hours independent of any such emphasis, all the more salient points of her demeanour of the day before seemed to be accentuated into hardness. Her perfect self-possession, as she faced the young man before her—it was the man she had noticed on the previous morning questioning the waiter—was hard; her perfect freedom from any touch of emotion or agitation was hard; her face, a little sharpened and haggard, and reddened slightly about the eyelids, apparently rather from want of sleep than from tears, was very hard; her eyes, brighter than usual, and her rather thin mouth, were eloquent of bitterness, rather than desolation, of spirit.
She turned quickly towards the door as Falconer entered, and looked at him for an instant with an unrecognising stare. Then, as he advanced to her without speaking, and with outstretched hand, something that was almost a spasm of comprehension passed across her face, settling into a stiff little society smile.
“It is Dennis Falconer, isn’t it?” she said, holding out her hand to him. “I ought to have known you at once. I am very glad to see you.”
“My uncle thought—— We decided yesterday morning——”
Dennis Falconer hesitated and stopped. He was thrown out of his reckoning, taken hopelessly aback, as it were, by something so entirely unlike what he had expected as was her whole bearing; though, indeed, he had been quite unconscious of expecting anything. But Mrs. Romayne remained completely mistress of the situation.
“It is very kind of you,” she said, with the same hard composure. “It was very kind of my uncle.” She hesitated, hardly perceptibly, and then said, the lines about her mouth growing more bitter, “You have heard?”
Falconer bowed his head in assent, and she turned toward the young man, who had drawn a little apart during this colloquy.
“This gentleman comes from Scotland Yard,” she said. “Perhaps you will be so kind as to go into matters with him. I do not understand business or legal details. Mr. Falconer will represent me,” she added to the young man, who bowed with an alacrity that suggested, as did his glance at Falconer, that the prospect of conferring with a man rather than a woman was a distinct relief to him. Then, before Falconer’s not very rapid mind had adjusted itself to the situation, she had bowed slightly to the young man and left the room.
CHAPTER III
Three days before, the name of William Romayne had been widely known and respected throughout Europe as the name of a successful and distinguished financier. Now, it was the centre of a nine-days’ wonder as the name of a master swindler, detected.