They faced each other in the dim, cool room for what seemed to him endless centuries. She was much younger than he had imagined; but her eyes were blue, just as he remembered them, and her abundant light hair curled away from her forehead in pretty waves, and was tied to-day with a large bow of blue ribbon. For an instant she seemed puzzled or mystified, but her blue eyes regarded him steadily. The very helplessness of her youth, the simplicity of her blue linen gown, the girlish ribbon in her hair, proclaimed him blackguard.
"Won't you please sit down, Mr. Ardmore?"
And when they were seated there was another pause, during which the blue eyes continued to take account of him, and he fingered his tie, feeling sure that there was something wrong with it.
"It's warm, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is. It's a way summer has, of being mostly warm."
He was quite sure that she was laughing at him; there was a tinge of irony in the very way in which she pronounced "wa'm," lingeringly, as though to prolong her contempt for his stupidity in not finding anything better to say.
She had taken the largest chair in the room, and it seemed to hide her away in its shadows, so that she could examine him at her leisure as he sat under a window in the full glare of its light.
"I enjoyed meeting your father so much, Miss Dangerfield. I think we are always likely to be afraid of great men, but your father made me feel at home at once. And he tells such capital stories—I've been laughing over them ever since I left New Orleans."
"Father has quite a reputation for his stories. When did you leave New Orleans, Mr. Ardmore?"