“You know her?” Stevens inquired curiously.
“She is my great friend.” Mrs. Trelawney lifted her head proudly as she spoke.
“Why, you know Bridget Ruan, Mr. Stevens!” she exclaimed, a moment later. “She used to stop with me years ago, after we both left school, you know. You were very much interested in her—”
“Not the clever little girl, whose father—”
“Yes!” she cried, interrupting him in her eagerness. “I forgot that you have never met her since. You’ve been away much too long!”
“Really? Strange that I shouldn’t have known, I mean,” he returned, raising himself a little on one elbow to talk. “I remember her perfectly, of course, but her name had escaped me. Well, it’s a clever story, a very clever story. Strong, but delicate too. No screaming—no rant—but it tells. You have seen it, perhaps?
“She was a striking girl,” he went on musingly. “Is she as beautiful as she promised to be?”
Mrs. Trelawney rose, and crossed the room to a cabinet, from which she took a photograph. She put it silently into his hands.
The editor stood up, and moved nearer the light.
“Yes,” he said, after a moment’s scrutiny. “I remember her face. But she has altered. It was a face full of possibilities. Some of them have become realities, I should say. Yes, she is beautiful—really beautiful.”