"'E's comin'," the Italian coolly commented. "Do you wanta that I go along in with you?"
As quickly as it had entered, all the anger fled from Rose's voice, and Violet, accustomed to it in command or at satisfied ease, was amazed now to hear it swaying between terror and genuine affection.
"I didn't mean it!" Rose pleaded. "I didn't believe it when I heard it an' I don't believe it now, I know how much it costs a fellow to live. Here's another ten-spot. I—I—you know how I hate Dyker, and Angel, you know that I love you!"
The listener heard Angelelli rise and heard even his voice soften, though probably less with affection than with gratification.
"Now you talka lika de person witha gooda sense," he said. "Don' you listen to de beega lie no more. I lika you—nobody but only you. You are de gooda girl."
There was a whispered word more, and then the kitchen door was softly shut and Violet heard Rose, going into the next room, welcome that Wesley Dyker who, Violet had, to Celeste, so favorably compared with Angel.
The woman on the stairs hesitated. She wanted to pursue her eavesdropping, and she knew that she could regain her room, should the doorbell ring, before she was likely to be missed; but she was afraid that, in the maid's absence, Rose might return to the kitchen for a bottle of wine and discover her. Accordingly she waited the few minutes that were required for the first of such errands, and, those over, crept forward to the lighted keyhole, ready to retreat at the first intimation of danger.
She gave her eye precedence over her ear, and, as it chanced that Dyker was sitting directly in the limited shaft of her vision, she was enabled to get what was her first careful view of him.
A man but little beyond thirty, Wesley Dyker's face, which might once well have been handsome, was beginning to show that flaccid whiteness which must later light to red and glow to purple. What his mouth might have told, a crisp, short, brown mustache concealed, but the regularity of his other features lost much of its effect because of eyes that, though large and steel gray, were heavy-lidded and calculating. Nevertheless, Violet's estimate of the man was not without justification. He spoke easily and well in the voice of education; his excellently made evening clothes displayed a figure that had not yet lost its admirable lines, and even the face—to one that either had known it during its gradual changes, or to one that lacked a fund of experience for purposes of comparison—was not wanting in attraction.
To the sturdy Rose, whose hand he held and who was looking at him with what she patently believed to be a tender expression, he was speaking with a certain formal politeness that was novel in the ears of the listener.