marguerites.

The action was instinctive; Blix knew it for such immediately. The
retired captain had not premeditated it. He had not seen the face of
the newcomer. She had not time to come into the back room, or even to
close the street door. But the instant that the captain had recognized
a bunch of white marguerites in her belt he had, without knowing why,
been moved to conceal his identity.

"He's afraid," whispered Blix. "Positively, I believe he's afraid.
How absolutely stupid men are!"

But meanwhile, K. D. B., the looked-for, the planned-for and
intrigued-for; the object of so much diplomacy, such delicate
manoeuvring; the pivot upon which all plans were to turn, the
storm-centre round which so many conflicting currents revolved, and for
whose benefit the peace of mind of the red-headed man had been forever
broken up--had entered the room.

"Why, she's PRETTY!" was Blix's first smothered exclamation, as if she
had expected a harridan.

K. D. B. looked like a servant-girl of the better sort, and was really
very neatly dressed. She was small, little even. She had snappy black
eyes, a resolute mouth, and a general air of being very quiet, very
matter-of-fact and complacent. She would be disturbed at nothing,
excited at nothing; Blix was sure of that. She was placid, but it was
the placidity not of the absence of emotion, but of emotion disdained.
Not the placidity of the mollusk, but that of a mature and
contemplative cat.

Quietly she sat down at a corner table, quietly she removed her veil
and gloves, and quietly she took in the room and its three occupants.

Condy and Blix glued their eyes upon their coffee cups like guilty
conspirators; but a crash of falling crockery called their attention to
the captain's table.

Captain Jack was in a tremor. Hitherto he had acted the role of a sane
and sensible gentleman of middle age, master of himself and of the
situation. The entrance of K. D. B. had evidently reduced him to a
semi-idiotic condition. He enlarged himself; he eased his neck in his
collar with a rotary movement of head and shoulders. He frowned
terribly at trifling objects in corners of the room. He cleared his
throat till the glassware jingled. He pulled at his mustache. He
perspired, fumed, fretted, and was suddenly seized with an insane
desire to laugh. Once only he caught the eye of K. D. B., calmly
sitting in her corner, picking daintily at her fish, whereupon he
immediately