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over." He looked at his victim with an air of cunning mystery. She jumped up so suddenly that he started back. Mrs. Fyne rose too, and even the spell was removed from her husband. But the girl dropped again into the chair and turned her head to look at Mrs. Fyne. This time it was no accidental meeting of fugitive glances. It was a deliberate communication. To my question as to its nature Mrs. Fyne said she did not know. "Was it appealing?" I suggested. "No," she said. "Was it frightened, angry, crushed, resigned?" "No! No! Nothing of these." But it had frightened her. She remembered it to this day. She had been ever since fancying she could detect the lingering reflection of that look in all the girl's glances. In the attentive, in the casual--even in the grateful glances--in the expression of the softest moods. "Has she her soft moods, then?" I asked with interest. Mrs Fyne, much moved by her recollections, heeded not my inquiry. All her mental energy was concentrated on the nature of that memorable glance. The general tradition of mankind teaches us that glances occupy a considerable place in the self-expression of women. Mrs. Fyne was trying honestly to give me some idea, as much perhaps to satisfy her own uneasiness as my curiosity. She was frowning in the effort as you see sometimes a child do (what is delightful in women is that they so often resemble intelligent children--I mean the crustiest, the sourest, the most battered of them do--at times). She was frowning, I say, and I was beginning to smile faintly at her when all at once she came out with something totally unexpected. "It was horribly merry," she said. I suppose she must have been satisfied by my sudden gravity because she looked at me in a friendly manner. "Yes, Mrs. Fyne," I said, smiling no longer. "I see. It would have been horrible even on the stage." "Ah!" she interrupted me--and I really believe her change of attitude back to folded arms was meant to check a shudder. "But it wasn't on the stage, and it was not with her lips that she laughed." "Yes. It must have been horrible," I assented. "And then she had to go away ultimately--I suppose. You didn't say anything?" "No," said Mrs. Fyne. "I rang the bell and told one of the maids to go and bring the hat and coat out of the cab. And then we waited." I don't think that there ever was such waiting unless possibly in a jail at some moment or other on
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