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