Surely this
was a face she remembered--though the passing of years and ugly living
had thickened and blurred, somewhat, its always heavy features. Suddenly
she knew it, and the look in its eyes--the look she had, as a child,
unreasoningly hated.
Nigel Anstruthers had returned from his private holiday.
As she took a few quiet steps forward to meet him, their eyes rested on
each other. After a night or two in town his were slightly bloodshot,
and the light in them was not agreeable.
It was he who spoke first, and it is possible that he did not quite
intend to use the expletive which broke from him. But he was remembering
things also. Here were eyes he, too, had seen before--twelve years ago
in the face of an objectionable, long-legged child in New York. And his
own hatred of them had been founded in his own opinion on the best of
reasons. And here they gazed at him from the face of a young beauty--for
a beauty she was.
"Damn it!" he exclaimed; "it is Betty."
"Yes," she answered, with a faint, but entirely courteous, smile. "It
is. I hope you are very well."
She held out her hand. "A delicious hand," was what he said to himself,
as he took it. And what eyes for a girl to have in her head were those
which looked out at him between shadows.
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