Presently Maitland's attention was distracted and drawn, by the
abrupt cessation of its motor's pulsing, to the automobile on his
right. He lifted his chin sharply, narrowing his eyes, whistled
low; and thereafter had eyes for nothing else.
The car, he saw with the experienced eye of a connoisseur, was a
recent model of one of the most expensive and popular foreign
makes: built on lines that promised a deal in the way of speed,
and furnished with engines that were pregnant with multiplied
horse-power: all in all not the style of car one would expect to
find controlled by a solitary woman, especially after ten of a
summer's night.
Nevertheless the lone occupant of this car was a woman. And there
was that in her bearing, an indefinable something,--whether it lay
in the carriage of her head, which impressed one as both spirited
and independent, or in an equally certain but less tangible air of
self-confidence and reliance,--to set Mad Maitland's pulses
drumming with excitement. For, unless indeed he labored gravely
under a misapprehension, he was observing her for the second time
within the past few hours.
Could he be mistaken, or was this in truth the same woman who had
(as he believed) made herself free of his rooms that evening?
In confirmation of such suspicion he remarked her costume, which
was altogether worked out in soft shades of grey. Grey was the
misty veil, drawn in and daintily knotted beneath her chin, which
lent her head and face such thorough protection against prying
glances; of grey suede were the light gauntlets that hid all save
the slenderness of her small hands; and the wrap that, cut upon
full and flowing lines, cloaked her figure beyond suggestion, was
grey.
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