saw from her seat in the automobile something
which my own unencumbered vision had by no means detected.

But now, here on the bridge, even her outward appearance was as shrouded
as her inward qualities--save such as might be audible in that voice,
as her skilful, well-placed speeches to one and the other of the company
tided over and carried off into ease this uneasy moment. All men, at
such a voice, have pricked up their ears since the beginning; there was
much woman in it; each slow, schooled syllable called its challenge to
questing man. But I got no chance to look in the eye that went with that
voice; she took all the advantages which her veil gave her; and how well
she used them I was to learn later.

In the general smoothing-out process which she was so capably effecting,
her attention was about to reach me, when my name was suddenly called
out from behind her. It was Beverly Rodgers, that accomplished and
inveterate bachelor of fashion. Ten years before, when I had seen much
of him, he had been more particular in his company, frequently declaring
in his genial, irresponsible way that New York society was going to the
devil. But many tempting dances on the land, and cruises on the water,
had taken him deep among our lower classes that have boiled up from
the bottom with their millions--and besides, there would be nothing
to marvel at in Beverly's presence in any company that should include
Hortense Rieppe, if she carried out the promise of her voice.

Beverly was his customary, charming, effusive self, coming out of
the automobile to me with his "By Jove, old man," and his "Who'd have
thought it, old fellow?" and sprinkling urbane little drops of jocosity
over us collectively, as the garden water-turning apparatus sprinkles
a lawn. His knowing me, and the way he brought it out, and even the
tumbling into the road of a few wraps and chattels of travel as he
descended from the automobile, and the necessity of picking these up and
handing them back with delightful little jocular apologies, such as, "By
Jove, what a lout I am," all this helped the meeting on prodigiously,
and got us gratefully away from the disconcerting incident of the torn
money. Charley was helpful, too; you would never have supposed from the
polite small-talk which he was now offering to John Mayrant that he had
within some three minutes received the equivalent of a slap across the
eyes from that youth, and carried the soiled consequences in hi