ve been embarrassed. All she would have seen was
a man's forehead and a rim of smooth black hair showing over the top of
an illustrated paper.

What he saw was a clear profile with a delicate nose slightly tilting
upward in a proud rather than impertinent way; an arch of eyebrow
daintily sketched; a large eye which might be gray or violet; a drooping
mouth with a short upper lip; a really charming chin, and a long white
throat; skin softly pale, like white velvet; thick, ash-blond hair parted
in the middle and worn Madonna fashion--there seemed to be a lot of it in
the coil at the nape of her neck.

The creature looked too simple, too--not dowdy, but too unsophisticated,
to have anything false about her. Figure too thin, hardly to be called a
"figure" at all, but agreeably girlish; and its owner might be anywhere
from twenty to five or six years older. Not beautiful: just an average,
lady-like English girl--or perhaps more of Irish type; but certainly with
possibilities. If she were a princess or a millionairess, she might be
glorified by newspapers as a beauty.

Annesley forced her nervous limbs to slow movement, because she hoped,
or dreaded--anyhow, expected--that one of the dozen or so unattached men
would spring up and say, constrainedly, "Miss Grayle, I believe?--er--how
do you do?" If only he might not be fat or very bald-headed!

He had not described himself at all. Everything was to depend on her gray
dress and the white rose. That seemed, now one came face to face with the
fear, rather ominous.

But no one sprang up. No one wanted to know if she were Miss Grayle; and
this, although she was ten minutes late.

Her instructions as to what to do at the Savoy were clear. If she were
not met in the foyer, she was to go into the restaurant and ask for a
table reserved for Mr. N. Smith. There she was to sit and wait to be
joined by him. She had never contemplated having to carry out the latter
clause, however; and when she had loitered for a few seconds, the thought
rushed over her that here was a loop-hole through which to slip, if she
wanted a loop-hole.

One side of her did want it: the side she knew best and longest as
herself, Annesley Grayle, a timid girl brought up conventionally, and
taught that to rely on others older and wiser than she was the right way
for a well-born, sheltered woman to go through life. The other side, the
new, desperate side that Mrs. Ellsworth's "stuffiness" had developed, was
no