THE DERSINGHAMS AT HOME 147

forgot. This girl of mine wrote to say she was coming
from Paris to-day, but of course she didn't say how and
when and what and where, just left it all vague, y'know,
as usual, all up in the air. When it got to be half-past
seven and she hadn't turned up, I began to wonder.
What was I to do?" And as he asked this he stared
fiercely at Mr. Pearson, who happened to catch his eye.

"Quite so, Mr. Golspie," Mr. Pearson, startled, jerked
out.

"Well, I'll tell you what I did do. I left a message
with the caretaker of the flats, so that if she did come
she'd know where I was—"

"All right, my dear," his daughter interrupted, "you
needn't go on and on. Nobody wants to hear all about
it. I got the message. I wasn't going to spend hours all
alone in that poisonous flat. So I took a taxi and came
here. And that's that." And having thus dismissed the
subject, Miss Golspie, who seemed an astonishingly cool
and composed young lady, smiled at Mrs, Dersingham,
who did not return the smile. Miss Golspie then pro-
duced a small mirror from her handbag and carefully
examined her features in it.

And even Mrs. Dersingham would have been com-
pelled to admit that they were very charming features.
Lena Golspie still remained, after closer inspection, a
very pretty girl. She had reddish-gold hair, large brown
eyes, an impudent little nose, and a luscious mouth.
She looked rather smaller than she actually was. Her
neck, -shoulders, and arms were slenderly, even too deli-
cately, fashioned, but she had strong, well-shaped legs;
and was indeed the complete attractive young female
animal. Only in a certain slant of the eye and some
movements of the mouth did she resemble her father,