And the
bird was silly enough to encourage us.
"She was a charming girl," I said, "seven-and-twenty years ago, when
St. Leonard fell in love with her. She had those dark, dreamy eyes
so suggestive of veiled mysteries; and her lips must have looked
bewitching when they pouted. I expect they often did. They do so
still; but the pout of a woman of forty-six no longer fascinates. To
a pretty girl of nineteen a spice of temper, an illogical
unreasonableness, are added attractions: the scratch of a blue-eyed
kitten only tempts us to tease her the more. Young Hubert St.
Leonard--he had curly brown hair, with a pretty trick of blushing,
and was going to conquer the world--found her fretfulness, her very
selfishness adorable: and told her so, kneeling before her, gazing
into her bewildering eyes--only he called it her waywardness, her
imperiousness; begged her for his sake to be more capricious. Told
her how beautiful she looked when displeased. So, no doubt, she did-
-at nineteen."
"He didn't tell you all that, did he?" demanded Robina.
"Not a word," I reassured her, "except that she was acknowledged by
all authorities to have been the most beautiful girl in Tunbridge
Wells, and that her father had been ruined by a rascally solicitor.
No, I was merely, to use the phrase of the French police courts,
'reconstructing the crime.'"
"It may be all wrong," grumbled Robina.
"It may be," I agreed.
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