He could not see much of her face, from his perch,
but she was tall and fashionably clad. There was a loose
covering of black lace thrown over her head, but once,
as she turned, he could see that her hair was red.
Even in this fleeting glimpse, the unusual tint attracted
his attention: there was a brilliancy as of fire in it.
Somehow it seemed to make a claim upon his memory.
He continued to stare down at the stranger with an indefinable
sense that he knew something about her.
Suddenly another figure appeared upon the balcony--and
in a flash he comprehended everything. These idiotic,
fighting gluttons of gulls had actually pointed out to him
the object of his search. It was Lady Cressage who stood
in the doorway, there just below him--and her companion,
the red-haired lady who laughed hotel-rules to scorn,
was the American heiress who had crossed the ocean
in his ship, and whom he had met later on at Hadlow.
What was her name--Martin? No--Madden. He confronted the swift
impression that there was something odd about these two
women being together. At Hadlow he had imagined that they
did not like each other. Then he reflected as swiftly
that women probably had their own rules about such matters.
He seemed to have heard, or read, perhaps, that females
liked and disliked each other with the most capricious
alternations and on the least tangible of grounds.
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