Читать книгу The Running Fight онлайн

23 страница из 74

Leslie took the picture from his hand and looked long and intently at it. To her surprise she saw that this was no ordinary face. The girl was evidently petite, with an expression on her face that seemed to ask for the world's fond protection as well as its admiration; a girl with her soul in her eyes, at any rate, so it seemed to Leslie.

"Oh, she's pretty!" she exclaimed. "But someone must always take care of her—always, always."

"You've said it, though I never even thought it!" he cried. "And you, a stranger, see it—that appeal for protection, that wistfulness, that——" Abruptly he stopped and glanced quickly toward the heavy hangings on the wall toward the right—a strange, startled glance it was.

Leslie followed the direction of his gaze wonderingly.

"I had a feeling, somehow," he said, fastening his steely grey eyes suspiciously on her, "that we were not alone."

And indeed Ilingsworth would have been all the more startled had he known that his fancy embodied the truth. For behind the dull red curtains breathed a mortal who had heard, had seen, everything.