This man, as I had soon reason to know, was endowed with a cat-like
circumspection; and though precisely the most unspiritual quality in
the world, it was almost as effective as spiritual insight in making
him acquainted with whatever it suited him to discover. He now
proved it, considerably to my discomfiture, by detecting and
recognizing me, at my post of observation. Perhaps I ought to have
blushed at being caught in such an evident scrutiny of Professor
Westervelt and his affairs. Perhaps I did blush. Be that as it
might, I retained presence of mind enough not to make my position yet
more irksome by the poltroonery of drawing back.
Westervelt looked into the depths of the drawing-room, and beckoned.
Immediately afterwards Zenobia appeared at the window, with color
much heightened, and eyes which, as my conscience whispered me, were
shooting bright arrows, barbed with scorn, across the intervening
space, directed
full at my sensibilities as a gentleman. If the truth must be told,
far as her flight-shot was, those arrows hit the mark. She signified
her recognition of me by a gesture with her head and hand, comprising
at once a salutation and dismissal. The next moment she administered
one of those pitiless rebukes which a woman always has at hand, ready
for any offence (and which she so seldom spares on due occasion), by
letting down a white linen curtain between the festoons of the damask
ones. It fell like the drop-curtain of a theatre, in the interval
between the acts.
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