CHAPTER V

THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE

The flush was still on Charley's face when the door opened slowly, and a
lady dressed in heliotrope silk entered, and came forward. Without a
word Charley rose, and, taking a step towards her, offered a chair; at
the same time noticing her heightened colour, and a certain rigid
carriage not in keeping with her lithe and graceful figure. There was no
mistaking the quiver of her upper lip--a short lip which did not hide a
wonderfully pretty set of teeth.

With a wave of the hand she declined the seat. Glancing at the books and
papers lying on the table, she flashed an inquiry at his flushed face,
and, misreading the cause, with slow, quiet point, in which bitterness or
contempt showed, she said meaningly:

"What a slave you are!"

"Behold the white man work!" he said good-naturedly, the flush passing
slowly from his face. With apparent negligence he pushed the letter and
the books and papers a little to one side, but really to place them
beyond the range of her angry eyes. She shrugged her shoulders at his
action.

"For 'the fatherless children and widows, and all that are desolate and
oppressed?'" she said, not concealing her malice, for at the wedding she
had just left all her married life had rushed before her in a swift
panorama, and the man in scarlet had fixed the shooting pictures in her