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.
Priscilla had disappeared from the boudoir. But the dove still kept
her desolate perch on the peak of the attic window.