Page:Hilda Wade (1900).pdf/62

but . . . the innocence has all been put into it by the photographer.'

'You think so?'

'I know it. Look here at those lines just visible on the cheek. They disappear, nowhere, at impossible angles. And the corners of that mouth. They couldn't go so, with that nose and those puckers. The thing is not real. It has been atrociously edited. Part is nature's; part, the photographer's; part, even possibly paint and powder.'

'But the underlying face?'

'Is a minx's.'

I handed her the letter. 'This next?' I asked, fixing my eyes on her as she looked.

She read it through. For a minute or two she examined it. 'The letter is right enough,' she answered, after a second reading, 'though its guileless simplicity is perhaps, under the circumstances, just a leetle overdone; but the handwriting—the handwriting is duplicity itself: a cunning, serpentine hand: no openness or honesty in it. Depend upon it, that girl is playing a double game.'

'You believe, then, there is character in handwriting?'

'Undoubtedly; when we know the character, we can see it in the writing. The difficulty is, to see it and read it before we know it: and I have practised a little at that. There is character in all we do, of course—our walk, our cough, the very wave of our hands: the only secret is, not all of us have always skill to see it. Here, however, I feel pretty sure. The curls of the g's and the tails of the y's—how full they are of wile, of low, underhand trickery!'

I looked at them as she pointed. 'That is true!' I exclaimed. 'I see it when you show it. Lines meant for effect. No straightness or directness in them!'

Hilda reflected a moment. 'Poor Daphne,' she mur-