CHAPTER 9"Good morning, Mr. Wilton." The speaker came to a direct standstill.
Basil Wilton hesitated quite an appreciable time before answering. For a minute he did not recognize the fashionably dressed young woman who had stopped him.
"Good morning, Miss Houlton," he said at last. "Really, I hardly knew you!"
"Rather gauche, isn't it, to tell me that?" the girl rejoined, but the bewildering smile she bestowed upon him undid the effect of her words. "I suppose you would like to say that 'fine feathers make fine birds,'" she went on.
"I hope I'm not so gauche as that," laughed Wilton, though the words rather aptly expressed his thoughts.
The contrast between the quiet little secretary and the elaborately got-up girl before him was even more marked than it had been at the inquest. For M
