"I give you my word!"
Mary met the gaze of the Inspector fully. In the same instant,
she flashed on him a smile that was dazzling, the smile of a
woman triumphant in her mastery of the situation. Her face was
radiant, luminous with honest mirth. There was something simple
and genuine in her beauty that thrilled the man before her, the
man trying so vindictively to trap her to her own undoing. For
all his grossness, Burke was of shrewd perceptions, and
somewhere, half-submerged under the sordid nature of his calling,
was a love of things esthetic, a responsiveness to the appeals of
beauty. Now, as his glance searched the face of the girl who was
bubbling with mirth, he experienced an odd warming of his heart
under the spell of her loveliness--a loveliness wholly feminine,
pervasive, wholesome. But, too, his soul shook in a premonition
of catastrophe, for there was mischief in the beaming eyes of
softest violet. There was a demon of mockery playing in the
curves of the scarlet lips, as she smiled so winsomely.
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