And in the meantime, the deep voice outside the door was saying:  “Yes,
Nick.  May I come in?”

She gave a little ecstatic cry, but while it was still tingling on her lips, she was winding her hair into shape with lightning speed; had dipped the tips of her fingers in cold water and rubbed her eyes awake and brilliant, and with one circular rub had brought the color into her cheeks.

Scarcely ten seconds from the time when she first answered the knock,
Nelly was opening the door and peeping out into the hall.

The rest was done by the man without; he cast the door open with the pressure of his foot, caught the girl in his arms, and kissed her; and while he closed the door the girl slipped back and stood with one hand pressed against her face, and her face held that delightful expression halfway between laughter and embarrassment.  As for Lord Nick, he did not even smile.  He was not, in fact, a man who was prone to gentle expressions, but having been framed by nature for a strong dominance over all around him, his habitual expression was a proud self-containment.  It would have been insolence in another man; in Lord Nick it was rather leonine.

He was fully as tall as Jack Landis, but he carried his height easily, and was so perfectly proportioned that unless he was seen beside another man he did not look large.  The breadth of his shoulders was concealed by the depth of his chest; and the girth of his throat was made to appear quite normal by the lordly size of the head it supported.  To crown and set off his magnificent body there was a handsome face; and he had the combination of active eyes and red hair, which was noticeable in Donnegan, too.  In fact, there was a certain resemblance between the two men; in the set of the jaw for instance, in the gleam of the eye, and above all in an indescribable ardor of spirit, which exuded from them both.  Except, of course, that in Donnegan, one was conscious of all spirit and very little body, but in Lord Nick hand and eye were terribly mated.  Looking upon so splendid a figure, it was no wonder that the mountain desert had forgiven the crimes of Lord Nick because of the careless insolence with which he treated the law.  It requires an exceptional man to make a legal life attractive and respected; it takes a genius to make law-breaking glorious.

No wonder that Nelly Lebrun stood with her hand against her cheek, looking him over, smiling happily at him, and questioning him about his immediate past all in the same glance.  He waved her back to her couch, and she hesitated.  Then, as though she remembered that she now had to do with Lord Nick in person, she obediently curled up on the lounge, and waited expectantly.

“I hear you’ve been raising the devil,” said this singularly frank admirer.

The girl merely looked at him.

“Well?” he insisted.

“I haven’t done a thing,” protested Nelly rather childishly.