A foreign voice cackled from the automobile:  “Oh la la! il a du panache!”

But Charley now disclosed himself to be a true man of the world—­the financial world—­by picking the pieces out of the mud; and, while he wiped them and enclosed them in his handkerchief and with perfect dignity returned them to his pocket, he remarked simply, with a shrug:  “As you please.”  His accent also was ever so little foreign—­that New York downtown foreign, of the second generation, which stamps so, many of our bankers.

The female now leaned from her seat, and with the tone of setting the whole thing right, explained:  “We had no idea it was a lady.”

“Doubtless you’re not accustomed to their appearance,” said John to Charley.

I don’t know what Charley would have done about this; for while the completely foreign voice was delightedly whispering, “Toujours le panache!” a new, deep, and altogether different female voice exclaimed:—­

“Why, John, it’s you!”

So that was Hortense, then!  That rich and quiet utterance was hers, a schooled and studied management of speech.  I found myself surprised, and I knew directly why; that word of one of the old ladles, “I consider that she looks like a steel wasp,” had implanted in me some definite anticipations to which the voice certainly did not correspond.  How fervently I desired that she would lift her thick veil, while John, with hat in hand, was greeting her, and being presented to her companions!  Why she had not spoken to John sooner was of course a recondite question, and beyond my power to determine with merely the given situation to guide me.  Hadn’t she recognized him before?  Had her thick veil, and his position, and the general slight flurry of the misadventure, intercepted recognition until she heard his voice when he addressed Charley.  Or had she known her lover at once, and rapidly decided that the moment was an unpropitious one for a first meeting after absence, and that she would pass on to Kings Port unrevealed, but then had found this plan become impossible through the collision between Charley and John?  It was not until certain incidents of the days following brought Miss Rieppe’s nature a good deal further home to me, that a third interpretation of her delay in speaking to John dawned upon my mind; that I was also made aware how a woman’s understanding of the words “Steel wasp,” when applied by her to one of her own sex, may differ widely from a man’s understanding of them; and that Miss Rieppe, through her thick veil, saw from her seat in the automobile something which my own unencumbered vision had by no means detected.

But now, here on the bridge, even her outward appearance was as shrouded as her inward qualities—­save such as might be audible in that voice, as her skilful, well-placed speeches to one and the other of the company tided over and carried off into ease this uneasy moment.  All men, at such a voice, have pricked up their ears since the beginning; there was much woman in it; each slow, schooled syllable called its challenge to questing man.  But I got no chance to look in the eye that went with that voice; she took all the advantages which her veil gave her; and how well she used them I was to learn later.