as Mrs. Conway had read the headlines.
The sitting room was deserted and the newspapers strewn about the table--a condition which should have suggested to Pearl that the room had been too recently occupied for the servants to have had time to come in and put it to rights. But she didn't think of that. She took up the first sheet that came to hand and saw a long illustrated article about the turquoise mines of Mexico, into which she plunged with a thrill of interest. She was standing with both arms outstretched, her gold-colored head a little bent.
Suddenly she felt two hard, masculine arms go round her, a kiss on the back of her neck, another on her reluctantly turned cheek. It happened in a second. As she struggled ungracefully, angrily, she saw over Williams' shoulder the figure of Durland rising from the hammock on the piazza.
If Wood had received that batch of Sunday letters at the mine he would have torn open Pearl's first--as likely to promise the most amusement.
But he got them at his hotel in Mexico City, and conscious of great leisure--for he was staying there a week or so on his way home while he dickered over taxes with a governmental department--he adopted a different method. He ranged them before him inversely in the order of interest. They came--first Durland's. He wondered what Durland wanted, for his nephew was never moved to the momentous effort of writing except under the stress of great financial necessity; second, Edna's;