Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/251

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ENTER, A CIGARETTE
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rette from his lips and held it by his side for a minute. He and Kitty were busy with each other's company for the time, ignoring Jane. She burned with curiosity and with excitement mounting like the fire of wine to her brain. Would he never put that cigarette to his lips again, so she could follow the invisible pen! So fleeting, so evanescent that worm track on the paper, wrought by fire and by fire to be consumed. A mystery vanishing even as it was aborning! After ages, the unconscious Kimball set the cigarette again in his lips.


"—informer has denounced you and Louisa-t-
—play your game and he will be slow to——"


Again the cigarette came away in Kimball's hand. Acting on impulse she did not stop to question, Jane struck it from the young man's outstretched hand and set her foot on it as it fell in the dust.

"Oh, I'm clumsy!" She fell lightly against Kimball's shoulder and caught herself in well-simulated confusion. "Standing tiptoe to see what that man on a horse is going to do—lost