All the same it pained Letty that great ladies should be so beautiful. Not that this one was beautiful of face—she wasn't—only piquant—but the general effect was beautiful. It showed what money and the dressmaker could do. If she, Letty could have had a dress and a hat like this!—a blue or a green, it was difficult to say which—with these strips of jade and turquoise on a ground of the purplish-greenish-blue she remembered as that of the monkshood in the old farm garden in Canada—and the darlingest hat, with one long feather beginning as green and graduating through every impossible shade of green and blue till it ended in a monkshood tip....

No wonder the girl's blue eyes danced and quizzed and laughed. As a matter of fact, Letty commented, the eyes brought a little too much blue into the composition. It was her only criticism. As a whole it lacked contrast. If she herself had worn this costume—with her gold-stone eyes—and brown hair—and rich coloring, when she had any color—blue was always a favorite shade with her—when she could choose, which wasn't often—she remembered as a child on the farm how she used to plaster herself with the flowers of the blue succory—the dust-flower they called it down there because it seemed to thrive like the disinherited on the dust of the wayside—not but what the seal-brown was adorable....

The spectacle grew dazzling, difficult for Steptoe to keep up with. He and Letty were plainly objects of interest to these grand folk, because there were now four or five of them. They advanced, receded, came up and studied them, wheeled away, smiled sometimes at each other with the high self-assurance of beauty and position, pranced, pawed, curveted, were noble or coquettish as the inner self impelled, but always the embodiment of overweening pride. Among the "real gentry," as he called them, there had unfailingly been for him and his colleagues a courtesy which might have been called only a distinction in equality, whereas these high-steppers....

It was a relief to see the French madam bustling in again from the room at the back. Steptoe rose. He meant to express himself. Letty hoped he would. For people who brought money in their hands this treatment was too much. When Steptoe advanced to meet madam, she went with him. As her champion she must bear him out.

But madam forestalled them. "I 'ope that mademoiselle has seen something what she like. Me, I thought the brown costume—coeur de le marguerite jaune we call it ziz season——"

Letty was quick. She had heard of mannequins, the living models, though so remotely as to give her no visualized impression. Suddenly knowing what they had been looking at she adapted herself before Steptoe could get his protest into words.

"I liked the seal-brown; but for me I thought the second one——"

Madame Simone nodded, sagely. "Why shouldn't mademoiselle 'ave both?"



Chapter XI

While this question was being put, and Steptoe was rising to what he saw as the real occasion, Rashleigh Allerton too was having a new experience. He couldn't understand it; he couldn't understand himself. Not that that was strange, since he had hardly ever understood himself at any time; but now he was, as he expressed it, "absolutely stumped."

He had put on the table the bottle on which the kilted Highlander was playing on the pipes; he had poured himself a glass. It was what he called a good stiff glass, meant, metaphorically, to kill or cure, and he hoped it would be to kill.

And that was all.

He had sat looking at it, or he had looked at it while walking about; but he had only looked at it. It was as far as he could go. Now that to go farther had become what he called a duty the perversity of his nerves was such that they refused. It was like him. He could always do the forbidden, the dare-devil, the crazily mad; but when it came to the reasonable and straightforward something in him balked. Here he was at what should have been the beginning of the end, and the demon which at another time would have driven him on was holding him back. Temptation had worked itself round the other way. It was temptation not to do, when saving grace lay in doing.

An hour or more had gone by when Mr. Radbury knocked at the door, timidly.

"Come in, Radbury," Allerton cried, in a gayety he didn't feel. "Have a drink."

Mr. Radbury looked at the bottle and the glass. He looked at his young employer, who with his hands in his pockets, was again standing by the window. It was the first time in all the years of his service, first with the father and then with the son, that this invitation had been given him.

"Thanks, Mr. Rash," he said, with a thick, shaky utterance. "Liquor and I are strangers. I wish I could feel——"

But the old man's trembling anxiety forced on Allerton the fact that the foolish game was up. "All right, Radbury. Was only joking. No harm done. Had only taken the thing out to—to look at it."

Before sitting down to read and sign the letters he put both glass and bottle back into the keeping of Queen Caroline Murat, saying to himself as he did so: "I must find some other way."

He was thrown back thus on Barbara's suggestion of a few hours earlier. He must get rid of the girl! He had scarcely as yet considered this proposal, though not because he deemed it unworthy of himself. Nothing could be unworthy of himself. A man who was so little of a man as he was entitled to do anything, however base, and feel no shame. It was simply that his mind hadn't worked round to looking at the thing as feasible. And yet it was; plainly it was. The law allowed for it, if one only took advantage of the law's allowances. It would be beastly, of course; and more beastly for him than the average of men; but because it was beastly it were better done at once, before the girl got used to luxurious surroundings.

But even this resolution, speedy as it was, came a little late. By evening Letty was already growing used to luxurious surroundings, and finding herself at home in them.

First, there were no longer any women in the house, and with the three men—Steptoe's friends being already installed—she found herself safe from the prying and criticizing feminine.

Secondly, some of the new clothes had already come home, and she was now wearing the tea-gown she had long dreamt of but had never aspired to possess. It was of a blue so dark as to be almost black, with a flame colored bar across the breast, harmonizing with her hair and eyes. Of her eyes she wasn't thinking; but her hair....

That, however, was another part of the day's fairy tale.

When the dresses had been bought and paid for madame presumed to Steptoe that mademoiselle was under some rich gentleman's protection. Taking words at their face value, as she, Letty, did herself, Steptoe admitted that she was. Madam made it plain that she understood this honor, which often came to girls of the humblest classes, and the need there could be for supplementing wardrobes suddenly. After that it was confidence for confidence. Madame had seen that in the matter of lingerie mademoiselle "left to desire," and though Margot made no specialty in this line, they happened to have on an upper floor a consignment just arrived from Paris, and if monsieur would allow mademoiselle to come up and inspect it.... Then it was Madame Simone's coiffeur. At least it was the coiffeur whom Madame Simone recommended, who came to the house, after Letty had donned a peignoir from the consignment just arrived from Paris.... And now, at half past nine in the evening, it was the memory of a day of mingled agony and enchantment.

Having looked her over as he summoned her to dinner, Steptoe had approved of her. He had approved of her with an inner emphasis stronger than he expressed. Letty didn't know how she knew this; but she knew. She knew that her transformation was a surprise to him. She knew that though he had hoped much from her she was giving him more than he had hoped. Nothing that he said told her this, but something in his manner—in his yearning as he passed her the various dishes and tactfully showed her how to help herself, in the tenderness with which he repeated correctly her little slips in words—something in this betrayed it.

She knew it, too, when after dinner he begged her not to escape to the little back room, but to take her place in the drawing-room.

"Madam'll find that it'll pass the time for 'er. Maybe too Mr. Rashleigh'll come in. 'E does sometimes—early like. I've known 'im to come 'ome by 'alf past nine, and if 'is ma wasn't sittin' in the drorin' room 'e'd be quite put out. Lydies mostly wytes till their 'usbands comes in; and in cyse madam'd feel lonely I'll leave the door open to the back part of the 'ouse, and she'll 'ear me talkin' to the boys."

The October evening being chilly he lit a fire. Drawing up in front of it a small armchair, suited for a lady's use, he placed behind it a table with an electric lamp. Letty smiled up at him. He had never seen her smile before, and now that he did he made to himself another comment of approval.

"You're awful good to me."

He reflected as to how he could bring home to her the grammatical mistake.

"Madam finds me horfly good, does she? P'rhaps that's because madam don't know that 'er comin' to this 'ouse gratifies a tyste o' mine for which I ain't never 'ad no gratificytion."

As he put a footstool to her feet he caught the question she so easily transmitted by her eyes.

"P'raps madam can hunderstand that after doin' things all my life for people as is used to 'em I've 'ad a kind o' cryvin' to do 'em for them as 'aven't 'ad nothink, and who could enjoy them more. I told madam yesterday I was somethink of a anarchist, and that's 'ow I am—wantin' to give the poor a wee little bit of what the rich 'as to throw awye."

Later he brought her an old red book, open at a page on which she read, The Little Mermaid.

Her heart leaped. It was from this volume that Miss Pye had read to the Prince when he was a child. She let her eyes run along the opening words.

"Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the cornflower, and clear as the purest glass."

She liked this sentence. It took her into a blue world. It was curious, she thought, how much meaning there was in colors. If you looked through red glass the world was angry; if through yellow, it was lit with an extraordinary sun; if through blue, you had the sensation of universal happiness. She supposed that that was why blue flowers always made you feel that there was a want in life which ought to be supplied—and wasn't.

She remembered a woman who had a farm near them in Canada, who grew only blue flowers in her garden. The neighbors said she was crazy; but she, Letty, had liked that garden better than all the gardens she knew. She would go there and talk to that woman, and listen to what she had to say of Nature's peculiar love of blue. The sea and sky were loveliest when they were blue, and so were the birds. There were blue stones, the woman said, precious stones, and other stones that were little more than rocks, which said something to the heart when pearls and diamonds spoke only to the eyes. In the fields, orchards, and gardens, white flowers, yellow flowers, red flowers were common; but blue flowers were rare and retiring, as if they guarded a secret which men should come and search out.

To this there was only one exception. Letty would notice as she trudged back to her father's farm that along the August roadsides there was a blue flower—of a blue you would never see anywhere else, not even in the sky—which grew in the dust, and lived on dust, and out of the dust drew elements of beauty such as roses and lilies couldn't boast of. "That means," the crazy woman said, "that there's nothing so dry, or parched, or sterile, that God can't take it and fashion from it the most priceless treasures of loveliness, if we only had the eyes to see them."

Letty never forgot this, and during all the intervening years the dust flower, with its heavenly color, had been the wild growing thing she loved best. It spoke to her. It not only responded to the ache she felt within herself, but gave a promise of assuagement. She had never expected the fulfilment of that promise, but was it possible that now it was going to be kept?

With her eyes on the fire she saw the color of the dust flower close to the flaming wood. It was the closest of all the colors, the one the burning heart kept nearest to itself. It seemed to be, as the crazy woman said, dear to Nature itself, its own beloved secret, the secret which, even when written in the dust of the wayside, or in the fire on the hearth, hardly anyone read or found out.

And as she was dreaming of this and of her Prince, Rashleigh was walking up the avenue, saying to himself that he must make an end of it. He was walking home because, having dined at the Club, he found himself too restless to stay there. Walking relieved his nerves, and enabled him to think. He must have the thing over and done with. She would go decently, of course, since, as he had promised her, she would have plenty of money to go with—plenty of money for the rest of her life—and that was the sole consideration. She would doubtless be as glad to escape as he to have her disappear. After that, so his lawyer had assured him in the afternoon, the legal steps would be relatively easy.

Letting himself in with his latchkey he was surprised to see a light in the drawing-room. It had not been lighted up at night, as far as he could remember, since the days when his mother was accustomed to sit there. If he came home early he had always used the library, which was on the other side of the house and at the back.

He went into the front drawing-room, which was empty; but a fire burnt in the back one, and before it someone was seated. It was not the girl he had found in the park. It was a lady whom he didn't recognize, but clearly a lady. She was reading a book, and had evidently not heard his entrance or his step.

With the shadows of the front drawing-room behind him he stood between the portieres, and looked. He had looked for some seconds before the lady raised her eyes. She raised them with a start. Slowly there stole into her cheek the dark red of confusion. She dropped the book. She rose.

It wasn't till she rose that he knew her. It wasn't till he knew her that he was seized by an astonishment which almost made him laugh. It wasn't till he almost laughed that he went forward with the words, which insensibly bridged some of the gulf between them:

"Oh! So this is—you!"



Chapter XII

Letty had not heard Allerton's entrance or approach because for the first time in her life she was lost in the magic of Hans Andersen.

"The sun had just gone down as the little mermaid lifted her head above the water. The clouds were brilliant in purple and gold, and through the pale, rose-tinged air the evening star shone clear and bright. The air was warm and mild; the sea at rest. A great ship with three masts lay close by, only one sail unfurled, for there was no breath of air, and the sailors sat aloft in the rigging or leaned lazily over the bulwarks. Music and singing filled the air, and as the sky darkened hundreds of Chinese lanterns were lighted. It seemed as if the flags of every nation were hung out. The little mermaid swam up to the cabin window, and every time she rose upon the waves she could see through the clear glass that the room was full of brilliantly dressed people. Handsomest of all was the young prince with the great dark eyes."

Allerton's eyes were dark, and though she did not consider him precisely young, the analogy between him and the hero of the tale was sufficient to take her eyes from the book and to set her to dreaming.

"He could not be more than sixteen years old, and this was his birthday. All this gaiety was in honor of him; the sailors danced upon the deck; and when the young prince came out a myriad of rockets flew high in the air, with a glitter like the brightest noontide, and the little mermaid was so frightened that she dived deep down under the water. She soon rose up again, however, and it seemed as if all the stars of heaven were falling round her in golden showers. Never had she seen such fireworks; great, glittering suns wheeled by her, fiery fishes darted through the blue air, and all was reflected back from the quiet sea. The ship was lighted up so that one could see the smallest rope. How handsome the young prince looked! He shook hands with everybody, and smiled, as the music rang out into the glorious night. It grew late, but the little mermaid could not turn her eyes away from the ship and the handsome prince."

Once more Letty's thought wandered from the page. She too would have watched her handsome prince, no matter what the temptation to look elsewhere.

"The colored lanterns were put out, no rocket rose in the air, no cannon boomed from the portholes; but deep below there was a surging and a murmuring. The mermaid sat still, cradled by the waves, so that she could look in at the cabin window. But now the ship began to make more way. One sail after another was unfurled; the waves rose higher; clouds gathered in the sky; and there was a distant flash of lightning. The storm came nearer. All the sails were taken in, and the ship rocked giddily, as she flew over the foaming billows; the waves rose mountain-high, as if they would swallow up the very masts, but the good ship dived like a swan into the deep black trough, and rose bravely to the foaming crest. The little mermaid thought it was a merry journey, but the sailors were of a different opinion. The ship strained and creaked; the timbers shivered as the thunder strokes of the waves fell fast; heavy seas swept the decks; the mainmast snapped like a reed; and the ship lurched heavily, while the water rushed into the hold. Then the young princess began to understand the danger, and she herself was often threatened by the falling masts, yards, and spars. One moment it was so dark that she could see nothing, but when the lightning flamed out the ship was as bright as day. She sought for the young prince, and saw him sinking down through the water as the ship parted. The sight pleased her, for she knew he must sink down to her home. But suddenly she remembered that men cannot live in the water, and that he would only reach her father's palace a lifeless corpse. No; he must not die! She swam to and fro among the drifting spars, forgetting that they might crush her with their weight; she dived and rose again, and reached the prince just when he felt that he could swim no longer in the stormy sea. His arms were beginning to fail him, his beautiful eyes were closed; in another moment he must have sunk, had not the little mermaid come to his aid. She kept his head above water, and let the waves carry them whither they would."

Letty didn't want Allerton's life to be in danger, but she would have loved saving it. She fell to pondering possible conditions in which she could perform this feat, while he ran no risk whatever.

"The next day the storm was over; not a spar of the ship was left in sight. The sun rose red and glowing upon the waves, and seemed to pour down new life upon the prince, though his eyes remained closed. The little mermaid kissed his fair white forehead and stroked back his wet hair. He was like the marble statue in her little garden, she thought. She kissed him again, and prayed that he might live."

Letty saw herself seated somewhere in a mead, Allerton lying unconscious with his head in her lap, though the circumstances that brought them so together remained vague.

"Suddenly the dry land came in sight before her, high blue mountains on whose peaks the snow lay white, as if a flock of swans had settled there. On the coast below were lovely green woods, and close on shore a building of some kind, the mermaid didn't know whether it was church or cloister. Citrons and orange trees grew in the garden, and before the porch were stately palm trees. The sea ran in here and formed a quiet bay, unruffled, but very deep. The little mermaid swam with the prince to the white sandy shore, laid him on the warm sand, taking care that his head was left where the sun shone warmest. Bells began to chime and ring through all parts of the building, and several young girls entered the garden. The little mermaid swam farther out, behind a tiny cliff that rose above the waves. She showered sea-foam on her hair that no one might see its golden glory, and then waited patiently to see if anyone would come to the aid of the young prince."

To Letty that was the heart-breaking part of the story, the leaving the beloved one to others. It was what she and the little mermaid had in common, unless she too could get rid of her fish's tail at the cost of walking on blades. But for the little mermaid there the necessity was, as she, Letty read on.

"Before long a young girl came by; she gave a start of terror and ran back to call for assistance. Several people came to her aid, and after a while the little mermaid saw the prince recover his consciousness, and smile upon the group around him. But he had no smile for her; he did not even know that she had saved him. Her heart sank, and when she had seen him carried into the large building, she dived sorrowfully down to her father's palace."

Lifting her eyes to meditate on this situation Letty saw Allerton standing between the portieres. Her dream of being little mermaid to his prince went out like a pricked bubble. Though he neither smiled nor sneered she knew he was amused at her, with a bitterness in his amusement. In an instant she saw her transformation as it must appear to him. She had spent his money recklessly, and made herself look ridiculous. All the many kinds of shame she had ever known focused on her now, making her a glowing brand of humiliations. She stood helpless. Hans Andersen dropped to the floor with a soft thud. Nevertheless, it was she who spoke first.

"I suppose you—you think it funny to see me rigged up like this?"

He took time to pick up the book she had dropped and hand it back to her. "Won't you sit down again?"

While she seated herself and he followed her example she continued to stammer on. "I—I thought I ought to—to look proper for the house as long as I was in it."

Her phrasing gave him an opening. "You're quite right. I should like you to get whatever would help you in—in your profession before you—before you leave us."

Quick to seize the implications here she took them with the submission of those whose lots have always depended on other people's wills.

"I'll go whenever you want me to."

Relieved as he was by this willingness he was anxious not to seem brutal. "I'd—I'd rather you consulted your own wishes about that."

She put on a show of nonchalance. "Oh, I don't care. It'll be just—just as you say when."

He would have liked to say when at that instant, but a pretense at courtesy had to be maintained. "There's no hurry—for a day or two."

"You said a week or two yesterday."

"Oh, did I? Well, then, we'll say a week or two now."

"Oh, not for me," she hastened to assure him. "I'd just as soon go to-night."

"Have you hated it as much as that?"

"I've hated some of it."

"Ah, well! You needn't be bothered with it long."

Her candor was of the kind which asks questions frankly. "Haven't you got any more use for me?"

"I'm afraid—" it was not easy to put it into the right words—"I'm afraid I was mistaken yesterday. I put you in—in a false position with no necessity for doing so."

It took her a few seconds to get the force of this. "Do you mean that you didn't need me to be—to be a shame and a disgrace to you at all?"

"Did I put it in that way?"

"Well, didn't you?"

The fact that she was now dressed as she was made it more embarrassing to him to be crude than it had been when addressing the homeless and shabby little "drab."

"I don't know what I said then. I was—I was upset."

"And you're upset very easy, ain't you?" She corrected herself quickly: "aren't you?"

"I suppose that's true. What of it?"

"Oh, nothing. I—I just happen to know a way you can get over that—if you want to."

He smiled. "I'm afraid my nervousness is too deeply seated—I may as well admit that I'm nervous—you saw it for yourself——"

"Oh, I saw you was—you were—sick up here—" she touched her forehead—"as soon as you begun to talk to me."

Grateful for this comprehension he tried to use it to his advantage. "So that you understand how I could go off the hooks——"

"Sure! My mother'd go off 'em the least little thing, till—till she done—till she did—the way I told her."

"Then some of these days I may ask you to—but just now perhaps we'd better talk about——"

"When I'm to get out."

Her bluntness of expression hurt him. "That's not the way I should have put it——"

"But it's the way you'd 'a' meant, isn't it?"

He was the more disconcerted because she said this gently, with the same longing in her face and eyes as in that of the little mermaid bending over the unconscious prince.

The unconscious prince of the moment merely said: "You mustn't think me more brutal than I am——"

"Oh, I don't think you're brutal. You're just a little dippy, ain't—aren't—you? But that's because you let yourself go. If when you feel it comin' on you'd just—but perhaps you'd rather be dippy. Would you?"

If he could have called these wide goldstone eyes with their tiny flames maternal it is the word he would have chosen. In spite of the difficulty of the minute he was conscious of a flicker of amusement.

"I don't know that I would, but——"

"After I'm gone shall we—shall we stay married?"

This being the real question he was glad she faced it with the directness which gave her a kind of charm. He admitted that. She had the charm of everything which is genuine of its kind. She made no pretense. Her expression, her voice, her lack of sophistication, all had the limpidity of water. He felt himself thanking God for it. "He alone knows what kind of hands I might have fallen into yesterday, crazy fool that I am." Of this child, crude as she was, he could make his own disposition.

So in answer to her question he told her he had seen his lawyer in the afternoon—he was a lawyer himself but he didn't practice—and the great man had explained to him that of all the processes known to American jurisprudence the retracing of such steps as they had taken on the previous day was one of the simplest. What the law had joined the law could put asunder, and was well disposed toward doing so. There being several courses which they could adopt, he put them before her one by one. She listened with the sort of attention which shows the mind of the listener to be fixed on the speaker, rather than on anything he says. Not being obliged to ask questions or to make answers she could again see him as the handsome, dark-eyed prince whom she would have loved to save from drowning or any other fate.

Of all he said she could attach a meaning to but one word: "desertion." Even in the technical marital sense she knew vaguely its significance. She thought of it with a tightening about the heart. Any desertion of him of which she would be capable would be like that of the little mermaid when she dived sorrowfully down to her father's palace, leaving him with those to whom he belonged. It was this thought which prompted a question flung in among his observations, though the link in the train of thought was barely traceable:

"Is she takin' you back—the girl you told me about yesterday?"

He looked puzzled. "Did I tell you about a girl yesterday?"

"Why, sure! You said she kicked you out——"

"Well, she hadn't. I—I didn't know I'd gone so far as to say——"

"Oh, you went a lot farther than that. You said you were goin' to the devil. Ain't you? I mean, aren't you?"

"I—I don't seem able to."

"You're the first fellow I've ever heard say that."

"I'm the first fellow I've ever heard say it myself. But I tried to-day—and I couldn't."

"What did you do?"

"I tried to get drunk."

She half rose, shrinking away from him. "Not—not you!"

"Yes. Why not? I've been drunk before—not often, but——"

"Don't tell me," she cried, hastily. "I don't want to know. It's too——"

"But I thought it was just the sort of thing you'd be——"

"I'd be used to. So it is. But that's the reason. You're—you're different. I can't bear to think of it—not with you."

"But I'm just like any other man."

"Oh, no, you're not."

He looked at her curiously. "How am I—how am I—different?"

"Oh, other men are just men, and you're a—a kind of prince."

"You wouldn't think so if you were to know me better."

"But I'm not goin' to know you better, and I'd rather think of you as I see you are." She dropped this theme to say: "So the other girl——"

"She didn't mean it at all."

"She'd be crazy if she did. But what made her let you think so?"

"She's—she's simply that sort; goes off the hooks too."

"Oh! So there'll be a pair of you."

"I'm afraid so."

"That'll be bloody murder, won't it? Momma was that way with Judson Flack. Hammer and tongs—the both of them—till I took her in hand, and——"

"And what happened then?"

"She calmed down and—and died."

"So that it didn't do her much good, did it?"

"It did her that much good that she died. Death was better than the way she was livin' with Judson Flack—and it wasn't always his fault. I do' wanta defend him, but momma got so that if he did have a quiet spell she'd go and stir him up. There's not much hope for two married people that lives like that, do you think?"

"But you say your mother, under your instruction, got over it."

"Yes, but it was too late. The more she got over it the more he'd lambaste her, and when her money was all gone——"

"But do you think all—all hot-tempered couples have to go it in that way?"

She made a little hunching movement of the shoulders. "It's mostly cat and dog anyhow. You and her—the other girl—won't be much worse than others."

"But you think we'll be worse, to some extent at least."

She ignored this to say, wistfully: "I suppose you're awful fond of her."

"I think I can say as much as that."

"And is she fond of you?"

"She says so."

"If she is I don't see how she could—" Her voice trailed away. Her eyes forsook his face to roam the shadows of the room. She added to herself rather than to him: "I couldn't ha' done it if it was me."

"Oh, if you were in love——"

The eyes wandered back from the shadows to rest on him again. They were sorrowful eyes, and unabashed. A child's would have had this unreproachful ache in them, or a dog's. Though he didn't know what it meant it disturbed him into leaving his sentence there.

It occurred to him then that they were forgetting the subject in hand. He had not expected to be able to converse with her, yet something like conversation had been taking place. It had come to him, too, that she had a mind, and now that he really looked at her he saw that the face was intelligent. Yesterday that face had been no more to him than a smudge, without character, and almost featureless, while to-day....

The train of his thought being twofold he could think along one line, and speak along another. "So if you go to see my lawyer he'll suggest different things that you could do——"

"I'd rather do whatever 'ud make it easiest for you."

"You're very kind, but I think I'd better not suggest. I'll leave that to him and you. He knows already that he's to supply you with whatever money you need for the present; and after everything is settled I'll see that you have——"

The damask flush which Steptoe had admired stole over a face flooded with alarm. She spoke as she rose, drawing a little back from him. "I do' want any money."

He looked up at her in protestation. "Oh, but you must take it."

She was still drawing back, as if he was threatening her with something that would hurt. "I do' want to."

"But it was part of our bargain. You don't understand that I couldn't——"

"I didn't make no such—" She checked herself. Her mother had rebuked her for this form of speech a thousand times. She said the sentence over as she felt he would have said it, as the people would have said it among whom she had lived as a child. The cadence of his speech, the half forgotten cadences of theirs, helped her ear and her intuitions. "I didn't make any such bargain," she managed to bring out, at last. "You said you'd give me money; but I never said I'd take it."

He too rose. He began to feel troubled. Perhaps she wouldn't be at his disposition after all. "But—but I couldn't stand it if you didn't let me——"

"And I couldn't stand it if I did."

"But that's not reasonable. It's part of the whole thing that I should look out for your future after what——"

"I know what you mean," she declared, tremblingly. "You think that because I'm—I'm beneath you that I ain't got—that I haven't got—no sense of what a girl should do and what she shouldn't do. But you're wrong. Do you suppose I didn't know all about how crazy it was when I went with you yesterday? Of course I did. I was as much to blame as you."

"Oh, no, you weren't. Apart from your being what you call beneath me—and I don't admit that you are—I'm a great deal older than you——"

"You're only older in years. In livin' I'm twice your age. Besides I'm all right here——" she touched her forehead again—"and I could see first thing that you was a fellow that needed to be took—to be taken—care of."

"Oh, you did!"

She strengthened her statement with an affirmative nod. "Yes, I did."

"Well, then, I've always paid the people who've taken care of me——"

"Oh, but you didn't ask me to take care of you, and I didn't take no care. You wanted me to be a disgrace to you, and I thought so little of myself that I said I'd go and be it. Now I've got to pay for that, not be paid for it."

Her head was up with what Steptoe considered to be mettle. Though the picture she presented was stamped on his mind as resembling the proud mien of the girl in Whistler's Yellow Buskin, he didn't think of that till later.

"There's one thing I must ask you to remember," he said, in a tone he tried to make firm, "that I couldn't possibly accept from you anything in the way of sacrifice."

Her eyes were wide and earnest. "But I never thought of makin' anything in the way of sacrifice."

"It would be sacrifice for you to help me get out of this scrape, and have nothing at all to the good."

"But I'd have lots to the good." She reflected. "I'd have rememberin'."

"What have you got to remember?"

With her child's lack of self-consciousness she looked him straight in the eyes. "You—for one thing."

"Me!" He had hardly the words for his amazement. "For heaven's sake, what can you have to remember about me that—that could give you any pleasure?"

"Oh, I didn't say it would give me any pleasure. I said I'd have it. It'd be mine—something no one couldn't take away from me."

"But if it doesn't do you any good——"

"It does me good if it makes me richer, don't it?"

"Richer to—to remember me?"

She nodded, with a little twisted smile, beginning to move toward the door. Over her shoulder she said: "And it isn't only you. There's—there's Steptoe."



Chapter XIII

Making her nod suffice for a good-night, Letty, with the red volume of Hans Andersen under her arm, passed out into the hall. It was not easy to carry herself with the necessary nonchalance, but she got strength by saying inwardly: "Here's where I begin to walk on blades." The knowledge that she was doing it, and that she was doing it toward an end, gave her a dignity of carriage which Allerton watched with sharpened observation.

Reaching the little back spare room she found the door open, and Steptoe sweeping up the hearth before a newly lighted fire. Beppo, whose basket had been established here, jumped from his shelter to paw up at her caressingly. With the hearth-brush in his hand Steptoe raised himself to say:

"Madam'll excuse me, but I thought as the evenin' was chilly——"

"He doesn't want me to stay."

She brought out the fact abruptly, lifelessly, because she couldn't keep it back. The calm she had been able to maintain downstairs was breaking up, with a quivering of the lip and two rolling tears.

Slowly and absently Steptoe dusted his left hand with the hearth-brush held in his right. "If madam's goin' to decide 'er life by what another person wants she ain't never goin' to get nowhere."

There were tears now in the voice. "Yes, but when it's—him."

"'Im or anybody else, we all 'ave to fight for what we means to myke of our own life. It's a poor gyme in which I don't plye my 'and for all I think it'll win."

"Do you mean that I should—act independent?"

"'Aven't madam an independent life?"

"Havin' an independent life don't make it easier to stay where you're not wanted."

"Oh, if madam's lookin' first for what's easy——"

"I'm not. I'm lookin' first for what he'll like."

Hanging the hearth-brush in its place he took the tongs to adjust a smoking log. "I've been lookin' for what 'e'd like ever since 'e was born; and now I see that gettin' so much of what 'e liked 'asn't been good for 'im. If madam'd strike out on 'er own line, whether 'e liked it or not, and keep at it till 'e 'ad to like it——"

"Oh, but when it's—" she sought for the right word—"when it's so humiliatin'——"

"Humiliatin' things is not so 'ard to bear, once you've myde up your mind as they're to be borne." He put up the tongs, to busy himself with the poker. "Madam'll find that humiliation is a good deal like that there quinine; bitter to the tyste, but strengthenin'. I've swallered lots of it; and look at me to-dye."

"I know as well as he does that it's all been a crazy mistake——"

"I was readin' the other day—I'm fond of a good book, I am—occupies the mind like—but I was readin' about a circus man in South Africa, what 'e myde a mistyke and took the wrong tryle—and just when 'e was a-givin' 'imself up for lost among the tigers and the colored savages 'e found 'e'd tumbled on a mine of diamonds. Big 'ouse in Park Lyne in London now, and 'is daughter married to a Lord."

"Oh, I've tumbled into the mine of diamonds all right. The question is——"

"If madam really tumbled, or was led by the 'and of Providence."

She laughed, ruefully. "If that was it the hand of Providence 'd have to have some pretty funny ways."

"I've often 'eard as the wyes of Providence was strynge; but I ain't so often 'eard as Providence 'ad got to myke 'em strynge to keep pyce with the wyes of men. Now if the 'and of Providence 'ad picked out madam for Mr. Rash, it'd 'ave to do somethink out of the common, as you might sye, to bring together them as man had put so far apart." He looked round the room with the eye of a head-waiter inspecting a table in a restaurant. "Madam 'as everythink? Well, if there's anythink else she's only got to ring."

Bowing himself out he went down the stairs to attend to those duties of the evening which followed the return of the master of the house. In the library and dining-room he saw to the window fastenings, and put out the one light left burning in each room. In the hall he locked the door with the complicated locks which had helped to guarantee the late Mrs. Allerton against burglars. There was not only a bolt, a chain, and an ordinary lock, but there was an ingenious double lock which turned the wrong way when you thought you were turning it the right, and could otherwise baffle the unskilful. Occupied with this task he could peep over his shoulder, through the unlighted front drawing-room, and see his adored one standing on the hearthrug, his hands clasped behind him, and his head bent, in an attitude of meditation.

Steptoe, having much to say to him, felt the nervousness of a prime minister going into the presence of a sovereign who might or might not approve his acts. It was at once the weakness and the strength of his position that his rule was based on an unwritten constitution. Being unwritten it allowed of a borderland where powers were undefined. Powers being undefined his scope was the more easily enlarged, though now and then he found that the sovereign rebelled against the mayor of the palace and had to be allowed his way.

But the sovereign was nursing no seeds of the kind of discontent which Steptoe was afraid of. As a matter of fact he was thinking of the way in which Letty had left the room. The perspective, the tea-gown, the effectively dressed hair, enabled him to perceive the combination of results which Madame Simone had called de l'elegance naturelle. She had that; he could see it as he hadn't seen it hitherto. It must have given what value there was to her poor little roles in motion pictures. Now that his eye had caught it, it surprised, and to some degree disturbed, him. It was more than the show-girl's inane prettiness, or the comely wax-work face of the girl on the cover of a magazine. With due allowance for her Anglo-Saxonism and honesty, she was the type of woman to whom "things happen." Things would happen to her, Allerton surmised, beyond anything she could experience in his cumbrous and antiquated house. This queer episode would drop behind her as an episode and no more, and in the multitude of future incidents she would almost forget that she had known him. He hoped to God that it would be so, and yet....

He was noting too that she hadn't taxed him, in the way of calling on his small supply of nervous energy. Rather she had spared it, and he felt himself rested. After a talk with Barbara he was always spent. Her emotional furies demanded so much of him that they used him up. This girl, on the contrary, was soothing. He didn't know how she was soothing; but she was. He couldn't remember when he had talked to a woman with so little thought of what he was to say and how he was to say it, and heaven only knew that the things to be said between them were nerve-racking enough. But they had come out of their own accord, those nerve-racking things, probably, he reasoned, because she was a girl of inferior class with whom he didn't have to be particular.

She was quick, too, to catch the difference between his speech and her own. She was quick—and pathetic. Her self-correction amused him, with a strain of pity in his amusement. If a girl like that had only had a chance.... And just then Steptoe broke in on his musing by entering the room.

The first subject to be aired was that of the changes in the household staff, and Steptoe raised it diplomatically. Mrs. Courage and Jane had taken offense at the young lydy's presence, and packed themselves off in dishonorable haste. Had it not been that two men friends of his own were ready to come at an hour's notice the house would have been servantless till he had procured strangers. No condemnation could be too severe for Mrs. Courage and Jane, for not content with leaving the house in dudgeon they had insulted the young lydy before they went.

"Sooner or lyter they would 'a' went any'ow. For this long time back they've been too big for their boots, as you might sye. If Mr. Rash 'ad married the other young lydy she wouldn't 'a' stood 'em a week. It don't do to keep servants too long, not when they've got no more than a menial mind, which Jynie and Mrs. Courage 'aven't. The minute they 'eard that this young lydy was in the 'ouse.... And beautiful the wye she took it, Mr. Rash. I never see nothink finer on the styge nor in the movin' pictures. Like a young queen she was, a-tellin' 'em that she 'adn't come to this 'ouse to turn out of it them as 'ad 'ad it as their 'ome, like, and that she'd put it up to them. If they went she'd stye; but if they styed she'd go——"

"She's going anyhow."

Steptoe moved away to feel the fastenings of the back windows. "That'll be a relief to us, sir, won't it?" he said, without turning his head.

"It'll make things easier—certainly."

"I was just 'opin' that it mightn't be—well, not too soon."

"What do you mean by too soon?"

"Well, sir, I've been thinkin' it over through the dye, just as you told me to do this mornin,' and I figger out—" on a table near him he began to arrange the disordered books and magazines—"I figger out that if she was to go it'd better be in a wye agreeable to all concerned. It wouldn't do, I syes to myself, for Mr. Rash to bring a young woman into this 'ouse and 'ave 'er go awye feelin' anythink but glad she'd come."

"That'll be some job."

"It'll be some job, sir; but it'll be worth it. It ain't only on the young lydy's account; it'll be on Mr. Rash's."

"On Mr. Rash's—how?"

The magazines lapping over each other in two long lines, he straightened them with little pats. "What I suppose you mean to do, sir, is to get out o' this matrimony and enter into the other as you thought as you wasn't goin' to enter into."

"Well?"

"And when you'd entered into the other you wouldn't want it on your mind—on your conscience, as you might sye—that there was a young lydy in the world as you'd done a kind o' wrong to."

Allerton took three strides across the corner of the room, and three strides back to the fireplace again. "How am I going to escape that? She says she won't let me give her any money."

"Oh, money!" Steptoe brushed money aside as if it had no value. "She wouldn't of course. Not 'er sort."

"But what is 'er sort. She seemed one thing yesterday, and to-day she's another."

"That's somethink like what I mean. That young lydy 'as growed more in twenty-four hours than lots'd grow in twenty-four years." He considered how best to express himself further. "Did Mr. Rash ever notice that it isn't bein' born of a certain kind o' family as'll myke a man a gentleman? Of course 'e did. But did 'e ever notice that a man'll often not be born of a certain kind o' family, and yet be a gentleman all the syme?"

"I know what you're driving at; but it depends on what you mean by a gentleman."

"And I couldn't 'ardly sye—not no more than I could tell you what the smell of a flower was, not even while you was a-smellin' of it. You know a gentleman's a gentleman, and you may think it's this or that what mykes 'im so, but there ain't no wye to put it into words. Now you, Mr. Rash, anybody'd know you was a gentleman what merely looked at you through a telescope; but you couldn't explyne it, not if you was took all to pieces like the works of a clock. It ain't nothink you do and nothink you sye, because if we was to go by that——"

"Good Lord, stop! We're not talking about me."

"No, Mr. Rash. We're talkin' about the queer thing it is what mykes a gentleman, and I sye that I can't sye. But I know. Now, tyke Eugene. 'E's just a chauffeur. But no one couldn't be ten minutes with Eugene and not know 'e's a gentleman through and through. Obligin'—good-mannered—modest—polite to the very cat 'e is—and always with that nice smile—wouldn't you sye as Eugene was a gentleman, if anybody was to arsk you, Mr. Rash?"

"If they asked me from that point of view—yes—probably. But what has that to do with it?"

"It 'as this to do with it that when you arsk me what sort that young lydy is I 'ave to reply as she's not the sort to accept money from strynge gentlemen, because it ain't what she's after."

"Then what on earth is she after? Whatever it is she can have it, if I can only find out what it is."

Steptoe answered this in his own way. "It's very 'ard for the poor to see so much that's good and beautiful in the world, and know that they can't 'ave none of it. I felt that myself before I worked up to where I am now. 'Ere in New York a poor boy or a poor girl can't go out into the street without seein' the things they're cryvin' for in their insides flaunted at 'em like—shook in their fyces—while the law and the police and the church and everythink what mykes our life says to 'em, 'There's none o' this for you.'"

"Well, money would buy it, wouldn't it?"

"Money'd buy it if money knew what to buy. But it don't. Mr. Rash must 'ave noticed that there's nothink 'elplesser than the people with money what don't know 'ow to spend it. I used to be that wye myself when I'd 'ave a little cash. I wouldn't know what to blow myself to what wouldn't be like them vulgar new-rich. But the new-rich is vulgar only because our life 'as put the 'orse before the cart with 'em, as you might sye, in givin' them the money before showin' 'em what to do with it."

Having straightened the lines of magazines to the last fraction of an inch he found a further excuse for lingering by moving back into their accustomed places the chairs which had been disarranged.

"You 'ave to get the syme kind of 'ang of things as you and me've got, Mr. Rash, to know what it is you want, and 'ow to spend your money wise like. Pleasure isn't just in 'avin' things; it's in knowin' what's good to 'ave and what ain't. Now this young lydy'd be like a child with a dime sent into a ten-cent store to buy whatever 'e'd like. There's so many things, and all the syme price, that 'e's kind of confused like. First 'e thinks it'll be one thing, and then 'e thinks it'll be another, and 'e ends by tykin' the wrong thing, because 'e didn't 'ave nothink to tell 'im 'ow to choose. Mr. Rash wouldn't want a young lydy to whom 'e's indebted, as you might sye, to be like that, now would 'e?"

"It doesn't seem to me that I've got anything to do with it. If I offer her the money, and can get her to take it——"

"That's where she strikes me as wiser than Mr. Rash, for all she don't know but so little. That much she knows by hinstinck."

"Then what am I going to do?"

"That'd be for Mr. Rash to sye. If it was me——"

The necessity for getting an armchair exactly beneath a portrait seemed to cut this sentence short.

"Well, if it was you—what then?"

"Before I'd give 'er money I'd teach 'er the 'ang of our kind o' life, like. That's what she's aichin' and cryvin' for. A born lydy she is, and 'ankerin' after a lydy's wyes, and with no one to learn 'em to 'er——"

"But, good heavens, I can't do that."

"No, Mr. Rash, but I could, if you was to leave 'er 'ere for a bit. I could learn 'er to be a lydy in the course of a few weeks, and 'er so quick to pick up. Then if you was to settle a little hincome on 'er she wouldn't——"

Allerton took the bull by the horns. "She wouldn't be so likely to go to the bad. That's what you mean, isn't it?"

Moving behind Allerton, who continued to stand on the hearthrug, Steptoe began poking the embers, making them safe for the night.

"Did Mr. Rash ever notice that goin' to the bad, as 'e calls it, ain't the syme for them as 'ave nothink as it looks to them as 'ave everythink? When you're 'ungry for food you heats the first thing you can lie your 'ands on; and when you're 'ungry for life you do the first thing as'll promise you the good you're lookin' for. What people like you and me is hapt to call goin' to the bad ain't mostly no more than a 'ankerin' for good which nothink don't seem to feed."

Allerton smiled. "That sounds to me as if it might be dangerous doctrine."

"What excuses the poor'll often seem dyngerous doctrine to the rich, Mr. Rash. Our kind is awful afryde of their kind gettin' a little bit of what they're longin' for, and especially 'ere in America. When we've took from them most of the means of 'aving a little pleasure lawful, we call it dyngerous if they tyke it unlawful like, and we go to work and pass laws agynst them. Protectin' them agynst theirselves we sye it is, and we go at it with a gun."

"But we're talking of——"

"Of the young lydy, sir. Quite so. It's on 'er account as I'm syin' what I'm syin'. You arsk me if I think she'll go to the bad in cyse we turn 'er out, and I sye that——"

Allerton started. "There's no question of our turning her out. She's sick of it."

"Then that'd be my point, wouldn't it, sir? If she goes because she's sick of it, why, then, natural like, she'll look somewhere else for what—for what she didn't find with us. You may call it goin' to the bad, but it'll be no more than tryin' to find in a wrong wye what life 'as denied 'er in a right one."

Allerton, who had never in his life been asked to bear moral responsibility, was uneasy at this philosophy, changing the subject abruptly.

"Where did she get the clothes?"

"Me and 'er, Mr. Rash, went to Margot's this mornin' and bought a bunch of 'em."

"The deuce you did! And you used my name?"

"No, sir," Steptoe returned, with dignity, "I used mine. I didn't give no 'andle to gossip. I pyde for the things out o' some money I 'ad in 'and—my own money, Mr. Rash—and 'ad 'em all sent to me. I thought as we was mykin' a mistyke the young lydy'd better look proper while we was mykin' it; and I knew Mr. Rash'd feel the syme."

The situation was that in which the faineant king accepts the act of the mayor of the palace because it is Hobson's choice. Moreover, he was willing that she should have the clothes. If she wouldn't take money she would at least apparently take them, which, in a measure, would amount to the same thing. He was dwelling on this bit of satisfaction when Steptoe continued.

"And as long as the young lydy remynes with us, Mr. Rash, I thought it'd be discreeter like not to 'ave no more women pokin' about, and tryin' to find out what 'ad better not be known. It mykes it simpler as she 'erself arsks to be called Miss Gravely——"

"Oh, she does?"

"Yes, sir; and that's what I've told William and Golightly, the waiter and the chef, is 'er nyme. It mykes it all plyne to 'em——"

"Plain? Why, they'll think——"

"No, sir. They won't think. When it comes to what's no one's business but your own women thinks; men just haccepts. They tykes things for granted, and don't feel it none of their affair. Mr. Rash'll 'ave noticed that there's a different kind of honor among women from what there is among men. I don't sye but what the women's is all right, only the men's is easier to get on with."

There being no response to these observations Steptoe made ready to withdraw. "And shall you stye 'ome for breakfast, sir?"

"I'll see in the morning."

"Very good, sir. I've locked up the 'ouse and seen to everythink, if you'll switch off the lights as you come up. Good-night, Mr. Rash."

"Good-night."



Chapter XIV

While this conversation was taking place Letty, in the back spare room, was conducting a ceremonial too poignant for tears. There were tears in her heart, but her eyes only smarted.

Taking off the blue-black tea-gown, she clasped it in her arms and kissed it. Then, on one of the padded silk hangers, she hung it far in the depths of the closet, where it wouldn't scorch her sight in the morning.

Next she arrayed herself in a filmy breakfast thing, white with a copper-colored sash matching some of the tones in her hair and eyes, and simple with an angelic simplicity. Standing before the long mirror she surveyed herself mournfully. But this robe too she took off, kissed, and laid away.

Lastly she put on the blue-green costume, with the turquoise and jade embroidery. She put on also the hat with the feather which shaded itself from green into monkshood blue. She put on a veil, and a pair of white gloves. For once she would look as well as she was capable of looking, though no one should see her but herself.

Viewing her reflection she grew frightened. It was the first time she had ever seen her personal potentialities. She had long known that with "half a chance" she could emerge from the cocoon stage of the old gray rag and be at least the equal of the average; but she hadn't expected so radical a change. She was not the same Letty Gravely. She didn't know what she was, since she was neither a "star" nor a "lady," the two degrees of elevation of which she had had experience. All she could feel was that with the advantages here presented she had the capacity to be either. Since, apparently, the becoming a lady was now excluded from her choice of careers, "stardom" would still have been within her reach, only that she was not to get the necessary "half a chance." That was the bitter truth of it. That was to be the result of her walking on blades. All the same, as walking on blades would help her prince she was resolved to walk on them. For her mother's sake, even for Judson Flack's, she had done things nearly as hard, when she had not had this incentive.

The incentive nerved her to take off the blue-green costume, kissing it a last farewell, and laying it to rest, as a mother a dead baby in its coffin. Into the closet went the bits of lingerie from the consignment just arrived from Paris, and the other spoils of the day. When everything was buried she shut the door upon it, as in her heart she was shutting the door on her poor little fledgling hopes. Nothing remained to torment her vision, or distract her from what she had to do. The old gray rag and the battered black hat were all she had now to deal with.

She slept little that night, since she was watching not for daylight but for that first stirring in the streets which tells that daylight is approaching. Having neither watch nor clock the stirring was all she had to go by. When it began to rumble and creak and throb faintly in and above the town she got up and dressed.

So far had she travelled in less than forty-eight hours that the old gray rag, and not the blue-green costume, was now the disguise. In other words, once having tasted the prosperous she had found it the natural. To go back to poverty was not merely hard; it was contrary to all spontaneous dictates. Dimly she had supposed that in reverting to the harness she had worn she would find herself again; but she only discovered that she was more than ever lost.

Very softly she unlocked her door to peep out at the landing. The house was ghostly and still, but it was another sign of her development that she was no longer afraid of it. Space too had become natural, while dignity of setting had seemed to belong to her ever since she was born. Turning her back on these conditions was far more like turning her back on home than it had been when she walked away from Judson Flack's.

She crept out. It was so dark that she was obliged to wait till objects defined themselves black against black before she could see the stairs. She listened too. There were sounds, but only such sounds as all houses make when everyone is sleeping. She guessed, it was pure guessing, that it must be about five o'clock.

She stole down the stairs. The necessity for keeping her mind on moving noiselessly deadened her thought to anything else. She neither looked back to what she was leaving behind, nor forward to what she was going to. Once she had reached the street it would be time enough to think of both. She had the fact in the back of her consciousness, but she kept it there. Out in the street she would feel grief for the prince and his palace, and terror at the void before her; but she couldn't feel them yet. Her one impulse was to escape.

At the great street door she could see nothing; but she could feel. She found the key and turned it easily. As the door did not then yield to the knob she fumbled till she touched the chain. Slipping that out of its socket she tried the door again, but it still refused to open. There must be something else! Rich houses were naturally fortresses! She discovered the bolt and pulled it back.

Still the door was fixed like a rock. She couldn't make it out. A lock, a chain, a bolt! Surely that must be everything! Perhaps she had turned the key the wrong way. She turned it again, but only with the same result. She found she could turn the key either way, and still leave the door immovable.

Perhaps she didn't pull it hard enough. Doors sometimes stuck. She pulled harder; she pulled with her whole might and main. She could shake the door; she could make it rattle. The hanging chain dangled against the woodwork with a terrifying clank. If anyone was lying awake she would sound like a burglar—and yet she must get out.

Now that she was balked, to get out became an obsession. It became more of an obsession the more she was balked. It made her first impatient, and then frantic. She turned the key this way and that way. She pulled and tugged. The perspiration came out on her forehead. She panted for breath; she almost sobbed. She knew there was a "trick" to it. She knew it was a simple trick because she had seen Steptoe perform it on the previous day; but she couldn't find out what it was. The effort made her only the more desperate.

She was not crying; she was only gasping—in raucous, exhausted, nervous sobs. They came shorter and harder as she pitted her impotence against this unyielding passivity. She knew it was impotence, and yet she couldn't desist; and she couldn't desist because she grew more and more frenzied. It was the kind of frenzy in which she would have dashed herself wildly, vainly against the force that blocked her with its pitiless resistance, only that the whole hall was suddenly flooded with a blaze of light.

It was light that came so unexpectedly that her efforts were cut short. Even her hard gasps were silenced, not in relief but in amazement. She remained so motionless that she could practically see herself, thrown against this brutal door, her arms spread out on it imploringly.

Seconds that seemed like minutes went by before she found strength to detach herself and turn.

Amazement became terror. On the halfway landing of the stairs stood a figure robed in scarlet from head to foot, with flying indigo lapels. He was girt with an indigo girdle, while the mass of his hair stood up as in tongues of forked black flame. The countenance was terrible, in mingled perplexity and wrath.

She saw it was the prince, but a prince transformed by condemnation.

"What on earth does this mean?"

He came down the rest of the stairs till he stood on the lowest step. She advanced toward him pleadingly.

"I was—I was trying to get out."

"What for?"

"I—I—I must get away."

"Well, even so; is this the way to do it? I thought someone was tearing the house down. It woke me up."

"I was goin' this way because—because I didn't want you to know what'd become of me."

"Yes, and have you on my mind."

"I hoped I'd be takin' myself off your mind."

"If you want to take yourself off my mind there's a perfectly simple means of doing it."

"I'll do anything—but take money."

"And taking money is the only thing I ask of you."

"I can't. It'd—it'd—shame me."

"Shame you? What nonsense!"

She reflected fast. "There's two ways a woman can take money from a man. The man may love her and marry her; or perhaps he don't marry her, but loves her just the same. Then she can take it; but when——"

"When she only renders him a—a great service——"

"Ah, but that's just what I didn't do. You said you wanted me to send you to the devil—and now you ain't a-goin' to go."

He grew excited. "But, good Lord, girl, you don't expect me to go to the devil just to keep my word to you."

"I don't want you to do anything just to keep your word to me," she returned, fiercely. "I only want you to let me get away."

He came down the remaining step, beginning to pace back and forth as he always did when approaching the condition he called "going off the hooks." Letty found him a marvelous figure in his scarlet robe, and with his mass of diabolic black hair.

"Yes, and if I let you get away, where would you get away to?"

"Oh, I'll find a place."

"A place in jail as a vagrant, as I said the other day."

"I'd rather be in jail," she flung back at him, "than stay where I'm not wanted."

"That's not the question."

"It's the biggest question of all for me. It'd be the biggest for you too if you were in my place." She stretched out her hands to him. "Oh, please show me how to work the door, and let me go."

He flared as he was in the habit of flaring whenever he was opposed. "You can go when we've settled the question of what you'll have to live on."

"I'll have myself to live on—just as I had before I met you in the Park."

"Nothing is the same for you or for me as before I met you in the Park."

"No, but we want to make it the same, don't we? You can't—can't marry the other girl till it is."

"I can't marry the other girl till I know you're taken care of."

"Money wouldn't take care of me. That's where you're makin' your mistake. You rich people think that money will do anything. So it will for you; but it don't mean so awful much to me." Her eyes, her lips, her hands besought him together. "Think now! What would I do with money if I had it? It ain't as if I was a lady. A lady has ways of doin' nothin' and livin' all the same; but a girl like me don't know anything about them. I'd go crazy if I didn't work—or I'd die—or I'd do somethin' worse."

It was because his nerves were on edge that he cried out: "I don't care a button what you do. I'm thinking of myself."

She betrayed the sharpness of the wound only by a deepening of the damask flush. "I'm thinkin' of you, too. Wouldn't you rather have everything come right again—so that you could marry the other girl—and know that I'd done it for you free—and not that you'd just bought me off?"

"You mean, wouldn't I rather that all the generosity should be on your side——"

"I don't care anything about generosity. I wouldn't be doin' it for that. It'd be because——"

He flung out his arms. "Well—why?"

"Because I'd like to do something for you——"

"Do something for me by making me a cad." He was beside himself. "That's what it would come to. That's what you're playing for. I should be a cad. You dress yourself up again in this ridiculous rig——"

"It's not a ridic'lous rig. It's my own clothes——"

"Your own clothes now are—are what I saw you in when I came home last evening. You can't go back to that thing. We can't go back in any way." He seemed to make a discovery. "It's no use trying to be what we were in the Park, because we can't be. Whatever we do must be in the way of—of going on to something else."

"Well, that'd be something else, if you'd just let me go, and do the desertion stunt you talked to me about——"

"I'll not let you do it unless I pay you for it."

"But it'd be payin' me for it if—if you'd just let me do it. Don't you see I want to?"

"I can see that you want to keep me in your debt. I can see that I'd never have another easy moment in my life. Whatever I did, and whoever I married, I should have to owe it to you."

"Well, couldn't you—when I owe so much to you?"

"There you go! What do you owe to me? Nothing but getting you into an infernal scrape——"

"Oh, no! It's not been that at all. You'd have to be me to understand what it has been. It'll be something to think of all the rest of my life—whatever I do."

"Yes, and I know how you'll think of it."

"Oh, no, you don't. You couldn't. It's nothin' to you to come into this beautiful house and see its lovely kind of life; but for me——"

"Oh, don't throw that sort of thing at me," he flamed out, striding up and down. "Steptoe's been putting that into your head. He's strong on the sentimental stuff. You and he are in a conspiracy against me. That's what it is. It's a conspiracy. He's got something up his sleeve—I don't know what—and he's using you as his tool. But you don't come it over me. I'm wise, I am. I'm a fool too. I know it well enough. But I'm not such a fool as to——"

She was frightened. He was going "off the hooks." She knew the signs of it. This rapid speech, one word leading to another, had always been her mother's first sign of super-excitement, until it ended in a scream. If he were to scream she would be more terrified than she had ever been in her life. She had never heard a man scream; but then she had never seen a man grow hysterical.

His utterance was the more clear-cut and distinct the faster it became.

"I know what it is. Steptoe thinks I'm going insane, and he's made you think so too. That's why you want to get away. You're afraid of me. Well, I don't wonder at it; but you're not going. See? You're not going. You'll go when I send you; but you'll not go before. See? I've married you, haven't I? When all is said and done you're my wife. My wife!" He laughed, between gritted teeth. "My wife! That's my wife!" He pointed at her. "Rashleigh Allerton who thought so much of himself has married that—and she's trying to do the generous by him——"

Going up to him timidly, she laid her hand on his arm. "Say, mister, would you mind countin' ten?"

The appeal took him so much by surprise that, both in his speech and in his walk, he stopped abruptly. She began to count, slowly, and marking time with her forefinger. "One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten."

He stared at her as if it was she who had gone "off the hooks." "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, nothin'. Now you can begin again."

"Begin what?"

"What you was—what you were sayin'."

"What I was saying?" He rubbed his hand across his forehead, which was wet with cold perspiration. "Well, what was I saying?"

He was not only dazed, but a pallor stole over his skin, the more ghastly in contrast with his black hair and his scarlet dressing-gown.

"Isn't there no place you can lay down? I always laid momma down after a spell of this kind. It did her good to sleep and she always slept."

He said, absently: "There's a couch in the library. I can't go back to bed."

"No, you don't want to go back to bed," she agreed, as if she was humoring a child. "You wouldn't sleep there——"

"I haven't slept for two nights," he pleaded, in excuse for himself, "not since——"

Taking him by the arm she led him into the library, which was in an ell behind the back drawing-room. It was a big, book-lined room with worn, shiny, leather-covered furnishings. On the shiny, leather-covered couch was a cushion which she shook up and smoothed out. Over its foot lay an afghan the work of the late Mrs. Allerton.

"Now, lay down."

He stretched himself out obediently, after which she covered him with the afghan. When he had closed his eyes she passed her hand across his forehead, on which the perspiration was still thick and cold. She remembered that a bottle of Florida water and a paper fan were among the luxuries of the back spare room.

"Don't you stir," she warned him. "I'm goin' to get you something."

Absorbed in her tasks as nurse she forgot to make the sentimental reflections in which she would otherwise have indulged. Back to the room from which she had fled she hurried with no thought that she was doing so. From the grave of hope she disinterred a half dozen of the spider-web handkerchiefs to which a few hours previously she had bid a touching adieu. With handkerchiefs, fan, and Florida water, she flew back to her patient, who opened his eyes as she approached.

"I don't want to be fussed over——" he was beginning, fretfully.

"Lie still," she commanded. "I know what to do. I'm used to people who are sick—up here."

"Up here" was plainly the forehead which she mopped softly with a specimen from Margot's Parisian consignment. He closed his eyes. His features relaxed to an expression of relief. Relief gave place to repose when he felt her hand with the cool scented essence on his brow. It passed and passed again, lightly, soothingly, consolingly. Drowsily he thought that it was Barbara's hand, but a Barbara somehow transformed, and grown tenderer.

He was asleep. She sat fanning him till a feeble daylight through an uncurtained window warned her to switch off the electricity. Coming back to her place, she continued to fan him, quietly and deftly, with no more than a motion of the wrist. She had the nurse's wrist, slender, flexible; the nurse's hand, strong, shapely, with practical spatulated finger-tips. After all, he was in some degree the drowning unconscious prince, and she the little mermaid.

"He'll be ashamed when he wakes up. He'll not like to find me sittin' here."

It was broad daylight now. He was as sound asleep as a child. Since she couldn't disturb him by rising she rose. Since she couldn't disturb him even by kissing him she kissed him. But she wouldn't kiss his lips, nor so much as his cheek or his brow. Very humbly she knelt and kissed his feet, outlined beneath the afghan. Then she stole away.



Chapter XV

The interlacing of destinies is such that you will not be surprised to learn that the further careers of Letty Gravely, of Barbara Walbrook, of Rashleigh Allerton now turned on Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, whose name not one of the three was ever destined to hear.

On his couch in the library Allerton slept till after nine, waking in a confusion which did not preclude a sense of refreshment. At the same minute Madame Simone was finishing her explanations to Mademoiselle Coucoul as to what was to be done to the seal-brown costume, which Steptoe had added to Letty's wardrobe, in order to conceal the fact that it was a model of a season old, and not the new creation its purchasers supposed. Taking in her instructions with Gallic precision mademoiselle was already at work when Miss Tina Vanzetti paused at her door. The door was that of a small French-paneled room, once the boudoir of the owner of the Flemish chateau, but set apart now by Madame Simone for jobs requiring deftness.

Miss Vanzetti, whose Neapolitan grandfather had begun his American career as a boot-black in Brooklyn, was of the Americanized type of her race. She could not, of course, eliminate her Latinity of eye and tress nor her wild luxuriance of bust, but English was her mother-tongue, and the chewing of gum her national pastime. She chewed it now, slowly, thoughtfully, as she stood looking in on Mademoiselle Odette, who was turning the skirt this way and that, searching out the almost invisible traces of use which were to be removed.

"So she's give you that to do, has she? Some stunt, I'll say. Gee, she's got her gall with her, old Simone, puttin' that off on the public as something new. If I had a dollar for every time Mamie Gunn has walked in and out to show it to customers I'd buy a set of silver fox."

Mademoiselle's smile was radiant, not because she had radiance to shed, but because her lips and teeth framed themselves that way. She too was of her race, alert, vivacious, and as neat as a trivet, as became a former midinette of the rue de la Paix and a daughter of Batignolles.

"Madame she t'ink it all in de beezeness," she contented herself with saying.

With her left hand Miss Vanzetti put soft touches to the big black coils of her back hair. "See that kid that all these things is goin' to? Gee, but she's beginnin' to step out. I know her. Spotted her the minute she come in to try on. Me and she went to the same school. Lived in the same street. Name of Letty Gravely."

Seeing that she was expected to make a response mademoiselle could think of nothing better than to repeat in her pretty staccato English: "Name of Let-ty Grav-el-ly."

"Stepfather's name was Judson Flack. Company-promoter he called himself. Mother croaked three or four years ago, just before we moved to Harlem. Never saw no more of her till she walked in here with the old white slaver what's payin' for the outfit. Gee, you needn't tell me! S'pose she'll hit the pace till some fella chucks her. Gee, I'm sorry. Awful slim chance a girl'll get when some guy with a wad blows along and wants her." The theme exhausted Miss Vanzetti asked suddenly: "Why don't you never come to the Lantern?"

In her broken English mademoiselle explained that she didn't know the American dances, but that a fella had promised to teach her the steps. She had met him at the house of a cousin who was married to a waiter chez Bouquin. Ver' beautiful fella, he was, and had invited her to a chop suey dinner that evening, with the dance at the Lantern to wind up with. Most ver' beautiful fella, single, and a detective.

"Good for you," Miss Vanzetti commanded. "If you don't dance you might as well be dead, I'll say. Keeps you thin, too; and the music at the Lantern is swell."

The incident is so slight that to get its significance you must link it up with the sound of the telephone which, as a simultaneous happening, was waking Judson Flack from his first real sleep after an uncomfortable night. Nothing but the fear lest by ignoring the call the great North Dakota Oil Company whose shares would soon be on the market, would be definitely launched without his assistance dragged him from his bed.

"Hello?"

A woman's voice inquired: "Is this Hudson 283-J?"

"You bet."

"Is Miss Gravely in?"

"Just gone out. Only round the corner. Back in a few minutes. Say, sister, I'm her stepfather, and 'll take the message."

"Tell her to come right over to the Excelsior Studio. Castin' director's got a part for her. Real part. Small but a stunner. Outcast girl. I s'pose she's got some old duds to dress it in?"

"Sure thing!"

"Well, tell her to bring 'em along. And say, listen! I don't mind passing you the tip that the castin' director has his eye on that girl for doin' the pathetic stunt; so see she ain't late."

"Y'betcha."

That an ambitious man, growing anxious about his future, was thus placed in a trying situation will be seen at once. The chance of a lifetime was there and he was unable to seize it. Everyone knew that by these small condensations of nebular promise stars were eventually evolved, and to have at his disposal the earnings of a star....

It seemed providential then that on dropping into the basement eating place at which he had begun to take his breakfasts he should fall in with Gorry Larrabin. They were not friends, or rather they were better than friends; they were enemies who found each other useful. Mutually antipathetic, they quarrelled, but could not afford to quarrel long. A few days or a few weeks having gone by, they met with a nod, as if no hot words had been passed.

It was such an occasion now. Ten days earlier Judson had called Gorry to his teeth "no detective, but a hired sneak." Gorry had retorted that, hired sneak as he was, he would have Judson Flack "in the jug" as a promoter of faked companies before the year was out. One word had led to another, and only the intervention of friends to both parties had kept the high-spirited fellows from exchanging blows. But the moment had come round again when each had an axe to grind, so that as Judson hung up his hat near the table at which Gorry, having finished his breakfast, was smoking and picking his teeth, the nod of reconciliation was given and returned.

"Say, why don't you sit down here?"

Politely Gorry indicated the unoccupied side of his own table. It was a small table covered with a white oil-cloth, and tolerably clean.

"Don't mind if I do," was the other's return of courtesy, friendly relations being thus re-established.

Having given his order to a stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture, Judson Flack launched at once into the subject of Letty. He did this for a two-fold reason. First, his grievance made the expression of itself imperative, and next, Gorry being a hanger-on of that profession which lives by knowing what other people don't might be in a position to throw light on Letty's disappearance. If he was he gave no sign of it. As a matter of fact he was not, but he meant to be. He remembered the girl; had admired her; had pointed out to several of his friends that she had only to doll herself up in order to knock spots out of a lot of good lookers of recognized supremacy.

Odette Coucoul's description of him as "most ver' beautiful fella" was not without some justification. Regular, clean-cut features, long and thin, were the complement of a slight well-knit figure, of which the only criticism one could make was that it looked slippery. Slipperiness was perhaps his ruling characteristic, a softness of movement suggesting a cat, and a habit of putting out and drawing back a long, supple, snake-like hand which made you think of a pickpocket. Eyes that looked at you steadily enough impressed you as untrustworthy chiefly because of a dropping of the pupil of the left, through muscular inability.

"Awful sorry, Judson," was his summing up of sympathy with his companion's narrative. "Any dope I get I'll pass along to you."

Between gentlemen, however, there are understandings which need not be put into words, the principle of nothing for nothing being one of them. The conversation had not progressed much further before Gorry felt at liberty to say:

"Now, about this North Dakota Oil, Judson. I'd like awful well to get in on the ground floor of that. I've got a little something to blow in; and there's a lot of suckers ready to snap up that stock before you print the certificates."

Diplomacy being necessary here Judson practiced it. Gorry might indeed be seeking a way of turning an honest penny; but then again he might mean to sell out the whole show. On the one hand you couldn't trust him, and on the other it wouldn't do to offend him so long as there was a chance of his getting news of the girl. Judson could only temporize, pleading his lack of influence with the bunch who were getting up the company. At the same time he would do his utmost to work Gorry in, on the tacit understanding that nothing would be done for nothing.

* * * * *

Allerton too had breakfasted late, at the New Netherlands Club, and was now with Miss Barbara Walbrook, who received him in the same room, and wearing the same hydrangea-colored robe, as on the previous morning. He had called her up from the Club, asking to be allowed to come once more at this unconventional hour in order to communicate good news.

"She's willing to do anything," he stated at once, making the announcement with the glee of evident relief. "In fact, it was by pure main force that I kept her from running away from the house this morning."

He was dashed that she did not take these tidings with his own buoyancy. "What made you stop her?" she asked, in some wonder. "Sit down, Rash. Tell me the whole thing."

Though she took a chair he was unable to do so. His excitement now was over the ease with which the difficulty was going to be met. He could only talk about it in a standing position, leaning on the mantelpiece, or stroking the head of the Manship terra cotta child, while she gazed up at him, nervously beating her left palm with the black and gold fringe of her girdle.

"I stopped her because—well, because it wouldn't have done."

"Why wouldn't it have done? I should think that it's just what would have done."

"Let her slip away penniless, and—and without friends?"

"She'd be no more penniless and without friends than she was when—when you—" she sought for the right word—"when you picked her up."

"No, of course not; only now the—the situation is different."

"I don't see that it is—much. Besides, if you were to let her run away first, so that you get—whatever the law wants you to get, you could see that she wasn't penniless and without friends afterwards. Most likely that's what she was expecting."

His countenance fell. "I—I don't think so."

"Oh, you wouldn't think so as long as she could bamboozle you. I was simply thinking of your getting what she probably wants to give you—for a price."

"I don't think you do her justice, Barbe. If you'd seen her——"

"Very well; I shall see her. But seeing her won't make any difference in my opinion."

"She'll not strike you as anything wonderful of course; but I know she's as straight as they make 'em. And so long as she is——"

"Well, what then?"

"Why, then, it seems to me, we must be straight on our side."

"We'll be straight enough if we pay her her price."

"There's more to it than that."

"Oh, there is? Then how much more?"

"I don't know that I can explain it." He lifted one of the Stiegel candlesticks and put it back in its place. "I simply feel that we can't—that we can't let all the magnanimity be on her side. If she plays high, we've got to play higher."

"I see. So she's got you there, has she?"

"I wish you wouldn't be disagreeable about it, Barbe."

"My dear Rash," she expostulated, "it isn't being disagreeable to have common sense. It's all the more necessary for me not to abnegate that, for the simple reason that you do."

He hurled himself to the other end of the mantelpiece, picking up the second candlestick and putting it down with force. "It's surely not abnegating common sense just to—to recognize honesty."

"Please don't fiddle with those candlesticks. They're the rarest American workmanship, and if you were to break one of them Aunt Marion would kill me. I'll feel safer about you if you sit down."

"All right. I'll sit down." He drew to him a small frail chair, sitting astride on it. "Only please don't fidget me."

"Would you mind taking that chair?" She pointed to something solid and masculine by Phyffe. "That little thing is one of Aunt Marion's pet pieces of old Dutch colonial. If anything were to happen to it—But you were talking about recognizing honesty," she continued, as he moved obediently. "That's exactly what I should like you to do, Rash, dear—with your eyes open. If I'm not looking anyone can pull the wool over them, whether it's this girl or someone else."

"In other words I'm a fool, as you were good enough to say——"

"Oh, do forget that. I couldn't help saying it, as I think you ought to admit; but don't keep bringing it up every time I do my best to meet you pleasantly. I'm not going to quarrel with you any more, Rash. I've made a vow to that effect and I'm going to keep it. But if I'm to keep it on my side you mustn't badger me on yours. It doesn't do me any good, and it does yourself a lot of harm." Having delivered this homily she took a tone of brisk cheerfulness. "Now, you said over the phone that you were coming to tell me good news."

"Well, that was it."

"What was it?"

"That she was ready to do anything—even to disappear."

"And you wouldn't let her."

"That I couldn't let her—with nothing to show for it."

"But she will have something to show for it—in the end. She knows that as well as I do. Do you suppose for a minute that she doesn't understand the kind of man she's dealing with?"

"You mean that——?"

"Rash, dear, no girl who knows as much as this girl knows could help seeing at a glance that she's got a pigeon to pluck, as the French say, and of course she means to pluck it. You can't blame her for that, being what she is; but for heaven's sake let her pluck it in her own way. Don't be a simpleton. Angels shouldn't rush in where fools would fear to tread—and you are an angel, Rash, though I suppose I'm the only one in the world who sees it."

"Thank you, Barbe. I know you feel kindly toward me, and that, as you say, you're the only one in the world who does. That's all right, I acknowledge it, and I'm grateful. What I don't like is to see you taking it for granted that this girl is merely playing a game——"

"Rash, do you remember those two winters I worked in the Bleary Street Settlement? and do you remember that the third winter I said that I'd rather enlist in the Navy that go back to it again? You all thought that I was cynical and hard-hearted, but I'll tell you now what the trouble was. I went down there thinking I could teach those girls—that I could do them good—and raise them up—and have them call me blessed—and all that. Well, there wasn't one of them who hadn't forgotten more than I ever knew—who wasn't working me when I supposed she was hanging on my wisdom—who wasn't laughing at me behind my back when I was under the delusion that she was following my good example. And if you've got one of them on your hands she'll fool the eyes out of your head."

"You think so," he said, drily. "Then I don't."

"In that case there's no use discussing it any further."

"There may be after you've seen her."

"How can I see her?"

"You can go to the house."

"And tell her I know everything?"

"If you like. You could say I told you in confidence—that you're an old friend of mine."

"And nothing else?"

"Since you only want to size her up I should think that would be enough."

She nodded, slowly. "Yes, I think you're right. Better not give anything away we can keep to ourselves. Now tell me what happened this morning. You haven't done it yet."

He told her everything—how he had been waked by hearing someone fumbling with the lock of the door, whether inside or outside the house he couldn't tell—how he had gone to the head of the stairs and switched on the lower hall light—how she had flung herself against the door as a little gray bird might dash itself against its cage in its passion to escape.

"She staged it well, didn't she? She must have brains."

"She has brains all right, but I don't think——"

"She knew of course that if she made enough noise someone would come, and she'd get the credit for good intentions."

"I really don't think, Barbe.... Now let me tell you. You'll see what she's like. I felt very much as you do. I was right on the jump. Got all worked up. Would have gone clean off the hooks if——"

There followed the narrative of his loss of temper, of his wild talk, of her clever strategy in counting ten—"just like a cold douche it was"—and the faint turn he so often had after spells of emotion. To convince Miss Walbrook of the queer little thing's ingenuousness he told how she had made him lie down on the library couch, covered him up, rubbed his brow with Florida water, and induced the best sleep he had had in months.

She surprised him by springing to her feet, her arms outspread. "You great big idiot! Really there's no other name for you!"

He gazed up at her in amazement. "What's the matter now?"

Flinging her hands about she made inarticulate sounds of exasperation beyond words.

"There, there; that'll do," she threw off, when he jumped to her side, to calm her by taking her in his arms. "I'm not off the hooks. I don't want anyone to rub Florida water on my brow—and hold my hand—and cradle me to sleep——"

"She didn't," he exclaimed, with indignation. "She never touched my hand. She just——"

"Oh, I know what she did—and of course I'm grateful. I'm delighted that she was there to do it—delighted. I quite see now why you couldn't let her go, when you knew your fit was coming on. I've seen you pretty bad, but I've never seen you as bad as that; and I must say I never should have thought of counting ten as a cure for it."

"Well, she did."

"Quite so! And if I were you I'd never go anywhere without her. I'd keep her on hand in case I took a turn——"

He was looking more and more reproachful. "I must say, Barbe, I don't think you're very reasonable."

She pushed him from her with both hands against his shoulders. "Go away, for heaven's sake! You'll drive me crazy. I'm not going to lose my temper with you. I'll never do it again. I've got you to bear with, and I'm going to bear with you. But go! No, go now! Don't stop to make explanations. You can do that later. I'll lay in a supply of Florida water and an afghan...."

He went with that look on his face which a well meaning dog will wear when his good intentions are being misinterpreted. On his way to the office he kept saying to himself: "Well I don't know what to do. Whatever I say she takes me up the wrong way. All I wanted was for her to understand that the little thing is a good little thing...."



Chapter XVI

While Allerton was making these reflections Steptoe was summoned to the telephone.

"Is this you, Steptoe? I'm Miss Barbara Walbrook."

Steptoe braced himself. In conversing with Miss Barbara Walbrook he always felt the need of inner strengthening. "Yes, Miss Walbrook?"

"Mr. Allerton tells me you've a young woman at the house."

"We 'ave a young lydy. Certainly, miss."

"And Mr. Allerton has asked me to call on her."

Steptoe's training as a servant permitted him no lapses of surprise. "Quite so, miss. And when was it you'd be likely to call?"

"This afternoon about four-thirty. Perhaps you could arrange to have me see her alone."

"Oh, there ain't likely to be no one 'ere, miss."

"And another thing, Steptoe. Mr. Allerton has asked me just to call as an old friend of his. So you'll please not say to her that—well, anything about me. I'm sure you understand."

Steptoe replied that he did understand, and having put up the receiver he pondered.

What could it mean? What could be back of it? How would this unsophisticated girl meet so skilful an antagonist. That Miss Walbrook was coming as an antagonist he had no doubt. In his own occasional meetings with her she had always been a superior, a commander, to whom even he, 'Enery Steptoe, had been a servitor requiring no further consideration. With so gentle an opponent as madam she would order and be obeyed.