"You are impertinent, much too bold," she admonished. "I will not talk to you any more if you are not quite respectful; but the first part of your description was pretty. Let me, if I can, do even half so well. You, senor, are rather tall and quite slender, no superfluous flesh, all muscle, and your eyes are a dark gray and your hair is brown, so is your face, by the way; and you have a cool, leisurely sort of manner, although your speech is quite rapid, and you have a charming, oh, a most unusually charming smile."

"But you know me!" cried Hayden naively. "Of course, of course," as her laughter swelled, "I know you've flattered me to death," the red rising in his tanned cheek, "with all that rot about my grin. But," speaking louder in the effort to drown those trills and ripples of melodious laughter, more elfishly mocking and elusive than ever, "your portrait of me, no matter how grossly exaggerated, is in the main, correct."

"Still talking?" droned the menacing voice of Central.

"But it isn't fair," Hayden continued to protest to the Unknown. "You have me at a disadvantage, and I am going to drop all courtesy and any pretense of good manners. Now, are you ready? Yes? Well then, who are you and what do you want?"

"Who am I? Ah, senor, a waif of the wind, adrift on the night's Plutonian shore; but an hour or two ago, the gale caught me up in Spain and swept me over the seas. Regard me as a voice, merely a voice that would hold speech with so distinguished a naturalist."

"A naturalist!" exclaimed Hayden both disappointed and disconcerted. "You have mistaken your man. I can lay no claims to any scientific accomplishments or achievements."

"Oh, pardon!" There was an affected and exaggerated horror in her tones. "I have made a mistake, oh, a great mistake. I had fancied that you were a collector of butterflies."

Hayden nearly dropped the receiver. There was the smallest of pauses and then he spoke in his accustomed tone, a little cooler and more leisurely than usual, with some fleeting idea of caution.

"Ah, yes, yes, I am somewhat interested in that line. But the fact is known to few. Perhaps you will kindly tell me how you learned of my enthusiasm?"

"Are you quite sure that you may not have mentioned the subject to me yourself." Her voice was full of subtle emphasis.

"No, senorita," he laughed. "That will not do. You can not throw me off the track that way, by trying to make me doubt my memory."

"Then, truly, you do not recall the old glad days in Spain?" her voice questioned incredulously, doubted, took on a little fall of disappointment, almost of wounded vanity or sentiment.

"Senorita, emphatically, no. Had I, in the old glad days in Spain, or the old glad days anywhere else, ever met a woman with a voice like yours, I should never have forgotten her in a thousand years. No, senorita. Try something else. That will not do."

"Zip!" There was unmistakable temper in the exclamation.

"We were speaking of butterflies," said Hayden, alarmed lest she should ring him off. "Are you at all interested in that line?"

"Indeed, yes," she assured him, "although I doubt very much if my interest is anything like as scientific as yours. I fancy I am more interested in them because of their wonderful beauty, than for any more particular reason. And what in all the world, senor, is so beautiful as the butterflies of the tropics? Do you remember how they come floating out into the sunlight from the dark mysterious depths of the forests? Such colors! Such iridescence on their wings; but the most beautiful of all are the great gray ones, senor, the silver butterflies."

Again Hayden started violently and again succeeded in controlling the surprise her words aroused in him. "I quite agree with you," he said politely. "The silver butterfly is one of the most beautiful of all the tropical varieties."

"Yes, truly." Again there was the hint of irresistible laughter in the lady's tones. "But there is a curious little fact that I fancy very few of you naturalists know, and that is that it is not confined absolutely to the tropics. Doubt the assertion if you will, but I make it calmly: I, senor, with my own eyes have seen silver butterflies at New York, and in the most unlikely places; oh, places you would never dream of, the opera, for instance."

"You surprise me!" Hayden was prepared for anything now, and his voice was carefully indifferent, almost drawling; but his mind was working like lightning. What on earth could this mean? Was it a possibility that it might be Marcia,—Marcia Oldham herself, thus cleverly disguising her voice? No, no, a thousand times, no. He hastily rejected the thought. Even if she possessed the skill—nevertheless the very tones themselves revealed a woman of a totally different type and temperament.

"I am so anxious to see your collection," continued the rich, warmly-colored voice. "I am wondering if you have been able to secure a specimen of a very rare butterfly indeed, one which some naturalists believe is quite extinct. It is called 'The Veiled Mariposa.'"

Hayden felt as if in some peculiar, intuitive sort of way, he had expected this from the first. For a moment or two, he could not control his excitement. His mouth felt curiously dry, and he noticed that his hand was trembling.

"I—I think I have heard of it," he said at last, and objurgated himself for his stammering banality.

"But," and the word seemed to express a pout, "I understood that it was in your collection."

"Ah, one must not trust too much to report and rumor," Hayden reminded her.

"Then it is not in your collection?" she persisted.

"Senorita, my collection is a large one." He smiled amusedly at the thought of this hypothetical collection, and the grandiloquent tone in which he referred to it. "I can not say, offhand, just what varieties it contains."

"True," assented the voice reasonably, and Hayden felt that its possessor was probably a person who was reasonable when one would naturally expect her to be capricious, and capricious when one would naturally expect her to be reasonable. "True," she repeated thoughtfully, "I only wanted to say, senor, that should you find that you have that particular butterfly, I am in touch with certain collectors who would be willing to pay a large price for it."

"I have no desire to sell outright, senorita, please understand that," Hayden spoke quickly, taking a high tone. "But should I care to consider your proposition, how am I to communicate with you? Shall I ring up Central and say: 'Please give me the delicious voice?'"

"Ah, senor, you are of an absurdity! Never fear, you will hear from me again, and soon. Good-by." Her voice died away like music.

Hayden mechanically hung up the receiver, and then sat for a moment or two staring rather stupidly before him. At last, he shook his head and laughed in whimsical perplexity: "Who would ever have considered New York the haunt and home of mystery?" he murmured. "Every day connects me with a new one, and the charming ladies who seem involved in them apparently take delight in leaving me completely in the air, suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, 'twixt Heaven and earth, with the pleasing promise that I shall hear from them again—and soon."



CHAPTER VII

An afternoon or two later, having perfected a little plan in his mind, Hayden again called on his cousin to be informed that she was not at home. Kitty, he reflected, was never at home when any one wanted to find her. Therefore, with time on his hands, he turned into the Park and decided to stroll there for an hour or so. It was an almost incredibly mild afternoon for the season of the year, mild and soft and gray; the leafless boughs of the trees upheld the black irregular network of their twigs against the gray sky, with its faint, dull reflection of sunset gold, and the twilight brooded in the mists on the edge of distance as if it awaited the hour to send its gray veils floating over the face of the earth.

Hayden walked slowly, and in this direction or that as his fancy dictated. It was not an afternoon for violent exercise; but for loitering and reverie. Presently, he looked up from his musings, to see, to his infinite surprise and delight, Marcia Oldham approaching him down a twilight vista with the gold behind her.

She, too, was influenced by the day and the hour, for she seemed to walk in a dream, and came quite near him without seeing him. She was all in black, and her furs, also black, were slipping from her shoulders, while her muff dangled from a cord about her wrist. Hayden thought she looked a little tired and certainly pale; but that might have been due to the black hat and the lace veil she had thrown back from her face the better to enjoy the air.

She came quite close to him before she saw him, and as she lifted her eyes and met his she started slightly, a start of unmistakable amazement, and as it seemed to him, although perhaps this was but the reflection of his hopes, of pleasure.

"I began to fear that we were never going to meet again," he said after they had exchanged the conventional greetings, and he had asked and had received permission to walk with her in whatever direction she might be taking.

"I have been away for a week," she answered, "and there has been a number of things to see to since my return. I have been very busy. You know I have a studio away from my home where I paint all day. Your cousin has bought a number of my pictures."

"She spoke of them. I am anxious to see them; and I knew you were away," he said. "I knew it psychologically. The town was full of people and yet, at the same time, it was very empty." That faint and lovely carnation on her cheek! "And Kitty Hampton told me that you had been away with her," he rather tamely concluded.

"Yes," she said, it seemed to him indifferently. Then with a change of tone, as if warning him from dangerous ground: "How absurd our acquaintance has been!"

"Does it strike you so?" he asked sadly. "To me it is the most delightful, the most beautiful thing that ever happened."

"I should not be at all surprised," she said calmly, almost too calmly, and with premeditated irrelevance, "if Kitty and Bea were both of them awaiting me now." His boldness was incapable of ruffling her composure; but, nevertheless, he saw with a secret joy the telltale and uncontrollable carnation again fly to her cheek.

But Hayden had not even approached the limits of his courage. He had been too much baffled in his attempts to find her, she had proved too elusive for him to permit her lightly to slip through his fingers again, as it were, now, when he had the opportunity to press his claims for further recognition. Should a man who had succeeded more than once through bold but not displeasing words in causing the scarlet to stain that cheek of cream, carelessly forgo any chance for future experiment?

"Surely, you won't leave me on your door-step this dreary afternoon," he pleaded. "I would never have suspected you of such hardness of heart. Why, it amounts almost to—to—brutality," casting about him for a good strong word. "You will pass on into light and warmth and comfort; tea, the cheering cup, and cakes, no doubt cakes, while I am left out in this gray depressing atmosphere, night coming on, the rain falling—"

"Rain! Oh, nonsense. You have overshot your mark." She lifted her face to the sky. "Not a drop," scornfully.

He stripped his glove from his hand and held out the bare palm. "I thought so," with calm triumph. "A steady drizzle. You don't feel it yet because of your hat; but you will presently. It will very shortly turn to a drenching shower; that especial sort of cloud yonder," waving his stick toward the west, "always indicates a drenching shower. Oh," in answer to her incredulous smile, "you can't tell me anything about weather conditions, I've lived too much in the open not to be thoroughly conversant of them. So you see I know what I'm talking about when I say that a woman who would leave a man on a door-step on an afternoon like this is the kind that would shut up the house and go away for the summer leaving the cat to forage for itself."

"But think of your nice warm apartment, and the subways and street-cars and taxicabs and hansoms which will swiftly bear you thither."

His glance was a reproachful protest. "Every form of conveyance you have mentioned is drafty. Coming from the hot climates I have lived in so long—" He paused and coughed tentatively. "But what is the use of all this thrust and parry?" pressing his advantage. "Are you or are you not going to give me a cup of tea?"

At this very direct question, the laughter, the gaiety vanished from her face. She looked thoughtful and seemed to consider so trivial a matter quite unnecessarily. Then, apparently arriving at a sudden decision, she said with a sort of sweet, prim courtesy: "I should be very glad to have you come in with me and meet my mother. I think it is very probable that we will find Kitty, and perhaps Bea, there before us."

"Thank you very much," he said, with equal formality. "I very much appreciate your letting me come."

The remainder of their walk he found delightful. Marcia was pleased to throw off, in a measure, the reserve, the absorption which seemed almost habitual with her, and she chatted with him frankly, occasionally even playfully, as they strolled along.

"Why," he asked her curiously, "did you put that hypothetical question to me that evening at the Gildersleeve, about the young woman living in the country and sending her astral body on little visits to town?"

"I don't know, I'm sure," she laughed. "It often amuses me to indulge in little fanciful flights like that."

"I think you were purposely trying to mystify me," he said. "You saw that I was going to be a bore and you pretended to be a ghost, trusting to your noiseless and mysterious manner of appearing and disappearing to work on my fears and frighten me off. And, truth to tell, there is something uncanny about your peculiarly soundless and rustleless movements."

"Oh, absurd!" she cried, the very tips of her ears red. Hayden might well exult in his ability to make her blush. "How you do romance! The whole situation was an absolutely simple one. Old Mr.——" He fancied she caught her breath sharply, but if it were so she recovered herself immediately and went on: "The man with whom I was dining—I had to see him that evening. He was leaving town. I was leaving him at the station when I bowed to you and Mr. Penfield from the motor, and, as I was saying, I had to see him before he left on a—a business matter, and naturally, it was much easier to talk it over with him at the Gildersleeve than any place else."

She smiled as she finished, and Hayden saw more in that smile than she intended or desired he should. It was in itself a full period, definitely closing the subject. It also held resentment, annoyance that she had permitted herself to fall into so egregious a blunder as an explanation.

"Oh, how I love a winter evening like this!" she went on hurriedly. "Once in a while, they stray into the heart of winter from the sun-warmed autumn, and they get so cold, poor little waifs from Indian Summer, that they wrap themselves in all the clouds and mists they can find. Ah, isn't it soft and dim and sweet and mysterious? The wind sings such an eerie little song, and the tiny, pale crescent moon is just rising. Look, it has a ring about it! It will rain to-morrow. Oh, dear!"

They had left the Park a few minutes before and turned in the direction of Riverside Drive, and a short walk brought them to the home in which Marcia's father had installed his family a few months before the crash came and his subsequent death. It was a handsome house, within as well as without; dark, stately, and sumptuous in effect. The sound of voices and laughter reached their ears as they ascended the stairs, and when they entered the drawing-room they found a number of people there before them.

There was Kitty looking more than ever like a charming, if not very good little boy, and dressed beautifully, if incongruously, in a trailing limp gown of champagne color and wistaria most wonderfully blended, when her face, her figure, the way she wore her hair, seemed to cry aloud for knickerbockers; and there was Bea Habersham in velvet, of the cerise shade she so much affected, and Edith Symmes suggesting nothing so much as a distinguished but malevolent fairy, her keen, satirical, sallow face looking almost livid in contrast with a terrible gown which she spoke of with pride as "this sweet, gaslight-green frock of mine."

"Mother, Mr. Hayden has come in with me for a cup of tea. He doesn't know yet that you make the very best tea in all the world." Marcia's voice, in speaking to her mother, seemed to take on an added gentleness. It struck Hayden that so she might speak to a small child.

Mrs. Oldham greeted Hayden most graciously, but he could not fail to notice that she turned to her daughter with an indefinable displeasure in both glance and manner. She was a small woman, barely as high as Marcia's shoulder; a surprise always, when noted, for the carriage of her head and shoulders gave the impression of her being above medium height; she had evidently been an extremely pretty creature of the Dresden-china type, and she still bore the manner and assurance of beauty, fortifying this mental attitude by a genius for dress. Thus she succeeded in maintaining an illusion perfectly satisfactory to herself, if not quite to others, for it was rather a hungry beast of an illusion and demanded constant oblation and sacrifice.

Her hair, like Marcia's, was dark with the same loose and heavy waves, and her features exhibited the same delicate regularity; but the strength and sweetness of character so marked in the daughter's face were lacking in the mother's. Two rather striking blemishes on the older woman's beauty, a wandering eye and a scar on the soft cheek, she took her own peculiar method of ignoring, thus completely and effectively discounting any unfavorable opinion in the mind of the beholder. Consequently, she frequently referred to them, never as blemishes, but as slight but significant evidences of a distinctive and distinguished individuality.

"Oh, Marcia! What a dream of a hat!" cried Kitty. "And new. It's a Henri Dondel or a Carlier."

Marcia laughed her gentle and charming laugh. "Yes, it's new and I'm so glad you like it."

"New, new, new," said her mother petulantly. "It's something new every day. I never saw such a spendthrift. It's a good thing my wants are so few."

Marcia did not appear to hear this, and almost immediately her attention was taken up by the entrance of Wilfred Ames, big, stolid and good-looking, while hard upon his heels followed Horace Penfield.

Mrs. Oldham, seeing that Penfield had gravitated toward the three women, Edith Symmes, Kitty and Bea, and that Ames had drawn Marcia a little apart, urged Hayden to come and sit beside her tea-table and let her brew him a cup of fresh tea.

"It's really a rest for me, Mr. Hayden," she said pathetically, "for truly, it is very little rest I get. This big house to look after—Marcia is not the least assistance to me in housekeeping—and a daughter on one's mind." She sighed heavily. "It is enough to make Mr. Oldham turn over in his grave if he could see all the care and responsibility that is thrown on my shoulders. He couldn't endure the thought of such a thing. He always said to me: 'Those little feet were made to tread on flowers.' He was so absurd about my feet, you know. Not that they are anything remarkable; but I'm from the South, Mr. Hayden, and it's only natural that I should have beautiful feet.

"But then, as I often told him, he was just so constituted that he could see nothing in me but absolute perfection. Why, do you know, one of my eyes has a slight, oh, a very slight defect, you have probably not noticed it. Well, we had been married for years before he ever saw it. I happened to mention it and he simply would not believe me until I convinced him by standing before him in a very strong light with my eyes wide open. Do let me give you a little more tea. No? Then some sugar or lemon, just to freshen up a bit what you have. How handsome Marcia and Wilfred look standing together, she is so dark and he is so fair. He is a dear fellow and so steady and sedate. I love him like a son, and I consider his influence over Marcia excellent.

"She is, of course, the dearest thing in the world to me, Mr. Hayden. You will understand that, but I feel a mother's solicitude, and she has certain traits which I fear may become exaggerated faults. She is inclined to be head-strong, heedless, wilful, and I'm afraid, sweet as Mrs. Hampton and Mrs. Habersham are—dear girls! I love them like my own daughters—that they encourage Marcia in her defiance of proper authority and her dreadful extravagance. But," sighing, "she is young and pretty and she does not think; although Mr. Oldham used often to say: 'Marcia will never have her mother's beauty.' What do you think of such an absurdity?"

"I think if Diogenes had met Mr. Oldham he would have blown out his light and gone back to the seclusion of his bath-tub for the rest of his life."

"Oh!" Mrs. Oldham looked puzzled. "Oh, Diogenes! Oh, yes, searching for an honest man. Mr. Hayden, what a charming thing of you to say! I must remember that, and so witty, too! Edith dear," as Mrs. Symmes approached them, "you can't fancy what a wit Mr. Hayden is."

"Oh, yes, I can," returned Mrs. Symmes, "and that is the reason I have come to drag him away from you. Here is Mr. Penfield to take his place, and tell you a lot of new scandals all springing directly from the seven deadly old sins. Come and sit on the sofa with me, Mr. Hayden."

"Rescued!" he muttered feebly when they had sat down in a remote corner. "I had an idea that I was never going to escape, that it would run on for ever and ever."

"Poor Marcia!" murmured Mrs. Symmes, glancing toward the window where Marcia and Ames stood, still engrossed in conversation. "And poor Wilfred! You haven't seen his Old Man of the Sea yet—meaning his mother?"

"No, is she, too, a Venus with a bad eye?"

"Quite the reverse." Faint sparkles of amusement came into her eyes, amusement which was always touched with a slight malice. "Mr. Hayden, some people are coming to take luncheon with me next Wednesday, I may count on you, may I not?"

"Indeed, yes," he assured her. "I should like nothing better."

She rose and he with her. Every one was doing the same. With a purpose which had been maturing in his mind during the last hour, Hayden approached Kitty and Marcia, who stood together talking in low tones as Kitty caught her furs about her.

"Miss Oldham," Hayden's voice was delightfully ingratiating, "don't you or Kitty want to give me the address of this wonderful fortune-teller, Mademoiselle Mariposa?"

"But you said you took no interest in such things," Kitty spoke quickly. "You insisted that they were all fakers and frauds. Why do you want to go now?"

"But I have an idea that I have met the lady," he asserted.

Marcia gave a quick start; but Kitty laughed. "I defy you to pierce her disguise," she asserted, "and tell whether you have met her or not, unless, of course, she acknowledges the acquaintance. I will telephone you her address the moment I reach home. I do not remember the number."



CHAPTER VIII

Kitty was as good as her word and telephoned her cousin the address of Mademoiselle Mariposa that evening,—a fact that rather surprised Hayden, as he had a sort of indefinable idea that she would conveniently forget her promise.

On his part, he lost no time in seeking the Mariposa, calling at her apartment the next morning, only to be informed by a particularly trim and discreet maid that her mistress received no one save by appointment. Therefore, bowing to the inevitable with what philosophy he could summon, he went home and wrote a note to the seeress, requesting an early interview and signing an assumed name. He was gratified to receive an answer, dictated, the next morning in which Mademoiselle Mariposa stated that she would be pleased to receive him at three o'clock in the afternoon, on the following Thursday. Thursday, and this was Tuesday. Two days farther away than he desired, but there was nothing to do but curb his impatience, and he set about occupying his mind and incidentally his time until Thursday.

Fortunately, he discovered in glancing over his list of engagements that a number of events dovetailed admirably, thus filling up the hours, and among them was Edith Symmes' luncheon on Wednesday. He heaved a sigh of relief that there were enough things on hand to give time wings, even if artificial ones, when it seemed bent on perversely dragging leaden feet along the ground. In consequence he betook himself to Mrs. Symmes' house on Wednesday with more eagerness than he would otherwise have shown had he not regarded her luncheon as a time-chaser.

Mrs. Symmes had been early widowed. Her experience of married life included a bare two years, her husband living a twelve-month longer than the friends of both had predicted. He was, so it was rumored, a charming fellow of rare artistic taste and discrimination, a dilettante, and a connoisseur of all things beautiful. So sensitively was he organized that inharmonies or discords of color, or any lack of artistic perception affected him acutely, often to the verge of illness, and always irritation. Although he permitted his wife no voice in the decoration and furnishing of either town or country house, almost desperately withheld it from her in fact, he could not control or even influence her taste in dress, and there were those who did not hesitate to whisper that Edith's costumes alone were quite sufficient to have caused his death.

After that event, Mrs. Symmes endured the low-toned harmonies of her husband's faultless taste for six months, and then declaring her environment depressing to her spirits, she refurnished the house from garret to cellar, perpetrating crimes in decoration which made the horrors of her toilets seem mere peccadillos.

Hayden was soon to realize this, for on arriving at her home on Wednesday he was shown to a drawing-room large in size but crowded with furniture. Little tables, chairs, footstools, anything which would serve as a stumbling-block, seemed to be placed in the direct path of the guest advancing toward his hostess.

Robert, seeing that it behooved him to walk as delicately as Agag, reached Mrs. Symmes without misadventure, and after exchanging the usual light-weight coin of conventional greeting, looked about him for a familiar face. Most of the people he knew only casually; but presently, he spied Mrs. Habersham and made his way toward her as rapidly as the manifold objects in his path permitted.

She was, as usual, in one of the shades of American Beauty, which she so much affected, and which were admirably suited to her, giving depth and opulence, the rich restfulness of color to her too sharply defined and restless beauty. Upon her breast was her silver butterfly and the enameled chains were about her throat.

"I have walked twice across this room," said Hayden triumphantly, after shaking hands with her, "and I haven't fallen once. If I came here often I should bring an ax, notch the furniture and then clear a path. There goes some one!" as a heavy stumble was heard. "I did better than that."

"Don't boast. Remember that it's the wicked who stand in slippery places," said Bea, with meaning. "But indeed, I am glad you got here. There is some distorted, goggle-eyed Chinese monster at my elbow, and on the table before me is an ornament which chills the marrow of my bones. I dare not look up."

Hayden gazed bravely about him. "I don't think I ever saw such a hideous room in my life," he said slowly and with conviction.

"There is only one room in the world uglier," Bea assured him, "and that is the dining-room; but they do say that the wall-paper in her bed-room is of a bright scarlet, with large lozenges representing green and blue parrots swinging in gilded cages."

Hayden laughed and shivered. "It takes strong nerves," he said. "Do you suppose there are people who come often?"

"Oh, dear me, yes," returned Mrs. Habersham. "One would dine in Inferno if the food were good. Her table is as perfect as her house and gowns are dreadful, and then Edith herself is very clever and amusing. Here she comes."

"The cause of this delay," smiled Mrs. Symmes in passing, "is Mrs. Ames. I'll give her just one minute more."

Bea smiled perfunctorily, and then turned on Hayden an alarmed face. "I never would have come to-day—never, if I had fancied she would be present. She will be sure to launch out on Marcia Oldham before luncheon is over. She never misses an opportunity. She has a mania on the subject."

Hayden glanced toward the door with curiosity. "Where is this pepper and vitriol old dame?" he asked, with elaborate carelessness.

"She has not come yet. Did you not hear Edith say that it is she for whom we are waiting? You will see her in a moment, though. She is always late; but she will come, never fear."

Her words were prophetic, for at that moment Mrs. Ames hurried into the room, a wiry, spare old woman with a small hooked nose and a jaw like a nut-cracker. The skin of her face was yellow and deeply wrinkled, her eyes were those of a fierce, untamed bird, and she was gowned—swathed is the more suitable word—in rusty black with a quantity of dangling fringes and many jingling chains.

Luncheon was announced immediately after her arrival, and to Hayden's dismay he found that it was served at small tables and that he was placed between Mrs. Ames and Mrs. Habersham, with Horace Penfield opposite smiling in faint satirical glee at the situation.

"I shall never forgive Edith Symmes for this, never," was Bea's indignant whisper in Hayden's ear. "But just the same, I shall not give that old witch a chance to air any of her grievances. You'll see. With your help and cooperation I intend to monopolize the conversation."

Robert hastily assured her that she could depend on him to the limit of his capacities, and together they seized and held the ball of conversation, occasionally tossing it from one to the other; but never permitting it for a moment to fall into either Penfield's or Mrs. Ames' hands.

Hayden pottered over this incident or that, dawdling through long-winded tales of travel, and when his recollection or invention flagged Mrs. Habersham introduced topics so inimical to Mrs. Ames' frequently aired views that this lady rose passionately to the fray. Woman's Suffrage, Socialism, the Decline of the Church, Bea, a conservative, flung upon the table and Mrs. Ames pounced upon them as a dog upon a bone, a radical of radicals.

Meantime, Horace Penfield had sat enjoying his luncheon with a cool placidity, and listening with a smile of faint amusement to the arguments which surged and eddied about him. He looked for the most part indifferent, although, perhaps, he was only patient.

At last, in an unguarded moment Mrs. Habersham paused for breath, and in the brief ensuing silence Penfield entered the conversation like a thin sharp wedge.

"What a fad those butterflies are among you lovely ladies," he said to Mrs. Habersham. "But yours are paler than most of them, more opaline. Why?"

"Because I wear red so frequently," she replied indifferently. "The purple and yellow butterflies would look horrid with my crimson frocks."

"I really think," said Penfield slowly, meeting her eyes with a cool, blank gaze, "that, saving your presence, Mrs. Habersham, Marcia Oldham has by far the handsomest set I have seen."

At this red rag, purposely fluttered as Hayden felt before the eyes of Mrs. Ames, that lady sniffed audibly and tossed her head, emitting at the same moment a faint, contemptuous cackle.

"Oh, no," Bea assured him with languor, although the scarlet burned in her cheek. "Marcia's are nothing to compare to Mrs. ——," mentioning the name of the London actress.

"Oh, I must differ from you." Penfield was suavely positive. "I am surprised that you should say that, for Miss Oldham's are quite the most artistic I have seen."

"Naturally Miss Oldham would have the handsomest set in the market, wouldn't she?" queried Mrs. Ames in what no doubt was intended to be a tone of innocent inquiry.

"Marcia's taste is very beautiful," said Mrs. Habersham coldly.

"And very extravagant, I understand." Mrs. Ames was started now; there was no stopping her. "If one wears beautiful things in these days one must expect to pay for them."

Mrs. Habersham shrugged her shoulders and turning to Hayden asked him when he had last seen his cousin Kitty Hampton; but Mrs. Ames' cracked voice rose above their low tones.

"I wish some one would explain to me—perhaps you can, Mr. Penfield—just how a young woman who hasn't a penny to her name can afford a superb necklace. Such things could not have occurred in my young days; but different times, different manners. Humph!"

Before Penfield could reply, Bea Habersham leaned across the table and addressed her clearly: "It seems to me that such imaginary and absurd behavior would be considered as reprehensible to-day as in the remote era you mention."

Mrs. Ames held her lorgnon to her eyes with one withered, yellow hand, each finger covered to the swollen knuckles with diamonds dim with dust, then she dropped it in her lap with another dry cackle and said with a complete change of tone, as if reverting to some new topic of conversation:

"Mr. Penfield was speaking of your friend, Miss Oldham, a moment or two ago, Mrs. Habersham. Perhaps you will be able to tell me the identity of the rather elderly, ordinary-looking man with whom I have seen her several times lately?"

It seemed to Hayden that Bea's face grew a shade paler, but his momentary apprehension gave way to a swift admiration for her poise, the casual and careless indifference with which she answered:

"I am sure I can't imagine, Mrs. Ames. Marcia has many friends, more I fancy than you dream of." He also felt a swift longing to take Horace Penfield by the scruff of his thin, craning neck and drop him from the window instead of permitting him to sit there calmly sipping his liqueur with that faint, amused smile as of gratified malice about his lips.

Then he drew a breath of relief. Every one was rising.

"You were magnificent," he whispered as he drew aside for Bea to pass.

She smiled gratefully at him. "Thank goodness, it's to be bridge now and not conversation."

A few minutes later they were all seated at the card-tables and except for the occasional low-toned voicing of the conventions of the game, a grateful silence reigned.

But at the close of the afternoon, just as they were leaving, Bea asked Hayden if he would not drive down-town with her and let her drop him at his apartment. He accepted gladly, hoping in the brief intimacy of the drive homeward together that she would speak of Marcia.

But for a season, Mrs. Habersham cared only to discuss the scene they had just left; the fortunes of the game; the excellencies of this player, the atrocities of that; the eccentricities of their hostess and her apparently ineradicable passion for ugliness.

"It is true," she assured him, "about the red paper and the green and blue parrots in gilt cages; a woman who has seen it swore upon her honor."

They had by this time turned into the Park, and Bea leaned forward to inhale the fresher air. Night was falling fast; the spreading lawn-spaces, the dense shrubbery, the irregularly disposed trees were no longer distinct, but melted together, indistinguishable and unfeatured blurs in the deepening twilight.

Bea drooped her brow on her hand and sat in silence for a few moments. Then she turned to Hayden, her lips compressed, her hands clasped tightly together.

"Isn't it awful! Isn't it dreadful!" she cried. "To think of that old witch of Endor saying all those horrible untrue things about poor lovely Marcia, and worse, spreading them broadcast?"

Hayden lifted his chin in quick determination. "Mrs. Habersham, I can not be ignorant of what you refer to. I have, to my annoyance"—he hesitated and then deliberately chose another word—"to my pain, heard various hints and innuendoes before of the same kind. Now, why is this? Just malice, envy, jealousy? Why"—his indignation vibrated through his voice—"should one so lovely, so above reproach, as Miss Oldham, be the victim of that sort of thing?"

"Because," said Bea bitterly, "Marcia attends strictly to her own business and does not request any advice or permit any interference. Oh, Mr. Hayden, it is useless to tell you what a dear she is. I know from what you have just said that you do, you must admire her. No one could help it," she added, with a simple and loyal conviction. "So you may understand how difficult it is for us who love her, for the very few of us who are in some measure in her confidence, to have to accept the fact that there are certain things in her life which appear odd, which are not—" She broke off, looking at him uncertainly.

"Mrs. Habersham—" Hayden had turned about in his seat so that he could gaze more directly at her, and now, although his face had grown pale, he smiled down upon her his charming smile. "Mrs. Habersham, let me go further and tell you that I have never met a woman in my life toward whom I have felt as I do toward Miss Oldham. Why not put it frankly and tell you the exact truth? I love her."

Bea's eyes brightened delightedly and then grew a little sad. "I suspected as much," she said gently, "and yet, I hardly knew whether you had the courage or not. Now," impulsively moving nearer to him, "I will be as frank as you have been. Nothing in all the world, nothing would please me half so much as for you and Marcia to love each other. I don't know you awfully well, Mr. Hayden, and yet," she laughed, "I do in a way. True, we have only met a few times; but for many years I have been well acquainted with Kitty's 'Bobby,' But," and her dark eyes smiled on him with a soft shining in their depths, "I think that just now when there is all this unkind whispering it is a beautiful and courageous thing for you to love Marcia, and I want to assure you that all the support I can give to your cause is yours."

Her ungloved hand lay on her knee, and Hayden lifted it and lightly kissed it. "Dear lady," he began, his voice a little broken.

"Oh, wait!" She lifted the same hand in admonition. "My support may not amount to anything. Reserve your gratitude. Marcia is extremely reticent about her own affairs, but, nevertheless, I can give you a crumb of comfort. No matter what every one says, I am sure that she and Wilfred Ames are not engaged and that she does not begin to see as much of him as people think; and I do know"—again her voice was shaken with indignation—"that there wouldn't begin to be as much of this unpleasant talk if it were not for his mother's wicked, frantic fears. Why, what does she wish? She might be glad, proud to have such a daughter-in-law as Marcia. Oh, Mr. Hayden, I can't talk about it. It makes me too angry."

"Mrs. Habersham"—Hayden spoke with that quiet, forceful determination which was under all his impulses the real key-note of his character—"I desire nothing so much in the world as to be of assistance to Miss Oldham. Can't we"—his smile had never been more winning—"can't we clear away these cobwebs of mystery which surround her?"

"Ah," cried Bea Habersham, tears in her eyes, "we who love her all long to do that."

"Then you will help me?"

"Oh, you give me hope that it is a possibility," with one of her radiant changes of mood. "But," and she fell again into depression, "I can not help you. You must do it all, all yourself."



CHAPTER IX

Even to the impatient heart of youth the longed-for, entreated to-morrow comes with a suddenness which has its elements of shock. The Thursday which Hayden had regarded as so remote was actually here, and he, opening his eyes to the fact after a sound night's rest, was aware of that faint shrinking which comes to us all in that moment of embarkation upon the unknown and uncharted.

This day, he felt, was to be a day of revelations; in an hour, a moment, he might, nay he was sure that he would, learn certain facts, touch certain clues which might change and direct his whole future existence. As he dressed he caused the various circumstances of the past few weeks to marshal themselves in orderly array and pass in review before him.

He, by some irony of chance, had been so fortunate as to discover the wonderful lost Mariposa, the Veiled Mariposa; but although a vast fortune lay before his eyes, within his grasp, he was withheld from profiting by this strange stumble upon Golconda by the intangible potent arm of the law. And all his diligent efforts to find the owners of the property had been in vain. Then he had come to New York, largely to enjoy a long-anticipated vacation, and before he had had time to make definite plans and decide upon the best methods of prosecuting his search for the owners of the mine, he heard, by the merest chance, of a fortune-teller who called herself Mariposa and who always appeared veiled. This fanciful symbolism might of course be the merest coincidence; but Hayden could not so view it. It was too significant not to smack of design.

And then, by another curious turn of the wheel, he had met a strange and lovely lady with a chain of jeweled butterflies about her throat, a great silver butterfly upon her breast. What significance could be attached to them? Apparently none. They seemed the fad of several great ladies and a very beautiful and extravagant fad; but what was the inner meaning, if indeed there was any? Yet, look at the matter dispassionately as he would, he could not rid himself of the idea that these delicately fashioned, fluttering things had a significance. Well, perhaps the day would disclose it. There was no use in his attempting to arrive at a solution of these enigmas. He could but await the pleasure of destiny. And further, there was that mysterious telephone message, a still unsolved enigma. Daily, he had waited for another message from the golden voiced unknown, but so far, all his waiting and hoping had met with a barren reward.

Then his thoughts reverted to his conversation with Mrs. Habersham, and his heart rose buoyantly with hope. She had, at least, assured him of one thing, and that was that there was nothing definite in these reports of Marcia's engagement to Wilfred Ames; and there were secret intimations prompted not of his vanity, but of a belief in the sympathetic understanding existing between Marcia and himself, which confirmed him in his determination to make the most of a fighting chance.

He managed, with these reflections, his correspondence and the various details of some business matters, to pass the morning; but when at three o'clock he made his way to the Mariposa's apartment he found himself to his own disgust in an unwonted state of excitement, which, as usual with him, revealed itself only in a more calm and leisurely demeanor; but when on stepping from the elevator he realized that his hands were like ice, he was for the moment irritated at his lack of nerve, and then he quickly bolstered himself up with the reflection that the day of destiny comes only once in a lifetime and one would have arrived at a state of vegetable stolidity to meet it unmoved. Then he laughed at himself for clinging so obstinately to the belief that this was the day of his destiny, and this laughter cleared his mental atmosphere. He was himself again, in command of his self-assurance and good spirits.

His ring was answered immediately by the trim maid who conducted him through a narrow hall and into a small reception-room where she requested him to wait while she informed her mistress of his presence.

Left alone he glanced curiously about him. There was certainly no mystery here. The room was agreeably light and sunshiny. It was furnished with several comfortable chairs, and a large round table in the center of the room. Upon this were scattered some of the latest magazines surrounding a vase of fresh and fragrant flowers.

Hayden turned over the pages of one of the books for a moment and then the dark-eyed, rosy, white-capped maid reappeared and announced that Mademoiselle Mariposa would see him at once.

A few paces down the narrow hall, she drew aside the curtain before the door of mademoiselle's consulting-room, and stood aside for Hayden to enter, letting the portiere fall noiselessly behind him. But Robert instead of advancing and taking a chair, although there was none to invite him to do so, for the room was empty, stood transfixed upon the threshold, almost open-mouthed.

Ah, here was the atmosphere he had so sadly missed in the small parlor. This room was large, and it seemed to one entering it for the first time to extend indefinitely, for upon the walls, against a soft, low-toned background, were painted the bare trunks and branches of leafless trees, a forest of them apparently, so admirable and so illusive was the perspective. The eye seemed to plunge into interminable forest vistas of dead leaves covering the ground and even floating on dim, moveless pools. The rounded ceiling was painted with silver-edged clouds, and the only light fell from a skylight like a great yellow moon.

When Hayden finally drew his attention from the walls and ceiling sufficiently to realize that he was not in the autumn woods, he noticed that this apartment was scantily furnished. Two or three chairs, a small table or so. On one of these tables was a bronze tripod upholding a crystal ball and a silk cushion upon which to rest one's hand during a palm-reading. On another table were several astrological charts and small books, presumably works of reference.

As he still stood motionless there was a slight rustle at the door, the curtain parted and the Mariposa entered clad as always in her graceful black gown, the mantilla and the mask. It was the most effective of disguises and yet, it was negatived, nullified by a positive force of personality so unmistakable and definite that the disguise instead of concealing served more subtly to reveal and even accentuate individuality.

"How do you do, Mr. Hayden?" ignoring the name he had signed to his note and speaking with a marked Spanish accent meanwhile seating herself at the table holding the crystal globe.

"Ah!" cried Hayden, starting forward excitedly. "The waif of the wind! The lovely disembodied voice! How entirely delightful!"

Never had he been more interested and with every moment that passed, he was experiencing a pleasant sense of reassurance. For days he had been putting from him the latent but constant fear that Marcia Oldham and Mademoiselle Mariposa were identical; but a personal atmosphere is unmistakable, and in spite of her excellent and efficient disguise, Hayden felt instinctively that this was no delicate and wistful violet, but a gorgeous tropical bloom swaying from the tallest trees and exulting in torrid sunshine and fierce tempest. Her voice, too, was deeper and fuller, and the accent was, beyond question, genuine.

"I am afraid it is impossible to disguise my accent," she laughed but did not seem inclined to pursue the subject further. "Do you prefer a palm-reading, the crystal-gazing or both?" she asked, and although the words were the usual commonplace phrases that she probably repeated a dozen times a day, uttered monotonously enough, yet through some vibrant, ringing quality her most ordinary utterances were endued with life.

"I hardly know," he said in answer to her question, and falling in with her mood. "What would you advise?"

"Why not try the crystal?" she said. "You will, I am sure, find it more interesting." Without waiting for his answer, she lifted the crystal ball from its tripod to the silken cushion, and began intently to gaze into its depths.

And now Hayden drew a sigh of intense relief. There was no longer any ground for the shadow of a doubt, for the hands of Mademoiselle Mariposa were not the hands of Marcia Oldham. Marcia's hands, as he had particularly noticed, were small and white, with very pink palms, and long, pointed, rosy-tipped fingers; while this woman's hands were smooth and creamy, the color of old ivory, with square fingers.

For a few moments there was silence between them, and then the fortune-teller began to speak in low familiar contralto tones, tones so near the brink of music that one expected trills and ripples of melody.

"I see mountains, yes, mountains, great bare hills; they change and vary in appearance, but there are always mountains; and I see wide burning deserts stretching on and on, and now there are forests, dark, impenetrable, vast forests. You have traveled much in foreign lands, senor. Now bridges and railroads, oh quite clearly, and natives—Chinese, blacks, Indians—much work in building railroads in many lands. Ah, clouds, clouds, clouds! Now they clear a little. Oh, senor, it is mountains again, ranges of them. They become more clear, always more clear, and now your figure. I see you very plainly. You are in the mountains. You follow a little trail. It winds curiously among the rocks, twisting, turning, occasionally descending, often doubling on itself. Clouds again, clouds! Ah, now I see you again and in the broad sunshine. You are greatly excited. Your face is white, your eyes are shining—and your hands are full of nuggets, golden nuggets, free gold, senor; it shines and gleams like fire in the sun. Wonderful! I have rarely had so clear a vision!"

Hayden deliberately leaned forward and lifted the crystal from the silken cushion to its tripod. "I thought so," he said. "There, mademoiselle, I believe we can talk better with that out of the way. What language do you prefer? English or Spanish?"

She laughed. Airy, full laughter, trembling like her voice on the brink of music and falling in sparkling cascades into an ocean of melody. "But you are bold!" she cried. "Bold as brass."

"Not at all," said Hayden politely. "All this crystal-gazing is very interesting, very pretty and effective, and serves admirably to show just as much of your hand as you desire me to know. But you forget, mademoiselle, that you revealed your rather wide knowledge of my affairs the other evening over the telephone. By the way, mademoiselle, it's sheer curiosity on my part and I beg you to pardon it," he spoke a little diffidently, "but why 'mademoiselle' with Mariposa? Why not 'senorita?'"

"Euphony," she laughed, "nothing more, I assure you. It is more musical."

"Exactly. But tell me, mademoiselle, shall we not take up matters where we dropped them the other evening? You have no objection I hope to discussing business?"

She appeared to ponder this proposition a moment. "Bah!" she cried suddenly. "You are right, quite right. It is an opportunity not to be wasted. But one moment, I can not talk with this on."

She swept off the mantilla and threw it aside. Her brown hair was rolled and twisted in great coils about her head, there were tendrils of it which sprang thickly about her brow and neck. The mask which concealed her face was held by a ribbon tied at the back of her head. She pulled at this but only succeeded in knotting it, and with an exclamation of impatience, she bent toward Hayden, murmuring:

"Please, senor."

He skilfully untied the knot, but while at this occupation the tendrils, shining like gold in the warm, yellow glow of the moon skylight, curled about his fingers, electric, tingling, leaving a faint, stinging remembrance.

"Oh, thank you."

She pulled off the mask and tossed it aside with a long breath of relief, and looked up, encountering Hayden's curious and admiring gaze. In that moment of unveiling, he saw before him a lady of high emprise.

"A diamond-drill of a woman!" cried Robert to himself; and the steel of him paid her gallant homage, homage all the more sincere in that she asked it not, neither craved nor stooped to win it. All she asked was the game, the game with the odds against her. Cool, resourceful, she was concerned with neither doubts nor scruples. To such natures all roads lead to Rome. Before them lie the city of their hopes. That the roads are rocky and beset with unknown perils does not alarm, deter, or even particularly interest them. They see only Rome.

In that brief scrutiny permitted himself by a well-bred man, Hayden decided that she was a Gipsy. Her rather short face, with the full, square chin, was of a clear brown; her intense and vivid eyes were green, a beautiful and rare shade of olive. Her mouth was large, merry and inscrutable, with a particularly short upper lip, a mouth as reckless as Mercutio's. It would be difficult to say which impression predominated, beauty or force of character, or if, indeed, one could be disassociated from the other. Divorced from the sheer individuality, the power which she expressed in every movement, every line of face and figure, would she have been beautiful at all?

While Robert considered this question the Mariposa looked at her watch, then touched an electric bell. It was answered by her private secretary, a dark, pale, colorless young woman whom Hayden had not seen before.

"Eunice," said the Mariposa carelessly, "I do not wish to be disturbed for an hour. Whoever calls within that time, tell them that it is impossible for me to give them a reading to-day. Make other appointments for them at as early a date as possible. That is all." The depressed young woman bowed and withdrew.

"It is exactly half-after three, Mr. Hayden." She snapped her watch shut. "Now we can talk. I fancy you are quite right. The crystal really did not—what do you say—did not, cut very much ice."

"You think then that, as you suggested the other evening, we shall probably find an interest in common?" he said.

"Undoubtedly. Several of them, perhaps."

He bent nearer. "Including butterflies?" he suggested.

She showed her white and even teeth. "Including butterflies," she repeated.

"But first," he said impetuously, "do allay the curiosity which, I assure you, would otherwise continue to come between me and any business matters we might discuss."

She looked at him with an inquiry which held a sort of prescient reserve. He could see that if not actually on guard, she held herself in readiness to be so.

"What do you mean?"

"You," he said daringly. "I have sat here watching and waiting to catch you tripping in that faultless accent of yours. It must be real. I have lived too much in Southern countries to be deceived."

She looked gratified, her pleasure showing itself in a deepening color. "It was adopted for business purposes, now it has become second nature. I, too, have lived much in Southern countries. The Romany strain, my mother was a Gipsy. You are a brother, Mr. Hayden, if not in blood, in kind. That kind that is so much more than kin. You are here to-day, there to-morrow. The doom of the wanderer is on you, and the blessing. Take it on the word of a fortune-teller." She spread out her hands smiling her wide, gay smile with a touch of irony, of feminine experience, the serpent-bought wisdom of Eve in it. "You know what it means to hear the red gods calling, calling; to know that no matter what binds you, whether white arms or ropes of gold, you have to go."

"You show yourself a true daughter of the road, senorita, and a student of Kipling. We brothers of the wild are usually not much given to books."

"That is true," she assented. "I have heard them say: 'We know cities and deserts, men and women of every race. What can books give us?' But I tell them: 'Everything can pay us toll if we ask it. A star in the sky, the tiniest grain of sand on the beach. We can demand their secrets and they will not withhold them.'" She mused a moment. "One must learn from all sources, knock upon every door. When I weary of gaining wisdom from the ant or considering a serpent on the rock, or the way of a man with a maid, why, I turn to books. They are my solace, my narcotics, my friends, and my teachers. I take a few, a very few with me on any rough journey I may be making; but when I am here or in London or Paris, any place where I may be living for months at a time, I have my books about me."

"But why do you tell fortunes?" asked Hayden involuntarily, and immediately flushed to the roots of his hair. There was the vaguest something in her smiling gaze, the merest flicker of an eyelash, which convicted him of impertinence. "Forgive me. I—I beg your pardon," he stammered.

She ignored his apologies. "Some day I will tell you," she whispered, going through a pantomime of looking about her cautiously as if it were a state secret of the most tremendous importance. "But we have talked enough about myself now, senor; the topic for discussion to-day is butterflies."

"An interesting subject might be The Veiled Mariposa," he said.

"Just so. Why beat about the bush?" He felt that she disdained subterfuges, although when necessary for her purposes, he was assured that she could use diplomacy, as a master of fence might his foils. "You, Mr. Hayden, have been lucky enough to find the lost Mariposa, the lost Veiled Mariposa. Is it not so? But you are in a peculiarly tantalizing position. You can not convert gold into gold. Strange. It sounds so simple. But your hands are tied."

"Perfectly true," Hayden assented.

"Then to put the matter in a nutshell and to descend from metaphor to plain business facts, you can not organize a company and begin to operate the mine or rather group of mines, for the reason that you can not secure a clear title, and what is worse, you have not, so far, succeeded in finding any trace of the present owners."

"You seem to know a lot about the matter," said Hayden pleasantly, "but do you know, I think that you are wrong on one point. I think, indeed I am quite sure, that I have found the owners, at least one of them."

"Yes?" Her tone still questioned. "And what then?"

"Well," he went slowly now, "there are some questions I would like to ask them. They may regard it as an awful impertinence; but it would be a lot of satisfaction to me."

"What would be the nature of those questions?"

"Among other things"—he still spoke slowly, seeming to consider his words—"I should like to ask them why, for years now, they should have let a valuable property remain idle. Even if they have the wealth of Midas it is still a puzzle. No one is ever quite rich enough, you know, and down there is Tom Tiddler's ground to their hand."

"Well, what do you make of it—this puzzle?" She was looking steadily at a ring she was turning about on her finger.

"This!" He leaned forward. For the life of him he could not keep a faint ring of triumph out of his tone. "This, senorita. There is only one reasonable, credible solution—" He paused cruelly.

"Yes?" Her eyes were on his, eager, almost voracious. "Yes?"

"The present owners can not locate the mine, or else they think it not worth the trouble and expense of attempting to do so. That they have allowed the estate to lie idle and in a measure go to waste is also curious and puzzling. I can not explain that."

"Admitting such a thing for the sake of argument," she asked, "what then?"

"Well, I think we will have several things to say to each other then. For, if either of my suppositions is anywhere near correct their hands are tied just as much as mine, so I think we shall have to talk business, do not you?"

"I quite agree with you and I should add, the sooner the better."

"The sooner the better," he echoed, with emphasis.

She nodded. Again, she studied her nails, pink as almond-flowers, with interest.

"And you really believe, you are quite convinced, that this lost or abandoned mine is all that tradition says of it?" she asked at last.

"More," he replied laconically. "I have prospected over every foot of it, and I know that it contains a fortune. A fortune"—he struck the table with the palm of his hand—"beyond the dreams of avarice."

There were dancing sparkles in her green eyes. "Let me congratulate you, 'O gallant knight, gaily bedight, in sunshine or in shadow,' that you have been lucky enough to find Eldorado."

She rose in a sweeping impetuosity, drew up her slender height, and made him a curtsy, a flower bending buoyantly to the breeze, and springing upright again.

"But"—two or three sliding steps of the fandango, and then in her chair—"where did you find Eldorado? That's the history a daughter of the road wants to know. Is it truly 'over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow?'"

She swept him along on the tide of her high spirits; her laughter ran silver cascades down to the ocean of melody; her sun-flecked eyes held the heart-warming glow, the stimulation of wine. She was a breeze blowing from the South.

"The romance!" she cried. "Behold an anomaly! Some one actually longing for a traveler's tale. Begin!" Her voice rang imperious, alluring.

Hayden almost caught at the table, a giddiness of the mind, perhaps of the senses, confused him. His face was a shade paler.

"It is too plain and rough a tale to be told except as a matter of business. You are kind; but I should not venture to bore you."

She accepted temporary defeat nonchalantly. "But you"—she did not change her position even by the movement of a finger, and yet, the whole expression of her figure became suddenly tense as a strung bow—"are you so sure that you could ever find your way thither again?"

He looked at her in surprise. "You give me very little credit for ordinary common sense, mademoiselle," he said shortly. "Of course, I made a map, and have any number of photographs." Immediately, he could have bitten his tongue.

"Ah, of course, naturally."

Her indifference, the absent-minded answer reassured him. He did not notice that her whole figure had relaxed.

There was a faint tap on the door and the subdued secretary stood on the threshold. "It is half-after four o'clock, mademoiselle, and your next client is waiting."

Hayden rose. "Time's up," he said. "But, senorita, when do you think the heirs will be ready to talk business?"

"I think I can promise you an interview within a very short time; and in the meanwhile I will communicate with you. Oh, by the way, in private and domestic life, my name is Carrothers, Ydo Carrothers. Y-d-o," spelling it, "pronounced Edo."

"Ydo," he exclaimed. "It is a name made in Spain; in color it is red and yellow, and it smells of jasmine."

"Yes." She laughed at his description. "The Romany strain again, you see."

"One moment," he insisted. "How did you know my traveler's tale? Was it Penfield?"

"Never mind. It is sufficient that I know it. Good-by." She held out her hand. "You can't say I haven't told you a good fortune, can you?"

As Hayden passed through the narrow hall he saw sitting in the reception-room the next client—the gray-haired man with whom Marcia had dined that evening at the Gildersleeve. But a further surprise awaited him; for just as he reached the door leading from the apartment the rosy and smiling little maid was admitting Wilfred Ames. Hayden almost ran into him, and Ames, with a stare, muttered a surly recognition and passed on in.



CHAPTER X

"Quite right."

Hayden regarded his calendar approvingly. The large red and gold letters stared at him proclaiming arrogantly: "Every day is the best day of the year." And was it not true? Yesterday had proved indeed a day of destiny. It had brought him the assurance of a hope, the confirmation of a hesitant belief that the owners of the lost Mariposa were within reach and, better still, were not entirely masters of the situation. And yesterday, too, he had met Ydo; and, perhaps, Hayden's thoughts had been as much occupied with her as with his discovered but not possessed Eldorado.

But Ydo herself was a sufficient excuse for that. And this was another day. A daring thought came to him. Why not assist Fate and make it the best day in the year—a day that should be Marcia's. At this brilliant idea he looked at his watch and then rushed to the telephone. Surely Marcia, even conscientious Marcia who worked painstakingly at her pretty Little water-colors every day, would not have left for her studio. He would throw dice with Destiny again to-day and push his luck. With this determination, he rang up the residence of Mrs. Oldham. There was a moment or two of delay, and then Marcia's voice answered. Hayden mentioned the beauty of the day—it was overcast—the charm of this soft and mild weather—an east wind blew piercingly—and diffidently assumed that after a day in her studio, she would as usual take the air by walking home through the Park.

Yes-s-s-s, she probably would.

Then since he had hoped to call upon her mother that afternoon, might he not join her and walk up with her, and would she not be leaving her brushes and canvases early, at half-after four, for instance.

Yes-s-s, he said four o'clock, did he not? Fate again honored him, she would be at the Plaza then calling on a friend.

Hayden had won in his dice-throwing and Fate took defeat handsomely, granting him his desires and throwing a favor or two for lagnappe. By four o'clock the wind had veered, the clouds no longer betokened rain, broken spars of sunshine dazzled over the gold of the Sherman statue, sparkled in the harness of prancing horses, and brightened the whiteness of the great hotel. It was early in March, which, by the way, had decided to enter like a meek little lamb this year instead of advancing with the mien of an angry and roaring lion. The air was cool and fresh and yet held all manner of soft, indescribable intimations of spring. The sky was a sheet of pale gold, the trees were a purple mist against it.

Hayden drew a long breath of happiness as Marcia's steps fell in with his; the sense of contentment and well-being which her mere presence always afforded him seemed the more soothing and potent this afternoon than ever before. Since yesterday, there had run high in his veins the fever of acquisition, and Ydo's personality had disturbed and stimulated until she had wrought in him a sort of mental confusion. But Marcia at his side, smiling in the shadow of her plumed hat, the familiar violets nestling in her dark furs, seemed the visible embodiment of all these soft, sweet intimations of spring. Not yet jocund, as spring come into her own crowned with flowers and laughing through her silver rain; but a wistful spring still held in the thraldom of winter.

"What have you been doing that makes you look a little pale?" asked Hayden tenderly.

"Am I pale?" She smiled at him. "I dare say. I have been painting the greater part of every day and going out a good deal in the evening."

"What an idler I must seem to you who are always so occupied," he said.

"Not at all. I, too, take vacations. But tell me how you have been idling lately."

"I idled, if you call it that," he said, "yesterday afternoon at the wonderful fortune-teller's."

"Oh, you have seen Ydo?" Marcia lifted her head involuntarily, and then meeting his surprised gaze, the color flooded her cheeks. It kept on rolling up in waves.

Seeing her embarrassment, he was at pains to suppress his astonishment.

"Yes," he said as naturally as he possibly could under the circumstances. "Yes, she gave me quite a long reading. Isn't that the professional word for it—reading?"

"I—I believe so." She had not entirely recovered herself. "And are you quite convinced of her powers?"

He gave a short laugh. "Oh, quite. More than convinced. I never should question them. Mine is the fate of the scoffer. The most rabid persecutor is merely the reverse side of the bigoted proselyter. Upon me rests not the curse that follows the tolerant. They get nowhere. 'Because thou art neither hot nor cold I spew thee from my mouth.'"

"Really!" It was plain she was a little puzzled, and took refuge in the conveniently inexpressive "really." "Did she tell you a good fortune?"

"How can I say? Fortune is always in the future."

"You are teasing me and telling me nothing," she declared, "and you are laughing, laughing, too, as if over some secret and mysterious joke."

"I am laughing," he said, suddenly serious, "but not over any of the revelations of Mademoiselle Mariposa, I can assure you; and to show you my faith in her prophecies, I am going to tell you something." He was grave enough now. "And yet, I wonder—perhaps—"

"Perhaps what?"

"Perhaps you will find no interest in what I want to say."

She looked up at him quickly, surprise in her glance. "How absurd! I do not see why you say such things. Why should you fancy that I would not be interested in anything you have to tell me?"

They had turned down a narrow lane of trees, and the skies, a deeper and more luminous gold, were in a net of bare, black twigs. The wind bore the fragrance of Marcia's violets past Hayden's nostrils.

"But you may not feel so when I tell you that I love you, Marcia." His voice low and unsteady thrilled her heart. "I realize the rashness of the whole thing; but I do love you, Marcia."

There was a moment's silence, a silence when Hayden's heart-beats sounded louder than the patter of their feet on the concrete pavement or the distant and mighty roar of the city—and then Marcia lifted her eyes to his.

In a moment the miracle had happened. Above them stretched the same gold sky in its intricate and broken nets, the wind blew softly; but they two had stepped across the boundaries of commonplace days straight into Arcady. Flowers bloomed, birds sang, and the soul of the spring was in their hearts. But, curiously enough, though they were in Arcady, they were also in the Park. Hayden looked up the little lane; north and south marched an unending line of people. They were in Arcady, but deprived of its ancient privilege of sylvan and umbrageous solitude.

She was the first to speak. "Why is it absurd?" And her clear voice trembled a little.

"How can it be, as things stand, anything but absurd?" he answered bitterly. "I am simply an engineer on my vacation, who when that is over will return to the wilds. Oh, Marcia, how can I in common decency ask you to marry me? I can not yet, but I do ask you to let me love you, to forgive me for telling you of my feeling for you, and believe me when I tell you that I would not have had the courage to mention the subject if I did not feel almost sure of a change of fortune. I don't want to tell you just yet. I'm trying not to tell you; but dearest, loveliest Marcia, I believe I'm on the eve of success. I can almost close my fingers around it, and then you will let me tell you I love you, won't you, dearest? Yes, laugh at me, I don't mind."

"But suppose, just suppose this wonderful fortune never does materialize," she said half-teasingly but still tremulously, a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. "What then?"

"Never suppose it. It can't help it," he cried confidently. "Why even now I can see particles of gold in the air. To-morrow, next day, the day afterward, we shall have our cake. Will you eat it with me, Marcia, if it's a nice, brown, plum-y cake?"

"You make too many conditions," she said demurely. "I don't care for very rich cake myself. Suppose the cake should not turn out particularly well in the baking? Wouldn't you offer me a piece anyway—Bobby?"

Again he looked up the path and down the path; people still hastening to and fro. Arcady was infested with toilers hurrying home to supper.

"I'd try not to," he said manfully, keeping his eyes resolutely away from hers. "Oh, Marcia, I can't be certain, I'd try not to. I couldn't bear to see you eating underdone cake. It would only mean misery to you. Your manner of life—"

"My manner of life!" she interrupted him scornfully. "Ah, what is my manner of life! Do you fancy that I am deaf as a post and blind as a bat? Do you think that I do not know some of the things that are spoken of me, by Mrs. Ames, for instance, or Horace Penfield, or even Edith Symmes? Do you fancy any word of that tittle-tattle escapes me? Sometimes it is repeated, or hinted in malice; sometimes as from Bea or Kitty in fright, as a warning, almost a prayer. I know that I lay myself open to gossip; but I can not help it, at least at present. It is impossible for me to alter things just now."

"I know," he murmured tenderly. "I am sure of it. I have realized something of this from the first moment that I met you. But always since that moment I could stake my life on this, that any—any mystery that might seem to exist was not of your making or choosing. And I want to assure you of something, to make you believe it if necessary; and that is, dear, dear Marcia, if you never choose to unravel the tangle I shall still be content."

She looked at him a moment in absolute, speechless wonder, and then tears, happy tears brimmed in her eyes. "Oh, how glad I shall be to unravel it!" She breathed deeply. "How glad! Wait a little—a week, a fortnight. Ah!" She caught herself up hastily. "Come, see how late! It is growing dark and the lights are beginning to twinkle out, and they tell me, even if you will not, that it is time I ran home and got dressed. I'm to dine at Bea Habersham's to-night. You must come in with me when we reach home and let mother give you a cup of tea. You are a tremendous favorite of hers; she says you are wonderfully witty. And then you can drive as far as Bea's with me, and I will have the chauffeur take you on home. Will you?"

"Will I? Will I? Thank you very much, Miss Oldham, for your amiability in Suggesting such a thing; but I could not possibly take advantage of your kindness." If the wit of this sally may be judged by the manner in which it was received Hayden had just uttered one of the great bon-mots of the ages.

"I hope," said Marcia presently, a touch of apprehension in her tone, "that some one has been to see mother this afternoon. Poor dear! She always feels a little aggrieved if no one comes."

"Let us appease any possible disappointment she may have suffered by taking her a present," suggested Hayden, fired by inspiration. "Women, children, every one likes presents, do they not? Come, let us find shops."

"What an adventurer you are!" laughed Marcia, letting him lead her across the street, a confusion crowded with swiftly moving vehicles and cars, for they had now left the twilight shadows and comparative seclusion of the Park and were walking down the noisy thoroughfare.

"You will have to make a quick decision," she added as they came upon a region of many brilliant shops and sidewalks crowded with people. "What will you take her, fruit or flowers?"

But Hayden was too happy to consider any topic with gravity. "We will take her a swanboat, or one of the Hesperidian apples, or the Golden Fleece."

And although Marcia spent herself in urging him to stick to the conservative fruit and flowers, he insisted on following his own vagrant fancy, and at last decided upon an elaborate French basket of pale-blue satin covered with shirrings of fine tulle. The lid was a mass of artificial flowers, violets and delicate pink roses, and within the satin-lined depths was a bunch of Hamburg grapes.

This, when finally and carefully wrapped, made a huge package; but Hayden insisted on carrying it, assuring Marcia that every one they met would be sure that he was carrying home the turkey for their Sunday dinner. He bore it ostentatiously, and took particular glee in any passing attention they excited.

"You act as if you were twenty, instead of well—let me guess your age," looking at him with keen scrutiny. "About thirty-five," said Marcia cruelly.

He stopped short to gaze at her with pained reproach. "I am Youth! Incarnate Youth, just eighteen. No doubt to your dulled materialistic vision I appear to wear a coat and hat. Is that true?" with polite, tolerant patience.

"It certainly appears that way to me," she replied. "What do you imagine yourself to be wearing?"

"And I dare say," he continued still patiently, "that you also fancy you and I are strolling about in one of the shopping districts of New York?"

"Yes," nodding affirmatively. "Where else?"

"Wretched, purblind girl! Thirty-five indeed! Why, I am eighteen, and clad in the hide of a leopard with a wreath of roses on my brow, and you, sweet Oenone, are wandering with me on the slopes of Ida—and we are taking your mother, not one, but a peck of golden apples."

"All things considered," said Marcia significantly, "I am glad we have reached our own door."

They found Mrs. Oldham in good spirits in consequence of having seen a number of people who had sufficient tact duly to admire her new costume worn for the first time that afternoon. She had given much consideration to all the effects of the picture she wished to create, and now sat in an especial chair in an especial part of the room, a vision in pale gray and orchid tints most skilfully mingled. Her feet, in orchid silk stockings, and slippers adorned with great choux of gray chiffon, looked on their footstool as if they were a part of the decorations of the room and had never served the utilitarian purpose of conveyance.

"Oh, I am glad to see you!" she cried, peering past Marcia to Hayden who followed, almost obscured by his great package. She stretched out a hand for him to take, not disarranging her pose by rising and thus spoiling the composition. "Marcia, you're dreadfully late, as usual," a touch of fretfulness in her voice.

"I know," replied her daughter; "and now, I'm going to leave Mr. Hayden to you. Give him some tea, won't you? I'm dining at the Habershams, you know, and he will drive down with me after a while."

"Of course I'll give Mr. Hayden some tea. Send in some hot water, Marcia." She leaned forward, still careful not to move her feet and fussed with the tea things on the table by her side. "I am very glad to see you," she murmured again. "Ah, Mr. Hayden, if it were not for my friends I should be a very lonely woman. You understand, of course, that I do not complain. Marcia is the dearest girl that ever was, so lovely and attractive. Oh, dear, yes. But," with an upward glance of resignation, "quite young people are apt to be thoughtless, you know, and Marcia's social life is so much to her, and indeed, I am selfish enough to be truly glad that it is so; it really is a great bond between dear Wilfred and herself; but of course it leaves me much alone; and it is not good for me to be thrown back on myself and my own sad thoughts so much. Mr. Oldham always recognized that fact. 'Change, constant diversion is an Absolute necessity to one of your sensitive, high-strung nature,' he would so often say, but," with a long-drawn sigh, "no one thinks enough about me to feel that way now."

"Don't say that," said Hayden cheerfully. "I may not be any one, but I've been thinking about you. Look! I carried this enormous bundle through the streets just for you. Be careful. It's heavy."

She flushed with pleasure through her delicately applied rouge, and stretching out her hands for her gift began eagerly to unwind the various tissue-papers which concealed it. The last of these discarded, she placed the basket in the middle of the table and spent herself in ecstatic phrases, melting from pose to pose of graceful admiration.

"Ah, Mr. Hayden," with one of her archest glances, "you remind me so much of Mr. Oldham." Hayden had a swift, mental picture of that grim old pirate of finance, as represented by his portraits and photographs, his shrewd, rugged old face surrounded by Horace Greeley whiskers. "He never came home without bringing me something. Sometimes it was just a flower, or some fruit, and again it was a jewel. You can't fancy, Mr. Hayden, no words of mine can express to you his constant thought and care for me. You take lemon in your tea, do you not? I thought so. I always remember those little things about my friends. And he had such faith in my business judgment, too. He would often discuss business with me and ask my opinion on this or that matter; and he always, without exception, acted on my advice. He used to say—so foolish of him—that he could not understand why he should have been so favored as to have found a combination of beauty and brains in one woman."

"It is rare, but as I understand now, not impossible." Hayden took his cue nobly.

"Oh, Mr. Hayden!" A reproving finger was shaken at him with the archest coquetry. "If you talk that way I shan't give you another cup of tea, no matter how hard you beg. But where was I? Oh, yes, I was telling you that Mr. Oldham so often discussed business matters with me."

"And did they interest you?" asked Hayden vaguely, wondering how soon he could possibly expect Marcia to return.

"Oh, yes, I found it more thrilling than the printed page."

"Most men do," he replied dryly. "I didn't know that women felt that way."

"I did." Mrs. Oldham nodded her head in modest acceptation of the fact that she was the exceptional woman. "I found it not only thrilling, but often so romantic. I do not see why people will speak of 'the dry details of business.' I think it is full of romance."

Hayden stared at her with the amazement her mental processes always aroused in him.

"It never seemed exactly within the range of romantic subjects to me," he said dubiously; "but perhaps that's the way I've been looking at it."

"Certainly it is," she affirmed triumphantly. "Now I'll prove it to you. As I often say to young people, Mr. Hayden: 'Never make an assertion unless you can prove it.' Now, I distinctly remember Mr. Oldham telling me of a most romantic business matter. A lost mine of almost unthinkable value which was on an old estate somewhere in Brazil, or no, Peru. Why, what is the matter, Mr. Hayden? Your eyes are almost popping out of your head. You look as if you had seen a ghost."

Hayden caught himself together. "It is only that it is so interesting. Do go on and let me hear the rest of it."

Mrs. Oldham smiled, well pleased at the tribute to her powers as a raconteuse. "Well, there isn't much to tell. I've forgotten the details, and they were so romantic, too; but Mr. Oldham seriously considered buying it."

"And did he buy it?" Hayden's hands were trembling in spite of himself. "This is so intensely interesting, one would like to hear the conclusion of the story."

But Mrs. Oldham only shook her head. "I don't know," she said vaguely. "I think he did; but I can't be sure."

She began another long story, but Hayden, after listening to enough of it to assure himself that it had no bearing on The Veiled Mariposa, gave himself up to the confused conjectures, the hopes, the dreams that thronged his brain.