Exactly eleven minutes by the watched clock after she had hung up the telephone receiver the doorbell rang. The doorbell could just be heard in the library by straining ears.
And then Freebody said from the doorway, "Doctor Dacer to see you, miss."
Dacer was standing now in the doorway, looking at her darkly. Severity was evidently going to temper his justice.
"Well?" he said.
The main thing was that he had come.
"Didn't you think I could write a better love letter than that?" she began.
"Unfortunately I have had no opportunities of judging."
"What does a head mistress know about girls?"
"She tells a pretty well-documented story."
It came over Lita that they were quarreling—almost—and that she liked the process, but liked it only because she knew it must come out right. Her case was so clear.
"The letter and the photographs belonged to Aurelia," she said. "I hid them for her when she was taken ill. That was why I was in such a hurry to go that first day—when you patted me on the head. And if they told you about a mysterious man who brought me home in a taxi—that was you, and—"
"You never wrote to Valentine?"
"Never!"
He took a step toward her.
"Never sent him your photograph?"
"No!"
He took another step.
"Never saw him except on the stage?"
"No!"
Another step would bring him to her; and what, she wondered, would happen then?
What happened was that the door opened and Freebody said, "Mr. Valentine."
And there he was, the man himself, more beautiful than the posters.
Never before had the chairman of the self-government committee found herself deserted by the powers of speech and action. She stood helplessly staring at the great artist before her. And even then the day might have been saved if Valentine had not been so kind, so determined to put everything straight.
"Ah," he said, supposing he had to do with an embarrassed child, "you are Miss Hazlitt, and very like your picture. I should know you anywhere."
"You've seen my picture?" said Lita, with a sort of feeble hope that the question would convey her complete innocence to Dacer. She could hear her own voice twittering high and silly like a hysterical bird.
"Yes, indeed," said Valentine; and the voice, which was only kind, sounded in Dacer's ears significant. "This one, isn't it? Photography"—he turned politely, including Dacer in the conversation—"is only just getting back to where it was in the days of the daguerreotype. How wonderful they were! So soft—"
"Photography has always had its uses, I believe," answered Dacer in his deepest voice. He made a slightbow in the general direction of Lita. "Good-by, Miss Hazlitt," he said, and each word came with a terrible distinctness. "If you and I don't meet for some time, you'll remember me to Aurelia, I hope. She seemed to me a singularly candid, truthful nature. I admire that."
He bowed also to Valentine, and was gone. Something about his manner struck Valentine as peculiar. He feared that he had interrupted one of those conversations that do not bear interruption—an impression somewhat confirmed when Miss Hazlitt snatched her hat from the sofa and ran out of the room without a word.
Left alone, Valentine returned to Trivia; but he began to be nervous about the time. He did not want Doria to arrive at his apartment before he and Mrs. Hazlitt got there; so that when Alita came down, apologizing for being late, but in the tone of the habitually late, as if no one really expected you to be on time, he hurried her grimly downstairs.
Freebody was waiting in the hall to open the door, and told her of her daughter's return. She showed a disposition to stay and argue the matter with him. How could it be, when she was not to come till the next day? But Freebody wouldn't argue, and Valentine was firm—they must go.
"Tell Miss Lita I'll be back before seven," said Mrs. Hazlitt, and let herself be hurried out to the car.
Freebody stared at her. Did not she know that Miss Hazlitt had just torn out of the house like a little mad witch?
Lita had moved fast, but an angry man faster. As she left the house she could see him swinging on the stepof a moving Madison Avenue car. As it was a southbound car, she hoped this meant that he was going back to his office.
She had seen the address only once, when she looked up his number in the telephone book; but it was indelibly impressed on her mind, although the date of the Battle of Bosworth Field, which she had spent so much time memorizing, always escaped her. In her hurry she had forgotten not only her gloves but her purse, so that she was obliged to walk the eight or nine blocks. Walk? She almost ran, crossing all necessary streets diagonally, dodging in and out between motors. Suppose he should go out again before she got there! It was terrible!
Doctor Burroughs' office was in an oyster-colored apartment house. In a window on the ground floor she read the blue porcelain name of Doctor Burroughs—very large; and Doctor Dacer—very small. She entered a hall that was low and decorated in the style of a Florentine palace. Miss Waverley, with her white hair brushed straighter than ever, answered the door.
"Have you an appointment with the doctor?"
She spoke very politely, but there was a hint that without an appointment—
"I think he'll see me for a minute," said Lita.
She was far from feeling certain of this; and if he refused, she did not know exactly what she could do except sit on the doorstep.
She was shown into the waiting room. A complete silence fell upon the room—the house—the city. Then a returning rustling of starched skirts in the narrow passageway was heard. The doctor would see her. Shewas led down the long corridor to a small room filled for the most part by a desk. A door was standing open into a larger room beyond, which was lined with white tiles and decorated with glass cases along the walls in which hideous instruments were displayed as if they were objects of art. The nurse having ushered Lita into the first room, retired to the second, where she remained without shutting the door between, and could be heard moving about and doing something with instruments that made a soft, continual clinking.
Dacer rose slowly from his desk, on which cards in several colors were strewn.
He said in his deep voice, "Yes, I thought it might be you."
"Doctor Dacer—" Lita began. Her throat was dry.
"Oh, don't explain," he said. "What's the use?"
For the first time she saw that she had no explanation whatsoever to offer. She could only say, "I haven't any idea why that man suddenly appeared at the house." It sounded feeble, even to her.
"Perhaps to inquire about Aurelia," answered Dacer, and permitted himself a most disagreeable smile.
"That's not funny," said Lita.
"It's not original. I got the main idea from someone else."
"Doctor Dacer, I never saw Mr. Valentine—nor wrote to him. The only explanation I can think of is—"
Miss Waverley entered.
"Mr. Andrews on the telephone, doctor."
Dacer snatched up the telephone as if it were acaptured standard, saying as he did so, "Perhaps while I'm telephoning you'll be able to think of the explanation."
But she wasn't able to think at all. She could just stare at him.
"Yes," she heard him saying, "there is a—someone is here at the moment, but I shall be free directly." He hung up the receiver and replaced the telephone on the desk. "Well," he said, "have you got something good ready for me?"
She had one small idea.
"Can't you see that if things were as you think I would hardly have left Mr. Valentine to follow you, at once?"
"Oh, quite a time has gone by!"
"Because I had to walk—I had no money with me. Walk? No, I ran!"
He was affected by the picture of her running after him through the streets, and she pressed on: "Doctor Dacer, I want to tell you why I let my parents and Miss Barton and everyone think that letter to Valentine was from me."
He sat down, shrugging his shoulders as if it were useless but he would not forbid it.
Truth in detail is almost inimitable. Lita told her story in great detail—Aurelia's request—the hidden photographs—the story of the tramp—the letter thrust into her pocket and discovered by Margaret—the identical expressions of her parents on the subject of her marriage and her own sudden inspiration that here, at least, was one topic on which they agreed.
"You see," she said eagerly, "it was only a few hours before that my father had said just the same thing—that I must not think of marrying for years; and then my mother—"
"You had sounded both your parents on the subject of marriage?"
Lita looked at him. His face was like a mask.
"I had happened to mention in the course of conversation—"
"You are thinking of getting married, Miss Hazlitt?"
"No, Doctor Dacer."
"No? The idea has never crossed your mind?"
"No—at least not in connection with—no."
Someone had told her that blushing could be prevented by a sharp pinch in the back of the neck. It was a lie. She felt as if she were being painted in a stinging crimson paint, while Dacer continued to regard her with a cold, impassive stare. He rose and shut the door between the two offices.
"Am I to understand," he said, "that you have never considered the possibility of marriage?"
She shook her head. She felt as if she were drowning.
"Then consider it now," he said, and took her up in his arms, her toes dangling inches from the floor.
Miss Waverley entered again. The apartment was well built and the doors opened without any preliminary creaking.
"Doctor Burroughs on the telephone, doctor," she said.
There was nothing to do but to let Lita slide to her feet and to take up the telephone from the desk. It was all very well for him, with his attention immediatelyoccupied; but Lita was left alone to encounter the blank self-control of Miss Waverley's expression as she again shut the door behind her. Dacer was giving his chief an account of a professional visit, and was about to receive instructions. Lita heard him say, "Yes, I'll hold the wire."
In the pause that followed, Lita whispered, pointing toward the door, "She saw!"
"Unless stricken with blindness."
"She took it so calmly."
"Nothing in her life."
"I mean as if it happened every day."
Dacer shouted, still holding the telephone to his ear, "Miss Waverley!" Miss Waverley returned, and Dacer went on, "Have you ever found a lady in my arms before?"
"No, not in yours, doctor," said the nurse, as if she would not wish to be pressed about some of the people she had worked for.
"Thanks," said Dacer. "Miss Hazlitt thought you were not quite enough surprised."
"I wasn't surprised at all," answered Miss Waverley, and as Dacer was obliged to turn back to the telephone and take down some directions in writing she added, "He's been so absent-minded lately—since Elbridge—forgetting everything if I didn't follow him up."
Dacer had finished telephoning.
"Miss Hazlitt and I are going to be married," he said. "Get me a taxi, will you?"
"Not now!" said Lita.
He laughed.
"No, not tonight," he answered. "I've got to see a patient in Washington Square. You'll go with me and wait in the cab. Then we'll dine somewhere—and not get you back until late. We'll test this theory of yours that parents can be reconciled through anxiety."
"Oh, I couldn't!" said Lita. "It would drive my mother mad!"
"Or to your father."
"It would hurt her terribly."
"I'm a surgeon. I know you've got to hurt people sometimes for their own good. My bag, please, Miss Waverley. My book—thanks. Good-by."
A moment later they had gone, and Miss Waverley was left alone, tidying the office for the night. She shook her head. Her thought was: "And they expect us to respect them as if they were grown men." She sighed. "And the grown-up men aren't any better," she thought.
In the meantime the pleasure of Mrs. Hazlitt's afternoon had been spoiled by the idea that Lita was sitting at home, waiting for her. Hers was a nature most open to self-reproach if no one reproached her.
She returned about seven, eager to do her duty. She came running upstairs, calling to her daughter as she ran, and felt distinctly foolish when Freebody said coldly that Miss Hazlitt had not yet come in.
"Hasn't come in?" cried Mrs. Hazlitt, and looked very severely at him over the banisters.
Freebody had been with her long enough to have learned to withstand the implication that anything he told her was his fault. He moved about, putting the card tray straight.
"Miss Hazlitt went out before you did, madam."
"Alone?"
"After the other gentleman left. Not Mr. Valentine."
"There was no other gentleman but Mr. Valentine."
Freebody, in his irritating way, would not argue with her. She had to begin all over again in order to elicit the facts—a gentleman had come to the house soon after Miss Hazlitt's arrival, and just before the arrival of Mr. Valentine. When he left, Miss Hazlitt had gone directly—Freebody would infer that she had been trying to catch up with him.
"Did she?" asked Mrs. Hazlitt.
"Ah, I couldn't say, madam."
Mrs. Hazlitt was really alarmed. This was the other man—the real danger. By half past eight she was convinced of disaster. She called up her former husband at his club. He had gone out to dinner. How characteristic!
No one in the club seemed to know where he was dining; but the telephone operator was ill-advised enough to say that if they did know they were not allowed to give out the information.
Nothing annoyed Mrs. Hazlitt so much as a rule. The idea that the telephone operator of the club knew something which she wanted to know and would not tell her was an idea utterly intolerable. Was her child to be murdered—or worse—because the club had a silly rule? She ordered her motor and drove down to interview the starter. He fortunately had heard the address Mr. Hazlitt had given his chauffeur. It was that of a small restaurant famous for quiet and for good food.
A few minutes later Mrs. Hazlitt was standing in the doorway, fixing her former husband with a significant stare. He was half through dinner with a man from Baltimore. Baltimoreans believe that good food is only terrapin and canvasback; and that terrapin and canvasbacks can only be properly cooked in Baltimore, hence that no good food is obtainable outside of their native city. Hazlitt was in process of proving his friend wrong when he looked up and saw his former wife. He guessed at once that something had happened to Lita, and began to feel guilty.
Alita, in common with so many wives, had always possessed the power of making her husband feel guilty. In old times, with just a glance or an inflection of the voice she could make him feel like the lowest of criminals. And, rage as he might, he found this power had persisted. Love may not always endure until death do them part, but the ability of married people to make each other feel guilty endures to the grave—and possibly beyond.
Hazlitt sprang to his feet, thinking that he ought to have seen Valentine. It had been mere obstinacy on his part. If anything had happened to Lita as a result—
Presently they were driving back to the house in Mrs. Hazlitt's car, and so strong is the power of association that as they got out at the house Hazlitt found himself feeling for his latchkey, though it was thirteen years since he had had a key to that lock. Mrs. Hazlitt saw it and felt rather inclined to cry. She herself was not without a sense of guilt, for she had not told him about her interview with Valentine. When he said repentantly that he ought to have seen the fellow she answered that she wasconvinced his first judgment had been correct—it wasn't necessary. He thought this very generous of her.
It was after nine when they entered the house. Still nothing had been heard of Lita. Activity for some common interest can make strangers friends and may keep enemies from open quarrels. Mrs. Hazlitt admired Hazlitt's methods—his instructions to his secretary—his possession of a friend in the police department. He complimented her upon the placing of her telephones, her pens and ink. He thought to himself as he looked about the room that she had always had the power to make the material side of life comfortable and agreeable; if only she had understood mental peace as well—
Their intercourse was impersonal, but not hostile. Hazlitt bore interruption calmly, and though she could not allow him to say that Lita resembled him in temperament, she contradicted him without insult. They came nearest to a disagreement over the question as to whether it was or was not a good rule that club employes should not be allowed to give information as to the whereabouts of the members.
"Are all the members' lives so full of secrets?" she asked, and she made the word "secrets" sound very sly.
Fortunately at that moment the doorbell rang, and Lita and Dacer entered.
"Where have you been?" asked her father angrily.
"Dining with Doctor Dacer," answered Lita. "He and I are engaged."
"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Hazlitt.
"My daughter is not old enough to know her own mind," said Hazlitt to Dacer.
"I know it all right," said Lita.
"Of course," said Dacer temperately, "we understand that we could not be married for some time, but we wanted you to know—"
"Oh, that's what young people always say to begin with," Mrs. Hazlitt answered; "but the first thing you know they are sending out their wedding invitations."
Lita and Dacer looked a trifle silly. This had been exactly their idea—to get consent to a long, long engagement, and then by the summer to start a campaign for an early marriage.
Mr. Hazlitt rose and stood on the hearth rug—as if it were his own.
"You two young people realize," he remarked, "that I have never seen or heard of Doctor Dacer before, and that so far he has caused me nothing but anxiety."
"The whole thing has just been a web of deceit," said Mrs. Hazlitt.
"Until I know a little more about him, and until Lita is a year or so older and more mature, I should not be willing even to discuss an engagement, and I'm sure my wife agrees with me."
All four noticed that he had used the word without qualification, and all four successfully ignored the fact. Indeed anyone entering the room at that moment and seeing Mr. Hazlitt, so commanding on the hearth rug, and Mrs. Hazlitt in a chair beside the fire, looking up at him and nodding her head at the end of every sentence, would have supposed them a married couple entering upon middle age without a thought of disagreement.
The discussion followed good orthodox lines. Theolder people, Olympian above their distress, granted that in a year or so if all went well an engagement might be discussed; but at present none existed. The young people, really calm, knew that nothing but their own wills could change the fact that they were engaged at that moment.
When Dacer had gone home and Lita had gone to bed her parents outlined their campaign. Delay without definite commitment was the idea—it always is. In the meantime Hazlitt would have the young man thoroughly looked up. Mrs. Hazlitt wagged her head despondently.
"I'm afraid there's nothing really against him. Doctor Burroughs wouldn't have an assistant with anything actually criminal in his record."
Lita was to be allowed to see him occasionally. To write? No, they decided, after talking it over, that letters would be a mistake. The point was, Mrs. Hazlitt explained, that the child must be left perfectly free to change her mind. This might be just a fancy for the first man who had asked her to marry him. Mrs. Hazlitt supposed it was the first. Next winter Lita might meet a dozen men she preferred. She had a sudden idea: Perhaps it would be wiser if the girl did go to Italy with her father, to get her out of the way for a few months.
"I'm afraid you'd miss her dreadfully."
"I should cry all summer, but it doesn't matter."
"There's nothing that I can see to prevent your going to Italy yourself."
"It's not usual to go junketing about Europe with your divorced husband," she answered.
"It need not be known that we went together; wemight meet by accident," said Mr. Hazlitt, at which his former wife laughed a little and said it sounded to her like a very improper suggestion, and he looked serious and blank and monumental.
The Italian trip was left in abeyance, but the other details were settled in a clear and definite manner. Dacer was to come to the house once a month, never to write; and there were to be no flowers or presents, or mention of an engagement. Certainly not! They parted gravely, like people who had had their last long talk.
But this campaign, like many others, worked better in theory than in effect. Dacer came the next morning, and again in the afternoon, and then again the next morning. Mrs. Hazlitt protested. She said three times in twenty-four hours was not occasionally. Dacer only laughed and said it seemed very occasional to him. The situation was made more difficult for her, too, by the fact that she really liked Dacer, and he and Lita were so friendly and seemed to value her company so much that she enjoyed herself with them more than was consistent in a stern, relentless parent. Besides, in old days she had told Lita a great many clever things she had accomplished in the management of her own parents when she had been first engaged; and Lita, horrible child, remembered every word, and would repeat them all to Dacer in her mother's presence.
Finding herself helpless, the second morning she telephoned to Hazlitt. She said she thought it was almost impossible to forbid a man the house partially; it ought to be one thing or the other.
Hazlitt said, "Let it be the other then; don't let the fellow come at all."
Hearing a note of pitiable weakness in her voice, he offered to come in himself.
He came that afternoon about three—an excellent time, for Lita was upstairs and Dacer was occupied with office hours. Mrs. Hazlitt sent Freebody to ask her daughter to come down, while she apologized to her former husband for troubling him again.
"But the fact is," she said, "turning a young man out of the house—that really is a father's job."
"Even if it isn't the father's house?"
"It's no affair of Doctor Dacer's whose house it is," answered Mrs. Hazlitt with dignity. "You see, a mother's relation with a daughter is too intimate, too tender—"
"I hope a father's may be both."
"I suppose it might, but it's not like a mother's. She respects you deeply, Jim. I've brought her up to that."
"Have you, Alita?"
A hint of skepticism in his voice wounded Mr. Hazlitt.
"Of course I have," she answered. "Why, what do you mean? Are you trying to suggest—how unjust! Lita," she added, as her daughter entered, "have I ever said a word that could in any way reflect on your father? Haven't I always brought you up to respect him?"
Lita looked at them reflectively. She had, in her time, told a great many untruths for their sake. Now that she had them here together, she rather thought it would be a good idea to tell them the truth. As she paused, hermother repeated her question even more emphatically: "Have I ever said anything to prejudice you against your father?"
"Why, of course you have, mother," she said. Her father gave a short, bitter laugh, and she turned on him. "And so have you, Pat—only not so often as mother."
"How can you be so disloyal?" cried her mother, her eyes getting larger than ever.
"How can I be anything else? You two make me disloyal."
"Remember you are speaking to your mother," said Hazlitt protectingly.
"And to you, too, Pat," answered his daughter calmly. "You've each wanted me to hate the other one, and you've both been as open about it as you dared to be. It was always like giving mother a Christmas present if I said anything disagreeable about you. And your cold gray eye would light up, Pat, if I criticized anything about her."
"Divorced or not, we are your parents, please remember," said Hazlitt.
"You don't always remember it yourselves," the girl answered. "Parents! You seem sometimes as if you were just two enemies trying to injure each other through me."
Mrs. Hazlitt was already standing, and she drew a step nearer her former husband.
"Jim," she wailed, "aren't they terrible—these young people? And I thought she loved me!"
"I do love you, mother," said Lita; "I love you dearly—better than I love Pat, only I can't help seeingthat he behaves better. Or perhaps not. Women understand the art of undermining better than men do. I think Pat did all he knew how. You both filled my mind with poison against the other, drop by drop. Oh, you don't know how dreadful it is to be poisoned all the time by the two people you love best in the world!"
Mrs. Hazlitt looked up into the face of her former husband, as to an oracle.
"Do you think it's our divorce she's talking about?"
"Of course it isn't, mother," Lita answered. "I see you had a perfect right not to be husband and wife any more if you didn't want to be; but you couldn't change the fact that you are still my parents. You ought to be able to coöperate about me, to present a united front."
"You'll find we present a united front on this issue," said Hazlitt sternly. "I mean your engagement."
"Indeed?" said his daughter. "Let me tell you, I could separate you tomorrow on it. I'm an expert. I should only have to intimate to Pat that mother was getting to like Luke so much that behind his back—but I'm sick of being treacherous and untruthful. You two must face the fact that I love you both; that I like to be with both of you; and that I will not be made to feel lower than the wombat because I do love you both. Now, there it is; settle it between you."
After she had gone they continued to stare at each other, like the last sane people in a world gone mad.
"What," said her father, "do you gather that that incomprehensible tirade was all about?"
"I can't make out," answered her mother. "She never was like that before—so excitable and rude. AndI need not tell you that it's all her fancy. I've been ridiculously scrupulous in never saying anything to her but what a girl ought to hear about her father—a fixed principle that our difficulties should not come between you and her."
"Of course, I know," he answered. "I know, because I know how absolutely without foundation her attack on me was. I've been most punctilious. To hurt a child's ideal of her mother! No, I have a good deal to reproach myself with in regard to my treatment of you, Alita; but not that—not that."
"I'm sure of it," and she gave him quite a starry glance. "The truth is, I've spoiled her, Jim. I've treated her too much as a friend—as an equal."
"It can't be done," said Hazlitt, shaking his head.
"It isn't possible to have an equal relation with the younger generation. You've got to go to your contemporaries for friendship, Alita. That was true since the world began; but these young people—"
Mrs. Hazlitt, who was still treating him as if he were an oracle, brightened at these words as if he were an oracle in excellent form.
"Yes," she said, "they are different, aren't they? I can't imagine my ever having spoken to my parents as Lita just spoke to us."
"Your mother! I should say not. One of the greatest ladies I ever met anywhere!"
"Wasn't mother wonderful?" murmured Mrs. Hazlitt, and there was a pause while they both reflected upon common memories.
Then she went on: "I must say I think you are verygenerous not to criticize me for the way I've brought Lita up. I feel humiliated."
"My dear Alita," said Hazlitt, "I never have criticized you, and I never shall."
"She hurt me terribly, Jim. She seemed so hard, so ruthless, so appraising of things that ought to be held sacred."
These words were faintly reminiscent to Mr. Hazlitt, and he summoned them up: "In short a little like me, after all."
"Perhaps a little bit. I know what you mean," answered his former wife; and then, as he laughed at this reply, she saw that it was funny, and she began to laugh too. But laughter was too much for her strained nerves, and as she laughed she also cried, and the most convenient place to cry on was Hazlitt's shoulder. They clung together, feeling their feet slipping on the brink of that unfathomable abyss—the younger generation.
Princesses are usually practical people, but we Americans, whose ideas of princesses are founded rather on fairy tales than on history, allow ourselves to be shocked and surprised when we discover this trait in them.
The Princess di Sangatano was practical; she was noble, dignified, unselfish, patient, subtle, still extremely handsome at thirty-nine, and—or but—practical. She had just married her young daughter excellently. She had not done this, however, by sitting still and being dignified and noble. She had done it by going pleasantly to the houses of women whom she disliked; by flattering men in whom even her subtlety found few subjects for flattery; by indorsing the policy of a cardinal, of whose policy as a matter of fact she disapproved. Nor did she feel that her conduct in this respect was open to criticism. On the contrary, there was nothing which the princess viewed with a more satisfactory sense of duty done than the marriage of her daughter.
And now she was beginning to recognize that her son must be launched by similar methods. The launching of Raimundo was something of a problem. He had much to recommend him; he was good-looking, gay and sweet-tempered; he loved his mother, and was not naughtier than other boys of his age; but he lacked the determined industry likely to make him successful. It was impossible to consider a learned profession for him, and evenfor diplomacy, in which the princess could easily have found him a place, Raimundo was a little too impulsive. And so his mother, working it out, came to the conclusion that a business—a business that would like to own a young prince and would need Raimundo's knowledge of Italians and Italy—would be the best chance; and so, of course, she thought of America—her native land. Yes, though few people remembered the fact, the princess had been born in the United States. She had left it as a small child, her mother having remarried—an Italian—and she had been brought up in Italy thenceforth. By circumstance and environment, by marriage and religion and choice, she had become utterly an Italian. She betrayed this by her belief that America—commercial America—would respect and desire a prince. And hardly had she reached this conclusion when she met Charlotte Haines.
They met quite by accident. The princess during a short stay in Venice was visiting her mother's old friend, the Contessa Carini-Bon. The Carini-Bon palace, as all good sightseers know, is not on the Grand Canal, but tucked away at the junction of two of the smaller canals. It is a late Renaissance palace, built of the white granite that turns blackest, and it is decorated with Turks' heads over the arches of the windows, and contains the most beautiful tapestries in Italy. The princess, who since the war did not commit the extravagance of having her own gondola in Venice, had walked to the palace, through many narrow streets over tiny bridges, and under porticos, and having arrived at the side door was standing a minute in conversation with the concierge—also an oldfriend—discussing his son who had been wounded on the Piave, and the curse of motor boats on the Grand Canal, and the peculiar habits of theforestieri, and other universal topics, when she saw, across the empty courtyard, that a gondola had appeared at the steps.
It was a magnificent gondola; the two men were in white with blue sashes edged with gold fringe; blue ribbons fluttered from their broad-brimmed hats; their oars were striped blue and white; and the gondola itself shone with fresh black paint relieved here and there by heavy gold. In the front there was a small bouquet of roses and daisies in the little brass stand that carried the lamp by night. Out of this, hardly touching the proffered arm of the gondolier, stepped a pretty woman, her white draperies and pearls contrasting with her smooth dark hair and alert brown eyes. She asked in execrable Italian whether it were possible to "visitare" thepalazzo. The concierge, in that liquid beautiful voice which so many Italians of all classes possess, replied that it was utterly impossible—that occasionally, when the contessa was not in Venice, certain people bringing letters were permitted, but at present the contessa was at home.
The lady did not understand all of this, and was not at her best when crossed in her pursuit of ideal beauty and without a language in which to argue the point. She kept repeating "Non è possible?" and "Perche?" and never appearing to understand the answer, until in despair the concierge looked pathetically at the princess. Following his glance Charlotte, bursting with a sense that she was somehow being done out of the rights of an Americanconnoisseur, broke into fluent French. Was it, she asked, really impossible to see the tapestries? How could such things be? She was told they were the best tapestries in all Italy; tapestries were her specialty. She knew herself in tapestries.
The princess courteously repeated the concierge's explanation; and so these two women, born not two hundred miles away from each other in the state of Ohio, stood for a few minutes and conversed in Venice in the language of the boulevards. Perhaps it was some latent sense of kinship that made the princess feel sorry for Charlotte. She told her to wait a moment, and went on up to see the contessa.
When the first greetings were over she explained that there was a very pretty young American woman downstairs who was bitterly disappointed at not being able to see the tapestries.
"Good," said the contessa. "I'm delighted to hear it." She was very old and wrinkled and bright-eyed, and she had a habit of flicking the end of her nose with her forefinger. "These Americans—I hear their terrible voices all day long in the canals. They have all the money in the world and most of the energy, but they cannot have everything. They cannot see my tapestries."
"And that is a pleasure to you?"
The contessa nodded. "Certainly. One of the few I have left."
The princess sighed. "I am more of an American than I supposed," she said.
The contessa hastened to reassure her: "My dear Lisa! You! There is nothing of it about you."
The princess was too remote from her native land to resent this reassurance.
She continued thoughtfully: "There must be. I am a little bit kind. Americans are, you know. If anyone runs for the doctor in the middle of the night at a Continental hotel it always turns out to be an American. The English think they are officious and we Italians think they are too stupid to know when they are imposed upon, but it isn't either. It's kindness. The English are just, and the French are clear-sighted, but Americans are kind. You know I can't bear to think of that young creature loving tapestries and not being able ever to see yours."
"My dear child, if you feel like that!" The contessa touched the bell, and when in due time Luigi appeared, she gave orders that the lady waiting below was to be allowed to see the tapestries in the dining room and the salas. "But not in here, Luigi; no matter how much she gives you—not in here—and let her know that these are much the best ones. So, like that we are all satisfied."
An evening or so after this the two women met again; this time at a musicale given by a lady as international as the socialist party. Charlotte, still in spotless white and pearls, came quickly across the room to thank the princess, whom she recognized immediately. She said quite the right things about the tapestries, about Venice, about Italy; and the princess, who was susceptible to praise of the country which had become her own, was pleased with Charlotte.
"One is so starved for beauty in America," Mrs. Haines complained. "I'm like a greedy child for it when I comehere; you can form no idea how terrible New York is." The princess dimly remembered rows of chocolate-colored houses—the New York of the early '90's. She was ready to sympathize with Charlotte.
"Why don't you come here and live—such beautiful old palaces to be had for nothing—for what Americans consider nothing," she suggested.
Charlotte rolled her large brown eyes. "If only I could; but my husband wouldn't hear of it. He actually likes America. Italy means nothing to him."
Lisa was destined to hear more of Charlotte's husband before she took in the fact that he was the president of the Haines Heating Corporations. It made a difference. It wasn't that she didn't really like Charlotte—Lisa would never have been nice to her if she hadn't really liked her; but neither would she have been so extremely nice to her if Haines had not been at the head of such a hopeful company. It was a wonderfully lucky combination of circumstances.
And to no one did it appear more lucky than to Charlotte, to whom the princess seemed so well-bred, so civilized, so expert and so wise—the living embodiment of all that Charlotte herself wished to become.
And then she knew Venice so wonderfully; she was better than any guidebook. She knew of gardens and palaces that no one else had heard of. She knew of old wellheads and courtyards. A few people went to see the Giorgione in the Seminario, but only the princess insisted on Charlotte's seeing the library, with its row of windows on the Canal, and its beautiful old books going up to theceiling, and the painted panel that looked like books until, sliding it, you found it was the stairway to the gallery—all these delights Charlotte owed to her new friend.
And as the moon grew larger—on the evenings when Charlotte wasn't dining with Americans at the Lido or at that delightful new restaurant on the other side of the Canal, where you sat in the open air and ate at bare tables in such a primitive way—the two women would go out in Charlotte's gondola—sometimes through the labyrinth of the little canals, but more often the other way—past some tall, empty, ocean-going steamer anchored off the steps of the church of the Redentore—out to the Giudecca, where they could see the lighthouse at the entrance to the port, past a huge dredge which looked in the misty moonlight, as Charlotte said, like a dragon with its mouth open; on and on with their two gondoliers, to where everything was marsh and moonlight.
The princess had often noticed that Americans in Europe explained themselves a good deal. Perhaps citizens of a republic must explain themselves socially; after all, a princess does not need explanation. Charlotte on these evenings explained herself. Even as a child, she said, she had been reaching out for beauty—a less sophisticated person would have called it culture—when she had married she had thought only of the romance of it—she had been very much in love with her husband, ten years older than she, already successful; a dominating nature, she had not thought then that they were out of sympathy about the impersonal aspects of life—art, beauty. It was natural for Charlotte to slip into the discussion of her own problem—the problem of theAmerican husband—so kind, so virtuous, so successful, but alas, so indifferent to the finer arts of living.
"What are we to do, we American women?" Charlotte wailed. "We grow up, we educate ourselves to know the good from the bad, the ugly from the beautiful—and then we fall in love and marry some man to whom it is all a closed book; who is sometimes jealous of interests he cannot share. Sometimes it seems as if we should crush all that is best in us in order to be good wives to our husbands. You Europeans are so lucky—you and your men have the same tastes and the same interests."
"At least," said the princess politely, "your men are very generous in allowing you to come abroad without them. Ours wouldn't have that for a minute."
Charlotte laughed. "Our men would rather we came alone than asked them to go with us. You can't imagine how bored my husband is in Europe. He speaks no language but his own, and instead of meeting interesting people he goes to his nearest office and entirely reorganizes it."
The princess had always wanted to know whether these deserted American husbands had other love affairs; or, rather, not so much whether they had them as whether they were permitted to have them. Here was an excellent opportunity for finding out. She put her question, as she felt, delicately, but Charlotte was obviously a little shocked.
"Oh, no!" she said quickly. "At least Dan doesn't. Dan isn't a bit horrid in ways like that."
Lisa felt inclined to disagree with the adjective. Human, she would have called it. At the same time shefelt extremely sympathetic with Charlotte's situation. She knew how she herself would have suffered if she had married a competent business man who lived in a brownstone front with a long drawing-room like a tunnel, and talked nothing but business at dinner. She inquired whether Mr. Haines was in Wall Street, and heard that he was the head of the Haines Heating Corporations. Then making more extended inquiries in her practical Latin way, she saw that she had found the right opening for Raimundo.
Before Charlotte left Venice she invited the princess and her son to pay her a visit in New York that winter; she urged it warmly. For to be honest Charlotte was in somewhat the same position in regard to the princess that the princess was in regard to Charlotte. The fact that she was a princess warmed the younger woman's liking.
Lisa did not jump at the invitation. It was her duty to accept it, but she was not eager.
"I haven't crossed the Atlantic since I was eight years old," she said. "Besides, how would Mr. Haines feel about us? If Italy bores him, wouldn't two resident Italians bore him more?"
"You would start with the handicap of being my friends," Charlotte answered, "but he'd be perfectly civil, and in the end he would learn to appreciate you. He's not a fool, Dan. He's wise about people, if he can only get over his prejudices. But he'd be away most of the time. He always goes to California in January to look after his oil wells or something."
It was not quite the princess' idea that Dan Hainesshould be away all the time. He must see Raimundo, and be charmed by his youth and gayety, while she, the princess, would provide a background of solidity and Old World standards. She talked the matter over with her son—a thin, eagle-nosed boy of twenty. He was enthusiastic at the prospect, but more, his mother feared, because he had fallen in love with Charlotte's niece, whom he had met at the Lido, than because he took his future in the Haines Heating Corporations seriously. Nevertheless Charlotte's invitation was accepted.
Yet many times before January came she woke up in the night, cold with horror at the idea of this journey to an unknown land. She had hardly been out of Italy for twenty years. And even after she had actually sailed, walking the inclosed deck at night, while Raimundo was playing bridge, she shrank from the undertaking. She was very lonely, the poor princess. She and the prince had had their own troubles and disagreements, but these had gradually passed, and she had come to look forward to his companionship for her old age—a quiet prospect of settling their children and bringing up grandchildren, and making two ends meet at the dilapidated Sangatano villa. And then he had failed her; he had died during the war; and the princess had found that all her little world died about the same time. The old circle in Rome was gone, ruined, embittered, changed and scattered. The pleasant clever friendly educated group of her friends were a group no longer. And she was changed too. The war—or, rather, the aftermath of war—had brought out in her something different from her beloved country of adoption. She was not willing to sit down and lament the passing ofher own order. She could not weep because the peasants no longer rose as you passed their houses. She had even a suspicion that the new order was not so terrible, and this put her old friends out of sympathy with her. They remembered that she was, after all, an American. Perhaps it was as well she was going away that winter, for she was very lonely at home.
Her steamer chair was next that of an American gentleman, a short, fat, round-faced man, who bore out her theory that Americans were kind, by the most careful and unobtrusive attention. The name of Haines was introduced into the conversation, and evidently inspired the fat man's interest. She asked if he knew Mr. Haines. No, not really. She saw that he would like to have been able to say that he did. He knew a great deal about Haines, which he was more than ready to tell. Haines was a man whom many people thought dangerously liberal in his ideas of handling his labor, and yet ultra-conservative in his investments. His ideas worked out, though—a brilliant man—creative—and then the usual story of having begun life on nothing.
"Really?" murmured the princess, not at all surprised, because she supposed all rich Americans began life on nothing.
Still, she was glad of this increase in her knowledge of her host. He was evidently one of these tremendous commercial powers. Charlotte's account had hardly prepared her for this, but then, she supposed Charlotte lived so surrounded by these vigorous fortune-makers that she had lost her sense of proportion about them.The possibility pleased the princess. After all, there were other heads of large industries besides Haines.
She conveyed her extended hopes to Raimundo when about noon he appeared on deck, having had already a game of squash, a swim, and a turn on deck with a very pretty opera singer.
"This is a great opportunity, Raimundo," she said, "if you take it in the right way."
"Oh, I shall take it right," said the boy, sitting down beside her and studying his long, slim foot in profile. "I shall, of course, make love to the beautiful Charlotte."
"You will do nothing of the kind."
"For what are we crossing the ocean?" replied her son. "Oh, I have read transatlantic fiction. American men do not mind your making love to their wives—because it saves them the time it would take to do it themselves; and then also it confirms their belief that they have acquired a valuable article."
"You must not talk like this, even to me," said his mother. "You are quite wrong. Charlotte, like most of the American women I have met, is extremely cool and virtuous."
"Of course," said Raimundo, "you offer them only a dumb doglike devotion." And looking into her face he sketched a look of dumb doglike devotion at which she could not help laughing.
Charlotte was at the wharf to welcome them, accompanied by a competent manservant to do the work of the customs. Mr. Haines, it appeared, was in California. The princess expressed polite regret at hearing this.
"Oh, he'll be back," answered his wife, and if she did not add "quite soon enough" her tone conveyed it, and Raimundo darted a quick impish glance at his mother.
As they waited while the princess' maid put back the trays of the trunks Lisa tried to convey her admiration of the harbor. Of course a great deal has been written about the approach to New York by sea, but as the princess, like most Europeans, had never read anything about America, it all came as a great surprise to her. It seemed to come as a surprise to Charlotte too.
"Beautiful?" she said incredulously. "After Venice?"
"Different," answered the princess.
"I should say it was different," said Charlotte. "There—I think those horrible men have finished mauling your trunks, and we can go."
It was on the tip of Lisa's tongue to say that she found the American customs officials perfectly civil, and that her experiences on European frontiers had been much more disagreeable, but as she began to speak she was suddenly conscious that Charlotte did not really want to think well of her native land, and she stopped.
"Oh, I say," cried the little prince as they came out of the cavelike shadow of the pier into the cloudless light of the winter day, "what a jolly day! I shan't be responsible for anything I do if you have many days like this."
"Oh, we have lots of these," returned Charlotte, signaling to her footman. "We have nothing else—no half lights, no mists, no mystery." And they got into her little French town car and started on their way uptown.
The princess stared out of her window in silence, notingthe disappearance of the chocolate-colored houses, the beauty of the shops—and yes, even of the shoppers. But her son was not gifted with reticence. If his impressions had been disagreeable he might have been silent, but as they were flattering he saw no reason for suppressing them. He thought Fifth Avenue wonderful.
"And, my eye," he kept saying—an expression he had learned early in life from an English groom—"what a lot of pretty girls, and what a lot of cars! I did not know there were so many motor cars in the world."
Charlotte smiled as if she knew he meant to be kind, and suddenly laying her hand on the princess' knee, she said, "Oh, I'm so afraid you're going to hate it all, but you don't know what it means to me to have you here."
The princess was touched.
Yet it must be owned that Lisa found the next few weeks confusing—confusing, that is, if Charlotte were to be regarded as the starved prisoner of an alien culture. They were agreeable weeks; Raimundo was in the seventh heaven. He dined, danced, lunched, and danced again. He went into the country and tobogganed, and learned to walk on snowshoes. When asked how he was enjoying America he always made the same answer: "I shall never go home. My eye! What girls!"
His mother enjoyed herself more mildly, and with certain reservations. Erudite gentlemen were put next to her at dinner—a Frenchman who was a specialist on Chinese porcelains; a painter of Spanish birth; and several English novelists and poets who were either just beginning or just completing successful lecture tours of the United States; interesting men, in one way or another,yet—and yet—the princess asked herself if she had crossed the wide Atlantic simply to see this pale replica of a civilization she already knew.
And something else puzzled and distressed her. Her friend Charlotte seemed to her the freest of created beings—freer than any woman the princess had ever known, to make of her life anything she wanted to make of it. But Charlotte's life seemed to lack purpose and dignity. Charlotte liked to feel that learned men came to her house, but her state of nerves did not always allow her to listen to what they said. Serious books were on her table, and sometimes in her hands, and yet her day lacked those long safe hours of leisure in which such books are read.
There was no doubt that a realer, more vital Charlotte appeared buying a new hat or playing a game of bridge or asking someone to dinner, than the Charlotte who lamented the lost beauty of an old world. And yet she wasn't just a fraud.
She was not an early riser, and if toward eleven o'clock the princess penetrated to Charlotte's bedroom, overlooking the park, she would find her still in bed—a priceless Italian bed—said to have been made for Bianca Capello—propped by lace pillows, and reading a fashion paper. And something else worried the princess—the house, the way it was managed. It was comfortable, well heated—too well; there was always delicious food and too much of it, but Charlotte lived in her house as in a hotel. If butchers overcharged or footmen stole, Charlotte's only feeling was that they were tiresome dishonest people with whom she wished to have nothing todo. Abroad, she said, one's servants did not do such things.
The princess disagreed. They did not have the same opportunities, she said; the mistresses were more vigilant. The extravagance of the Haines household actually hurt her, coming as she did from a group where extravagance had ceased to be possible. But Charlotte would not admit that she had any responsibility.
"Really, dear Lisa," she said almost crossly, "I have better things to think about than housekeeping."
Well, the princess wondered what those things were.
As the days went by and as small party succeeded small party, Lisa noted that she met no American men—or hardly any—at Charlotte's house, and she asked finally why this was.
"Do they work so hard they can't dine out?"
"No—or, rather, yes, they work hard; but that's not why I don't ask them. They're so uninteresting—you would be bored to death by them."
"I'd rather like to try," said the princess mildly.
Charlotte contracted her straight eyebrows in thought. "I'll try to think of some not too awful," she said.
And a few evenings afterward the princess found herself next to a nice little chattering gentleman who spoke Italian better than she did, and made lace with his own hands. On the other side was a former ambassador—a charming person, but of no nation or age. She had known him in Paris for years. She sighed gently. She wanted to meet a financial colossus. She liked men—real ones.
Needless to say that in the Haines house she had herown sitting room—a delightful little room hung in old crimson velvet, with a wood fire always blazing on the hearth. The first day when Charlotte brought her into it she apologized for a picture over the mantelpiece.
"The things one puts in the spare room!" she said. "My husband bought that picture at an auction once, because it reminded him of the farm he was brought up on. I didn't dare give it away, but there's no reason why you should be inflicted with it." And she raised her arm to take it down.
"No! Leave it; I like it," said the princess. "It's delightful—that blue sky and clouds."
She was quite sincere in saying she liked it. She did. Often she would look up from her book and let her eyes fall with pleasure on the small green and blue and white canvas, and wonder in what farming district Mr. Haines had been brought up—and in what capacity.
The New York climate affected the princess' ability to sleep. She read often late into the night. One night—or rather morning—for it must have been three o'clock—she was interrupted by a visit from her son. He often dropped in on his way to bed to sketch for her the strange but in his opinion agreeable habits of the American girl. But this evening he did not burst out into his usual narrative. He entered silently, and stood for some seconds silent.
Then he said "Our host has returned."
"Oh," said the princess with pleasure, for, after all, this was the purpose of the long excursion.
"How unexpected!"
Her son gave a short laugh. "I believe you," he said."Unexpected is just the word. It sometimes seems as if, in spite of all that has been written on the subject, husbands would never learn the tactlessness of the unexpected return."
"Raimundo, what do you mean?" asked his mother with a sinking heart.
The boy hesitated. "The lovely Charlotte," he said, "is all that you told me she was—cool and virtuous—so much so that it never occurs to her that others may be different. Tonight I brought her home from a dull party. We got talking; we sat down in the drawing-room. The back of a lovely white neck bent over a table was so near my lips—and the husband enters."
"Was there a scene?"
"Oh, no. It was worse. We chattedà troisfor a time."
The princess drew a long breath. "Perhaps he did not see; but really, Raimundo—"
"Oh, he saw," said the prince. "He maneuvered the suspicious Charlotte off to bed, and then he suggested without a trace of anger or criticism that I should leave the house in the morning; and really, my dear mother, I'm afraid I shall have to do it. I'm so sorry, I know you'll feel annoyed with me, but it is hard to remember that no woman means anything here. I just manage to remember it with the girls; but the married women—well, one can't always be so sure; not so sure, at least as one is with Charlotte. There was no excuse for me—none."
"You're an awkward, ungrateful boy," said his mother, with an absence of temper that made her pronouncementmore severe. "I think I shall go downstairs now myself and have a talk with Mr. Haines."
"You'll do the talking," answered her son. "He isn't exactly a chatty man."
But the princess was not discouraged. She could not see that she could do any harm to Raimundo's prospects, since evidently all was now lost, and she felt she owed it to Charlotte to repair, if she could, any damage the boy's folly had occasioned.
The lights on the stairs and corridors were all going; they were controlled by switches working, to the princess' continual surprise, from all sorts of unexpected places. She had no difficulty in finding her way to the drawing-room, on the second story, where Raimundo told her the interview had taken place.
As she opened the door she saw that a tall thin man in gray morning clothes was standing alone in the middle of the room, with his hands in his pockets and a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, quite in the American manner. He was pale, pale as his blond smooth hair, now beginning to be gray, and everything about him was long—his hands, his jaw, his legs like a cavalryman's. He was turned three-quarters toward the door, and he moved nothing but his eyes as the princess entered.
There was always something neat and finished about the way Lisa moved, and the way she held herself, the way she put her small steady feet on the ground; and this was particularly evident now in the way she opened the door, moved the train of her long tea gown out of the way and shut the door again. She did all this in silence, for it was her theory to let the other person speak first.It was a theory that she had had no difficulty in putting into practice during her stay in America, but it was now forced upon her attention that Haines had the same theory, for he remained perfectly silent, and something told her that he was likely to continue so. The fate of interviews is often decided thus in the first few seconds.
She spoke first. "I am the Princess di Sangatano," she said.
He nodded.
"My son has just told me about the incident of this evening."
He nodded again, and then he said, "You want to discuss it?"
His voice was low and not without a nasal drawl, but the baffling thing about it was the entire absence of any added suggestion of tone or emphasis. There were the bare words themselves and nothing more—no hint as to whether he himself wished or didn't wish to discuss it—approved or didn't approve of her intention.
"Yes, I do," she replied.
"Better sit down then."
The princess did sit down, folding her hands in her lap, drawing her elbows to her side, and sitting very erect. She did not say to herself, like Cleopatra: "Hath he seen majesty?" but some such thought was not far from her.
For twenty years she had been acknowledged to be an important person, and this had left its trace upon her manner. She knew it had.
"Are you very angry at this silly boy of mine?" she said.
Haines shook his head—that is to say, he wagged it twice from side to side.
"Not at Charlotte, I hope?"
Another shake of the head.
The princess felt a little annoyed. "Then what in heaven's name do you feel, if anything?" she said.
"I feel kinda bored," he answered; and as Lisa gave an exclamation that expressed irritation and lack of comprehension he added, again without any added color in his voice: "How did you expect me to feel?"
"Oh, either more or less," answered Lisa. "Either you should be furious and shake Charlotte until her teeth rattled, and fling my boy into the street, or else you should be wise enough to see it doesn't make the least difference—and be human—and sensible—and—and—"
"—and give your son a job," said Haines quietly.
The princess was startled. She drew herself up still more. "I have not asked you to give my son a job," she said.
He took his cigar out of his mouth, and she noticed that his strange long pale hands were rather handsome.
"Look here," he said, "answer this honestly: Didn't you have some such idea in your head when you decided to come here? Look at me."
She did look at him, at first rather expecting to look him down, and then so much interested in what she saw—something intense and real and fearless—that she forgot everything else—forgot everything except that she was thirty-nine years old, and had lived a great deal in the world and yet had not met very many real people, andnow— Then she remembered that she must answer him.
"Oh, yes," she said; "I had it in mind."
"Well," said Haines, "that's what bores me." He began to walk up and down the room, somewhat, Lisa thought, as if he were dictating a letter. "Poor Charlotte! She's always making these wonderful discoveries—and they always turn out the same way—they always want something. You—why she's been talking about you—and writing about you. You were the most noble, the most disinterested, the most aristocratic— She would hardly speak to me because I asked her why you were making this long journey. For love of her society, she thought. She thinks I'm a perfect bear, but, my God, how can a man sit round and see his wife exploited by everyone she comes in contact with—from the dealer who sells her fake antiques to the grandee who offers her fake friendship?"
"I can't let you say that," said the princess, too much interested to be as angry as she felt she ought to be. "I have never offered anyone fake friendship."
"I didn't say you had."
"Pooh!" said she. "That's beneath you. You should at least be as honest, as you ask other people to be."
This speech seemed to please him—to please him as a child might please him. He came and sat down opposite to her, looked at her for a moment and then smiled at her. His smile was sweet and intimate as a caress.
"Come," he said, "I believe you're all right."
"I am," she answered. "Even a little bit more than that."
He sat there smoking and frankly studying her. "And yet," he said after a moment, "they're mostly not—you know—Charlotte's discoveries. They're mostly about as wrong as they can be."
"And they kinda bore you?" said the princess, to whom the phrase seemed amusing. He nodded, and she went on: "A good many things do, I imagine."
"Almost everything but my business. You don't," he added after a second; and there was something so simple and imperial in his manner that she did not think him insolent; in fact, to tell the truth, she was flattered. "You might tell me something about yourself," he added.