The first game of polo for the season at the County Club was to be played that Saturday. The unusually early spring had put the turf in condition, and the men had had more or less practice. It was too soon, of course, for a match, but there was to be a friendly set-to between the County Club team and a team from the Oracle Club. It was not much more than an excuse for bringing the members out, and for having a mild gala, with fresh spring toilettes and spring buoyancy to add to the zest of the day.
Amusement is a business which calls for a good deal of brains if it is to be carried on successfully. Of course only professionals can hope to succeed in a line so difficult, and in America there are few real professionals in the art of self-amusement. Most men spoil their chances of complete success by dallying more or less with work of one sort or another; and this is fatal. Only he who is sincere in putting amusement first, and to it sacrifices all other considerations, can hope for true preëminence in this calling. Jack Neligage was one of the few men in Boston entirely free from any weakness in the way of occupation beyond that of pleasure-seeking; and as a consequence he was one of the few who did it well.
All forms of fashionable play came easily and naturally to Jack, and in them all he bore a part with tolerable grace. He was sufficiently adept at tennis in its day; and when that had passed, he was equally adroit in golf and in curling; he could lead a german better than anybody else; nobody so well managed assemblies and devised novel surprises in the way of decorations; nobody else so well arranged coaching trips or so surely made the life of a house party. All these things were part of his profession as a pleasure-seeker, and they were all done with a quick and merry spirit which gave to them a charm not to be resisted.
It was on the polo-field, however, that Jack was at his best. No man who hopes to keep up with the fashions can afford to become too much interested in any single sport, for presently the fad will alter, and he must perforce abandon the old delights; but polo held its own very well, and it was evidently the thing in which Jack reveled most. He was the leading player not of his club only, but of all the clubs about. His stud of polo-ponies was selected with more care than has often gone to the making of a state constitution, for the matters that are really important must be attended to with zeal, while public politics may be expected more or less to take care of themselves. His friends wondered how Neligage contrived to get hold of ponies so valuable, or how he was able to keep so expensive an outfit after he had obtained it; but everybody was agreed that he had a most wonderful lot.
The question of how he managed might have been better understood by any one who had chanced to overhear a conversation between Jack and Dr. Wilson, which took place just before luncheon that day. Dr. Wilson was chairman of the board of managers of the club. He was a man who had come into the club chiefly as the husband of Mrs. Chauncy Wilson, a lady whose stud was one of the finest in the state, and he was somewhat looked down upon by the men of genuine old family. He was good-humored, however; shrewd if a little unrefined; and he had been rich long enough to carry the burden of his wife's enormous fortune without undue self-consequence. To-day it became his duty to talk to Jack on an unpleasant matter of business.
"Jack," he said, "I've got to pitch into you again."
"The same old thing, I suppose."
"Same old thing. Sometimes I've half a mind to resign from the club, so as to get rid of having to drub you fellows about your bills."
Jack gnawed his mustache, twisting his cigar in his fingers in a way that threatened to demolish it altogether.
"I've told you already that I can't do anything until—"
"Oh, I know it," Wilson broke in. "I'm satisfied, but the committee is getting scared. The finances of the club are in an awful mess; there's no denying that. Some of the men on the committee, you see, are afraid of being blamed for letting the credits run on so."
Jack did not take advantage of the pause which gave him an opportunity to speak, and the other went on again.
"I'm awfully sorry, old man; but there's got to be an end somewhere, and nobody's been given the rope that you have."
"I can resign, of course," Jack said shortly.
"Oh, dry up that sort of talk! Nobody'd listen to your resigning. Everybody wants you here, and we couldn't spare you from the polo team."
"But if I can't pay up, what else can I do?"
"But you can't resign in debt, man."
Jack laughed with savage amusement.
"What the devil am I to do? I can't stay, and I can't leave. That seems to be about the size of it."
Dr. Wilson looked at his companion keenly, and there was in his tone some hesitation as he replied.
"You might sell—"
"Sell my ponies!" broke in Neligage excitedly. "When I do I'll give up playing."
"Oh, nonsense! Don't be so infernally stubborn. Harbinger'll buy one, and I'll buy a couple, and the others it doesn't matter about. You've always had twice as many as you need."
"So you propose that I shouldn't have any."
"You could use them just the same."
Jack swore savagely.
"Thank you," he returned. "I may be a beggar, but I won't be a beat."
Wilson laughed with his oily, chuckling laugh.
"I don't see," he observed with characteristic brusqueness, "why it is any worse to take a favor from a friend that offers it than to get it out of a club that can't help itself."
Jack's cheeks flushed, and he began an angry reply. Then he restrained himself.
"I won't quarrel with you for doing your official duty, Wilson," he said stiffly. "I'll fix things somehow or get out."
"Oh, hang it, man," returned the doctor good-naturedly, "you mustn't talk of getting out. I'll lend you what you need."
"Thank you, but you know I can't pay you."
"That's no matter. Something will turn up, and you may pay me when you get ready."
"No; I'm deep enough in the mire as it is. I won't make it worse by borrowing. That's the only virtue that I ever had,—that I didn't sponge on my friends. I'm just as much obliged to you; but I can't do it."
They had been sitting in the smoking-room before the fireplace where a smouldering log or two took from the air its spring chill. Jack as he spoke flung the stub of his cigar into the ashes, and rose with an air of considering the conversation definitely ended. Wilson looked up at him, his golden-brown eyes more sober than usual.
"Of course it is just as you say, old man," he remarked; "but if you change your mind, you've only to let me know."
Jack moved off with a downcast air unusual to him, but by the time he had encountered two or three men who were about the club-house, and had exchanged with them a jest or a remark about the coming game, his face was as sunny as ever. People were now arriving rather rapidly, and soon the stylish trap of Sibley Langdon came bowling up the driveway in fine style, with Mrs. Neligage sitting beside the owner. Jack was on the front piazza when they drove up, and his mother waved her hand to him gayly.
"Gad, Jack," one of the men said, "your mother is a wonder. She looks younger than you do this minute."
"I don't think she is," Jack returned with a grin; "but you're right. She is a wonderfully young woman to be the mother of a great cub like me."
Not only in her looks did Mrs. Neligage give the impression of youth, but her movements and her unquenchable vivacity might put to a disadvantage half of the young girls. She tripped up the steps as lightly as a leaf blown by the wind, her trim figure swaying as lithely as a willow-shoot. As she came to Jack she said to him in a tone loud enough to be heard by all who were on the piazza:—
"Oh, Jack, come into the house a moment. I want to show you a letter."
She dropped a gay greeting here and there as she led the way, and in a moment they were alone inside the house. Mrs. Neligage turned instantly, with a face from which all gayety had vanished as the color of a ballet-dancer's cheek vanishes under the pall of a green light.
"Jack," she said hastily, "I am desperate. I am in the worst scrape I ever was in, in my life. Can you raise any money?"
He looked at her a moment in amazed silence; then he laughed roughly.
"Money?" he retorted. "I am all but turned out of the club to-day for want of it. This is probably my last game."
"You are not in earnest?" she demanded, pressing closer to him, and putting her hand on his arm. "You are not really going to leave the club?"
"What else can I do? The committee think it isn't possible to let things go any longer."
She looked into his face, her own hardening. She studied him with a keen glance, which he met firmly, yet with evident effort.
"Jack," she said at length, her voice lower, "there is only one way out of it. Last night you wouldn't listen to me; but you must now. You must marry May Calthorpe. If you were engaged to her it would be easy enough to raise money."
"You talk as if she were only waiting for me to say the word, and she'd rush into my arms."
"She will, she must, if you'll have her. You wouldn't take her for your own good, but you've got to do it for mine. You can't let me be ruined just through your obstinacy."
"Ruined? What under the canopy do you mean, mother? You are trying to scare me to make me go your way."
"I'm not, Jack; upon my word I'm not! I tell you I'm in an awful mess, and you must stand by me."
Jack turned away from her and walked toward the window; then he faced her again with a look which evidently questioned how far she was really in earnest. There had been occasions when Mrs. Neligage had used her histrionic powers to get the better of her son in some domestic discussion, and the price of such success is inevitably distrust. Now she faced him boldly, and met his look with a nod of perfect comprehension.
"Yes, I am telling you the truth, Jacky. There is nothing for it but for us both to go to smash if you won't take May."
"Take May," he echoed impatiently, "how you do keep saying that! How can I take her? She doesn't care a straw about me anyway, and I've no doubt she looks on me as one of the old fellows."
"She being eighteen and you twenty-five," his mother answered, smiling satirically. "But somebody is coming. I can't talk to you now; only this one thing I must say. Play into my hands as you can if you will, and you'll be engaged to May before the week's over."
He broke into a roar of laughter which had a sound of being as much nerves as amusement.
"Is this a comic opera?" he demanded.
"Yes, dear Jacky," his mother retorted, resuming her light manner, "that's just what it is. Don't you miss your cue."
She left him, and went gayly forward to greet the new-comers, ladies who had just driven up, and Jack followed her lead with a countenance from which disturbance and bewilderment had not entirely vanished.
Mrs. Neligage escaped from her friends speedily, with that easy swiftness which is in the power of the socially adroit, and returned to the piazza by a French window which opened at the side of the house, and so was not in sight from the front of the club. There she came upon Count Shimbowski comfortably seated in a sunny corner, smoking and meditating.
"Ah, Count," she said, as he rose to receive her, "this is unexpected pleasure. Are you resting from the strain of continual adulation?"
"What you say?" he responded. Then he dropped into his seat with a despairing gesture. "Dis Eengleesh," he said; "eet ees eemposseeble eet to know. I have told Mees Wentsteele dat she ees very freesh, and—"
He ended with a groan, and a snug little Hungarian oath under his breath.
"Fresh!" echoed Mrs. Neligage, with a laugh like a redbird whisking gayly from branch to branch. "My dear Count, she is anything but fresh. She is as stale as a last year's love-affair. But she ought to be pleased to be told she is fresh."
"Oh, I say: 'You be so freesh, Mees Wentsteele,' and she, she say: 'Freesh, Count Shimbowski? You result me!' Den day teel me freesh mean fooleesh,sotte. What language ees dat?"
"Oh, it isn't so bad as you think, Count. It is onlyargotanyway, and it doesn't meansotte, butnaïve. Besides, she wouldn't mind. She is enough of a woman to be pleased that you even tried to tell her she was young."
"But no more ees she young."
"No more, Count. We are all of us getting to be old enough to be our own grandmothers. Miss Wentstile looks as if she was at the Flood and forgot to go in when it rained."
The Count looked more puzzled than amused at this sally, but his politeness came to his rescue. A compliment is always the resource of a man of the world when a lady puzzles him.
"Eet ees only Madame Neleegaze to what belong eemortal youth," he said with a bow.
She rose and swept him a courtesy, and then took from her dress one of the flowers she was wearing, which chanced to be very portly red carnations.
"You are as gallant as ever, Count," she said, "so that your English doesn't matter. Besides that, you have a title; and American women love a title as a moth loves a candle."
She stuck the carnation into his buttonhole as she spoke, and returned to her seat, where she settled herself with the air of one ready for a serious chat.
"It is very odd to see you on this side of the Atlantic, Count," she remarked. "Tell me, what are you doing in this country,—besides taking the town by storm, that is?"
"I weell range my own self;—say you een Eengleesh 'arrange my own self'?"
"When it means you are going to marry, Count, it might be well to say that you are going to arrange yourself and derange somebody else. Is the lady Miss Endicott?"
"Eet ees Mees Endeecott. Ees she not good for me?"
"She is a thousand times too good for you, my dear fellow; but she is as poor as a church mouse."
"Ah, but her aunt, Mees Wentsteele, she geeve her onedot: two thousand hundred dollar. Eet weell be a meellion francs, ees eet not?"
"So you get a million francs for yourself, Count. It is more than I should have thought you worth."
"But de teettle!"
"Oh, the title is worth something, but I could buy one a good deal cheaper. If I remember correctly I might have had yours for nothing, Count."
The Count did not look entirely pleased at this reminiscence, but he smiled, and again took refuge in a compliment.
"To one soravissanteas madame all teettles are under her feet."
"I wish you would set up a school for compliments here in Boston, Count, and teach our men to say nice things. Really, a Boston man's compliments are like molasses candy, they are so home-made. But why don't you take the aunt instead of the niece? Miss Wentstile is worth half a million."
"Dat weell be mouche," responded the Count with gravity; "but she have bones."
The widow laughed lightly. The woman who after forty can laugh like a girl is one who has preserved her power over men, and she is generally one fully aware of the fact. Mrs. Neligage had no greater charm than her light-hearted laugh, which no care could permanently subdue. She tossed her head, and then shook it at the Count.
"Yes," she responded, "you are unfortunately right. She has bones. By the way, do you happen to have with you that letter I gave you at Mrs. Harbinger's yesterday?"
"Yes," he answered, drawing from his pocket the note addressed to Christopher Calumus, "I have eet."
"I would like to see it," Mrs. Neligage said, extending her hand.
The Count smiled, and held it up.
"You can see eet," said he, "but eet ees not permeet you weedeen de hand to have eet."
She leaned forward and examined it closely, studying the address with keen eyes.
"It is no matter," was her remark. "I only wanted to make sure."
"Do you de handwrite know?" he demanded eagerly.
"And if I do?"
"You do know," he broke out in French. "I can see it in your face. Tell me who wrote it."
She shook her head, smiling teasingly. Then she rose, and moved toward the window by which she had come from the house.
"No, Count," was her answer. "It doesn't suit my plan to tell you. I didn't think quickly enough yesterday, or I wouldn't have given it to you. It was in your hands before I thought whose writing it was."
The Count, who had risen, bowed profoundly.
"After all," he said, "I need not trouble you. Mrs. Harbinger acknowledged that she wrote it."
Mrs. Neligage flashed back at him a mocking grimace as she withdrew by the window.
"I never expected to live to see you believe a thing because a woman said it," she laughed. "You must have been in strange hands since I used to know you!"
Left alone, the Count thoughtfully regarded the letter for a moment, then with a shrug he restored it to his pocket, and turned to go around the corner of the house to the front piazza. Sounds of wheels, of voices, of talking, and of laughter told of the gathering of pleasure-seekers; and scarcely had the Count passed the corner than he met Mr. Bradish face to face. There were groups of men and women on the piazza and on the lawn, with the horses and dogs in sight which are the natural features in such a picture at an out-of-town club. The Count heeded none of these things, but stepped forward eagerly.
"Ah, Count, you have come out to the games like everybody else, I see," Bradish said pleasantly.
"Eet ees extreme glad to see me, Mr. Bradeesh," the Count returned, shaking him by the hand. "Do you weelleengly come wid us a leettle, for dat I say to you ver' particle?"
Bradish, with his usual kindly courtesy, followed the Count around the corner of the house, out of sight of the arriving company.
"Something particular to say to me, Count?" he observed. "You do me too much honor."
"Eet weell be of honor dat I weell to you speak," the Count responded. "Weell you for myself de condescension to have dat you weell be one friend to oneaffaire d'honneur?"
Bradish stared at him in undisguised amazement.
"Anaffaire d'honneur?" he echoed. "Surely you don't mean that you are going to fight? You can't mean a duel?"
"Oh,oui, oui; eet weell be a duel dat eet calls you."
Bradish stared harder than ever, and then sat down as if overcome.
"But, my dear Count, you can't fight duels in America."
"For what weell not een Amereeca fight? He have result me! Me, Count Ernst Shimbowski! Weell I not to have hees blood?"
"I'm afraid you won't," Bradish responded, shaking his head. "That isn't the way we do things here. But who is it has insulted you?"
The Count became more and more excited as he spoke of his wrongs, and with wide gestures he appealed to the whole surrounding region to bear him out in his rage and his resolution. He stood over Bradish like an avenging and furious angel, swaying his body by way of accent to his words.
"You deed see! De ladies day deed see! All de world weell have heard dat he result—he eensult me! De Shimbowski name have been eensult'! Deed he not say 'Veelaine! Veelaine!' Oh,sacré nom de mon père! 'Veelaine! Veelaine!' Eet weell not but only blood to wash dat eensult!"
How an American gentleman should behave when he is seriously asked to act as a second in a duel in this land and time is a question which has probably never been authoritatively settled, and which might be reasoned upon with very curious arguments from different points of view. It is safe to say that any person who finds himself in such a position could hardly manage to incur much risk of running into danger, or even of doing violence to any moral scruples with which he may chance to be encumbered. He must always feel that the chances of a duel's actually taking place are so ridiculously small that the whole matter can be regarded only as food for laughter; and that no matter how eager for fight one or both of the possible combatants might be, the end will be peace. So far from making the position of a second more easy, however, this fact perhaps renders it more difficult. It is harder to face the ridiculous than the perilous. If there were any especial chance that a duel would proceed to extremes, that principals would perhaps come to grief and seconds be with them involved in actual danger, even though only the ignoble danger of legal complications, a man might feel that honor called upon him not to fail his friend in extremity. When it is merely a question of becoming more or less ridiculous according to the notoriety of the affair, the matter is different. The demand of society is that a gentleman shall be ready to brave peril, but there is nothing in the social code which goes so far as to call upon him to run the chance of making himself ridiculous. Society is founded upon the deepest principles of human nature, and if it demanded of man the sacrifice of his vanity the social fabric would go to pieces like a house of cards in a whirlwind. Bradish might have been called upon to risk his life at the request of the Count, although they were in reality little more than acquaintances; but he certainly cannot be held to have been under any obligations to give the world a right to laugh at him.
Bradish regarded the Count with a smile half amused and half sympathetic, while the Hungarian poured out his excited protest, and when there came a pause he said soothingly:—
"Oh, sit down and talk it over, my dear Count. I see you mean that stupid dunce of a Barnstable. You can't fight him. Everybody would laugh at the very idea. Besides, he isn't your equal socially. You can't fight him."
"You do comprehend not!" cried the Count. "De Shimbowski name weell eet to have blood for de eensult!"
"But—"
The Count drew himself up with an air of hauteur which checked the words on Bradish's lips.
"Eet ees not for a Shimbowski to beg for favors," he said stiffly. "Eef eet ees you dat do not serve me—"
"Oh, I assure you," interrupted Bradish hastily, "I am more than willing to serve you; but I wanted to warn you that in America we look at things so differently—"
"Een Amereeca even," the Count in his turn interrupted with a superb gesture, "dare weell be gentlemans, ees eet not?"
In the face of that gesture there was nothing more to be said in the way of objection. Time and the chapter of accidents must determine what would come of it, but no man of sensibility and patriotism, appealed to in that grand fashion in the name of the honor of America, could have held out longer. Least of all was it to be expected that Harry Bradish, kindest-hearted of living men, and famous for never being able to refuse any service that was asked of him, could resist this last touch. He rose as if to get out of the interview as speedily as possible.
"Very well then," he said, "if you persist in going on, I'll do what I can for you, but I give you fair warning once more that it'll come to nothing more than making us both ridiculous."
The Count shook hands warmly, but his response was one which might be said to show less consideration than might have been desired for the man who was making a sacrifice in his behalf.
"De Shimbowski name," he declared grandiloquently, yet with evident sincerity, "ees never reedeeculous."
There followed some settling of details, in all of which Bradish evinced a tendency to temporize and to postpone, but in which the ardor of the Count so hurried everything forward that had Barnstable been on the spot the duel might have been actually accomplished despite all obstacles. It was evident, however, that one side cannot alone arrange a meeting of honor, and in the end little could be done beyond the Count's receiving a promise from Bradish that the latter would communicate with Barnstable as soon as possible.
This momentous and blood-curdling decision having been arrived at, the two gentlemen emerged from their retirement on the side piazza, and once more joined the gay world as represented by the now numerous gathering assembled to see the polo at the County Club.
The exhilaration of the spring day, the pleasure of taking up once more the outdoor life of the warm season, the little excitement which belongs to the assembling of merry-makers, the chatter, the laughter, all the gay bustle combined to fill the County Club with a joyous atmosphere. Before the front of the house was a sloping lawn which merged into an open park, here and there dotted with groups of budding trees and showing vividly the red of golf flags. The driveway wound in curves of carefully devised carelessness from the country road beyond the park to the end of the piazza, and all arrivals could be properly studied as they approached. The piazza was wide and roomy, so that it was not crowded, although a considerable number of men and women were there assembled; and from group to group laughter answered laughter.
Mrs. Harbinger in the capacity of chaperone had with her Alice Endicott and May Calthorpe. The three ladies stood chatting with Dick Fairfield, tossing words back and forth like tennis-balls for the sheer pleasure of the exercise.
"Oh, I insist," Fairfield said, "that spring is only a season when the days are picked before they are ripe."
"You say that simply in your capacity of a literary man, Mr. Fairfield," Alice retorted; "but I doubt if it really means anything."
"I am afraid it doesn't mean much," he responded laughing, "but to insist that an epigram must mean something would limit production dreadfully."
"Then we are to understand," Mrs. Harbinger observed, "that what you literary men say is never to be taken seriously."
"Oh, you should make a distinction, Mrs. Harbinger. What a literary man says in his professional capacity you are at liberty to believe or not, just as you choose; but of course in regard to what is said in his personal capacity it is different."
"There, I suppose," she retorted, "he is simply to be classed with other men, and not to be believed at all."
"Bless me, what cynicism! Where is Mr. Harbinger to defend his reputation?"
"He is so absorbed in getting ready for the game that he has forgotten all about any reputation but that of a polo-player," Mrs. Harbinger returned. "And that reminds me that I haven't seen his new pony. Come, Alice, you appreciate a horse. We must go and examine this new wonder from Canada."
"We are not invited apparently," May said, seating herself in a piazza chair. "It is evidently your duty, Mr. Fairfield, to stay here and entertain me while they are gone."
"I remain to be entertained," he responded, following her example.
Mrs. Harbinger and Alice went off to the stables, and the pair left behind exchanged casual comments upon the day, the carriages driving up, the smart spring gowns of the ladies, and that sort of verbal thistledown which makes up ordinary society chit-chat. A remark which Fairfield made on the attire of a dashing young woman was the means of bringing the talk around again to the subject which had been touched upon between them on the previous afternoon.
"I suppose," Miss Calthorpe observed, "that a man who writes stories has to know about clothes. You do write stories, I am sure, Mr. Fairfield."
He smiled, and traced a crack in the piazza floor with his stick.
"Which means, of course," he said, "that you have never read any of them. That is so far lucky for me."
"Why is it lucky?"
"Because you might not have liked them."
"But on the other hand I might have liked them very much."
"Well, perhaps there is that chance. I don't know, however, that I should be willing to run the risk. What kind of a story do you like?"
"I told you that yesterday, Mr. Fairfield. If you really cared for my opinion you would remember."
"You said that you liked 'Love in a Cloud.' Is that what you mean?"
"Then you do remember," she remarked with an air of satisfaction. "Perhaps it was only because you liked the book yourself."
"Why not believe that it was because I put so much value on your opinion?"
"Oh, I am not so vain as that, Mr. Fairfield," she cried. "If you remember, it was not on my account."
He laughed without replying, and continued the careful tracing of the crack in the floor as if the occupation were the pleasantest imaginable. May watched him for a moment, and then with the semblance of pique she turned her shoulder toward him. The movement drew his eyes, and he suddenly stopped his occupation to straighten up apologetically.
"I was thinking," he said, "what would be the result of your reading such stories of mine as have been published—there have been a few, you know, in the magazines—if you were to test them by the standard of 'Love in a Cloud.' I'm afraid they might not stand it."
She smiled reassuringly, but perhaps with a faint suggestion of condescension.
"One doesn't expect all stories to be as good as the best," she observed.
Fairfield turned his face away for a quick flash of a grin to the universe in general; then with perfect gravity he looked again at his companion.
"I am afraid," he said, "that even the author of 'Love in a Cloud' wouldn't expect so much of you as that you should call his story the best."
"I do call it the best," she returned, a little defiantly. "Don't you?"
"No," he said slowly, "I couldn't go so far as that."
"But you spoke yesterday as if you admired it."
"But that isn't the same thing as saying that there is nothing better."
Miss Calthorpe began to tap her small foot impatiently.
"That is always the way with men who write," she declared. "They always have all sorts of fault to find with everything."
"Have you known a great many literary men?" he asked.
There are few things more offensive in conversation, especially in conversation with a lady, than an insistence upon logic. To ask of a woman that she shall make only exact statements is as bad as to require her to be always consistent, and there is small reason for wonder if at this inquiry Miss Calthorpe should show signs of offense.
"I do not see what that has to do with the matter," she returned stiffly. "Of course everybody knows about literary men."
The sun of the April afternoon smiled over the landscape, and the young man smiled under his mustache, which was too large to be entirely becoming. He glanced up at his companion, who did not smile in return, but only sat there looking extremely pretty, with her flushed cheeks, her dark hair in pretty willful tendrils about her temples, and her dark eyes alight.
"Perhaps you have some personal feeling about the book," he said. "You know that it is claimed that a woman's opinion of literature is always half personal feeling."
She flushed more deeply yet, and drew herself up as if he were intruding upon unwarrantable matters.
"I don't even know who wrote the book," she replied.
"Then it is only the book itself that you admire, and not the author?"
"Of course it is the book. Haven't I said that I don't even know who the author is? I can't see," she went on somewhat irrelevantly, "why it is that as soon as there is anything that is worth praising you men begin to run it down."
He looked as if he were a trifle surprised at her warmth.
"Run it down?" he repeated. "Why, I am not running it down. I said that I admired the novel, didn't I?"
"But you said that you didn't think it was one of the best," she insisted.
"But you might allow a little for individual taste, Miss Calthorpe."
"Oh, of course there is a difference in individual tastes, but that has to do with the parts of the story that one likes best. It's nothing at all to do with whether one isn't willing to confess its merits."
He broke into a laugh of so much amusement that she contracted her level brows into a frown which made her prettier than ever.
"Now you are laughing at me," she said almost pouting. "It is so disappointing to find that I was deceived. Of course I know that there is a good deal of professional jealousy among authors, but I shouldn't have thought—"
She perhaps did not like to complete her sentence, and so left it for him to end with a fresh laugh.
"I wish I dared tell you how funny that is!" he chuckled.
She made no reply to this, but turned her attention to the landscape. There was a silence of a few moments, in which Fairfield had every appearance of being amused, while she equally showed that she was offended. The situation was certainly one from which a young author might derive a good deal of satisfaction. It is not often that it falls to the lot of a writer to find his work so sincerely and ardently admired that he is himself taken to task for being jealous of its success. Such pleasure as comes from writing anonymous books must be greatly tempered by the fact that in a world where it is so much more easy to blame than to praise the author is sure to hear so much more censure of his work than approbation. To be accused by a young and pretty girl of a fault which one has not committed and from which one may be clear at a word is in itself a pleasing pastime, and when the imaginary fault is that of not sufficiently admiring one's own book, the titillation of the vanity is as lively as it is complicated. The spirit which Miss Calthorpe had shown, her pretty vehemence, and her marked admiration for "Love in a Cloud" might have seemed charming to any man who had a taste for beauty and youthful enthusiasm; upon the author of the book she praised it was inevitable that they should work mightily.
The pair were interrupted by the return of Mrs. Harbinger and Alice, who reported that there were so many men about the stables, and the ponies were being so examined and talked over by the players, that it was plainly no place for ladies.
"It was evident that we weren't wanted," Mrs. Harbinger said. "I hope that we are here. Ah, here comes the Count."
The gentleman named, fresh from his talk with Harry Bradish, came forward to join them, his smile as sunny as that of the day.
"See," May whispered tragically to Mrs. Harbinger as the Hungarian advanced, "he has a red carnation in his buttonhole."
"He must have read the letter then," Mrs. Harbinger returned hastily. "Hush!"
To make the most exciting communication and to follow it by a command to the hearer to preserve the appearance of indifference is a characteristically feminine act. It gives the speaker not only the last word but an effective dramatic climax, and the ever-womanly is nothing if not dramatic. The complement of this habit is the power of obeying the difficult order to be silent, and only a woman could unmoved hear the most nerve-shattering remarks with a manner of perfect tranquillity.
"Ah, eet ees so sweet loovly ladies een de landscape to see," the Count declared poetically, "where de birds dey twatter een de trees and things smell you so mooch."
"Thank you. Count," Mrs. Harbinger responded. "That is very pretty, but I am afraid that it means nothing."
"What I say to you, Madame," the Count responded, with his hand on his heart, "always eet mean mooch; eet ees dat eet mean everyt'ing!"
"Then it is certainly time for me to go," she said lightly. "It wouldn't be safe for me to stay to hear everything. Come, girls: let's walk over to the field."
The sitters rose, and they moved toward the other end of the piazza.
"It is really too early to go to the field," May said, "why don't we walk out to the new golf-holes first? I want to see how they've changed the drive over the brook."
"Very well," Mrs. Harbinger assented. "The shortest way is to go through the house."
They passed in through a long window, and as they went Alice Endicott lingered a little with the Count. That part of the piazza was at the moment deserted, and so when before entering the house she dropped her parasol and waited for her companion to pick it up for her, they were practically alone.
"Thank you, Count," she said, as he handed her the parasol. "I am sorry to trouble you."
"Nodings what eet ees dat I do for Mees Endeecott ees trouble."
"Is that true?" she asked, pausing with her foot on the threshold, and turning back to him. "If I could believe it there are two favors that I should like to ask."
"Two favors?" he repeated. "Ah, I weell be heavenlee happee eef eet ees dat I do two favors."
"One is for myself," she said, "and the other is for Miss Wentstile. I'm sure you won't refuse me."
"Who could refuse one ladee so loovlaie!"
"The first is," Alice went on, paying no heed to the Count's florid compliments, "that you give me the letter Mrs. Neligage gave you yesterday."
"But de ladee what have wrote eet—"
"The lady that wrote it," Alice interrupted, "desires to have it again."
"Den weell I to her eet geeve," said the Count.
"But she has empowered me to receive it."
"But dat eet do not empower me eet to geeve."
"Then you decline to let me have it, Count?"
"Ah, I am desolation, Mees Endeecott, for dat I do not what you desaire; but I weell rather to do de oder t'ing what you have weesh."
"I am afraid, Count, that your willingness to oblige goes no farther than to let you do what you wish, instead of what I wish. I only wanted to know where you have known Mrs. Neligage."
"Ah," he exclaimed, "dat is what Mees Wentsteele have ask. My dear young lady, eet ees not dat you can be jealous dat once I have known Madame Neleegaze?"
She faced him with a look of astonishment so complete that the most simple could not misunderstand it. Then the look changed into profound disdain.
"Jealous!" she repeated. "I jealous, and of you, Count!"
Her look ended in a smile, as if her sense of humor found the idea of jealousy too droll to admit of indignation, and she turned to go in through the window, leaving the Count hesitating behind.
Before the Count had recovered himself sufficiently to go after Miss Endicott despite her look of contempt and her yet more significant amusement, Jack Neligage came toward him down the piazza, and called him by name.
"Oh, Count Shimbowski," Jack said. "I beg your pardon, but may I speak with you a moment?"
The Count looked after Miss Endicott, but he turned toward Neligage.
"I am always at your service," he said in French.
"I wanted to speak to you about that letter that my mother gave you yesterday. She made a mistake."
"A mistake?" the Count echoed, noncommittally.
"Yes. It is not for you."
"Well?"
"Will you give it to me, please?" Jack said.
"But why should I give it to you? Are you Christopher Calumus?"
"Perhaps," answered Jack, with a grin. "At least I can assure you that it is on the authority of the author of 'Love in a Cloud' that I ask for the letter."
"But I've already refused that letter to a lady."
"To a lady?"
"To Miss Endicott."
"Miss Endicott!" echoed Jack again, in evident astonishment. "Why should she want it?"
"She said that she had the authority of the writer, as you say that you have the authority of the man it was written to."
"Did you give it to her?"
"No; but if I did not give it to her, how can I give it to you?"
Neligage had grown more sober at the mention of Miss Endicott's name; he stood looking down, and softly beating the toe of his boot with his polo mallet.
"May I ask," he said at length, raising his glance to the Count's face, "what you propose to do with the letter?"
The other waved his hands in a gesture which seemed to take in all possible combinations of circumstances, while his shrug apparently expressed his inner conviction that whichever of these combinations presented itself Count Shimbowski would be equal to it.
"At least," he returned, "as Mrs. Harbinger has acknowledged that she wrote it, I could not give it up without her command."
Neligage laughed, and swung his mallet through the air, striking an imaginary ball with much deftness and precision.
"She said she wrote it, I know; but I think that was only for a lark, like mother's part in the play. I don't believe Mrs. Harbinger wrote it. However, here she comes, and you may ask her. I'll see you again. I must have the letter."
He broke into a lively whistle, and went off down the walk, as Mrs. Harbinger emerged through the window which a few moments before she had entered.
"I decided that I wouldn't go down to the brook," she said. "It is too warm to walk. Besides, I wanted to speak to you."
"Madame Harbeenger do to me too mooch ofhonneur," the Count protested, with his usual exuberance of gesture. "Eet ees to be me at her sarveece."
She led the way back to the chairs where her group had been sitting shortly before, and took a seat which placed her back toward the only other persons on the piazza, a couple of men smoking at the other end.
"Sit down, Count," she said, waving her hand at a chair. "Somebody will come, so I must say what I have to say quickly. I want that letter."
The Count smiled broadly, and performed with much success the inevitable shrug.
"You dat lettaire weesh; Madame Neleegaze dat lettaire weesh; Mr. Neleegaze dat lettaire weesh; everybody dat lettaire weesh. Count Shimbowski dat lettaire he keep, weell eet not?"
"Mrs. Neligage and Jack want it?" Mrs. Harbinger exclaimed. "What in the world can have set them on? Did they ask you for it?"
"Eet ees dat they have ask," the Count answered solemnly.
"I cannot understand that," she pursued thoughtfully. "Certainly they can't know who wrote it."
"Ees eet not dat you have said—"
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Harbinger interrupted him, with a smile, "I forgot that they were there when I confessed to it."
The Count laid his hand on his heart and rolled up his eyes,—not too much.
"I have so weesh' to tell you how dat I have dat beauteous lettaire adore," he said. "I have wear de lettaire een de pocket of my heart."
This somewhat startling assertion was explained by his pushing aside his coat so that the top of a letter appeared peeping out of the left pocket of his waistcoat as nearly over his heart as the exigencies of tailoring permitted.
"I shouldn't have let you know that I wrote it," she said.
"But eet have geeve to me so joyous extrodinaire eet to know!"
She regarded him shrewdly, then dropping her eyes, she asked:—
"Was it better than the other one?"
"De oder?" he repeated, evidently taken by surprise. "Ah, dat alone also have I treasured too mooch."
Mrs. Harbinger broke out frankly into a laugh.
"Come," she said, "I have caught you. You know nothing about any other. We might as well be plain with each other. I didn't write that letter and you didn't write 'Love in a Cloud,' or you'd know about the whole correspondence."
"Ah, from de Edengarten," cried the Count, "de weemens ees too mooch for not to fool de man. Madame ees for me greatly too clevaire."
"Thank you," she said laughingly. "Then give me the letter."
He bowed, and shrugged, and smiled deprecatingly; but he shook his head.
"So have Mees Endeecott say. Eef to her I geeve eet not, I can geeve eet not to you, desolation as eet make of my heart."
"Miss Endicott? Has she been after the letter too? Is there anybody else?"
"Madame Neleegaze, Mr. Neleegaze, Mees Endeecott, Madame Harbeenger," the Count enumerated, telling them off on his fingers. "Dat ees all now; but eef I dat lettaire have in my heart-pocket she weell come to me dat have eet wrote. Ees eet not so? Eet ees to she what have eet wrote dat eet weell be to geeve eet. I am eenterest to her behold."
"Then you will not give it to me?" Mrs. Harbinger said, rising.
He rose also, a mild whirlwind of apologetic shrugs and contortions, contortions not ungraceful, but as extraordinary as his English.
"Eet make me desolation een de heart," he declared; "but for now eet weell be for me to keep dat lettaire."
He made her a profound bow, and as if to secure himself against farther solicitation betook himself off. Mrs. Harbinger resumed her chair, and sat for a time thinking. She tapped the tip of her parasol on the railing before her, and the tip of her shoe on the floor, but neither process seemed to bring a solution of the difficulty which she was pondering. The arrivals at the club were about done, and although it still wanted some half hour to the time set for the polo game, most of those who had been about the club had gone over to the polo-field. The sound of a carriage approaching drew the attention of Mrs. Harbinger. A vehicle easily to be recognized as belonging to the railway station was advancing toward the club, and in it sat Mr. Barnstable. The gentleman was landed at the piazza steps, and coming up, he stood looking about him as if in doubt what to do next. His glance fell upon Mrs. Harbinger, and the light of recognition flooded his fluffy face as moonlight floods the dunes of a sandy shore. He came forward abruptly and awkwardly.
"Beg pardon, Mrs. Harbinger," he said. "I came out to find your husband. Do you know where I can see him?"
"He is all ready to play polo now, Mr. Barnstable," she returned. "I don't think you can see him until after the game."
She spoke rather dryly and without any cordiality. He stood with his hat in his two hands, pulling nervously at the brim.
"You are very likely angry with me, Mrs. Harbinger," he blurted out abruptly. "I ought to apologize for what I did at your house yesterday. I made a fool of myself."
Mrs. Harbinger regarded him curiously, as if she could hardly make up her mind how such a person was to be treated.
"It is not customary to have scenes of that kind in our parlors," she answered, smiling.
"I know it," he said, with an accent of deep despair. "It was all my unfortunate temper that ran away with me. But you don't appreciate, Mrs. Harbinger, how a man feels when his wife has been made the subject of an infamous libel."
"But if you'll let me say so, Mr. Barnstable, I think you are going out of your way to find trouble. You are not the only man who has been separated from his wife, and the chances are that the author of 'Love in a Cloud' never heard of your domestic affairs at all."
"But he must have," protested Barnstable with growing excitement, "why—"
"Pardon me," she interrupted, "I wasn't done. I say that the chance of the author of that book knowing anything about your affairs is so small as to be almost impossible."
"But there were circumstances so exact! Why, all that scene—"
"Really, Mr. Barnstable," Mrs. Harbinger again interrupted, "you must not go about telling what scenes are true. That is more of a publishing of your affairs than any putting them in a novel could be."
His eyes stared at her from the folds and undulations of his face like two remarkably large jellyfish cast by the waves among sand heaps.
"But—but," he stammered, "what am I to do? How would you feel if it were your wife?"
She regarded him with a glance which gave him up as incorrigible, and half turned away her head.
"I'm sure I can't say," she responded. "I never had a wife."
Barnstable was too much excited to be restrained by the mild jest, and dashed on, beginning to gesticulate in his earnestness.
"And by such a man!" he ran on. "Why, Mrs. Harbinger, just look at this. Isn't this obliquitous!"
He pulled from one pocket a handful of letters, dashed through them at a mad speed, thrust them back and drew another handful from a second pocket, scrabbled through them, discarded them for the contents of a third pocket, and in the end came back to the first batch of papers, where he at last hit upon the letter he was in search of.
"Only this morning I got this letter from a friend in New York that knew the Count in Europe. He's been a perfect rake. He's a gambler and a duelist. There, you take it, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it. You'll see, then, how I felt when that sort of a man scandaled my wife."
"But I thought that you received the letter only this morning," suggested Mrs. Harbinger, with a smile.
Her companion was too thoroughly excited to be interrupted, and dashed on.
"You take the letter, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it for yourself. Then you show it to your friends. Let people know what sort of a man they are entertaining and making much of. Damme—I beg your pardon; my temper's completely roused up!—it makes me sick to see people going on so over anything that has a title on it. Why, damme—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Harbinger; I really beg your pardon!—in America if a man has a title he can rob henroosts for a living, and be the rage in society."
Mrs. Harbinger reached out her hand deliberately, and took the letter which was thus thrust at her. She had it safe in her possession before she spoke again.
"I shall be glad to see the letter," she said, "because I am curious to know about Count Shimbowski. That he is what he pretends to be in the way of family I am sure, for I have seen his people in Rome."
"Oh, he is a Count all right," Barnstable responded; "but that doesn't make him any better."
"As for the book," she pursued calmly, "you are entirely off the track. The Count cannot possibly have written it. Just think of his English."
"I've known men that could write English that couldn't speak it decently."
"Besides, he hasn't been in the country long enough to have written it. If he did write it, Mr. Barnstable, how in the world could he know anything about your affairs? It seems to me, if I may say so, that you might apply a little common sense to the question before you get into a rage over things that cannot be so."
"I was hasty," admitted Barnstable, an expression of mingled penitence and woe in his face. "I'm afraid I was all wrong about the Count. But the book has so many things in it that fit, things that were particular, why, of course when Mrs.—that lady yesterday—"
"Mrs. Neligage."
"When she said the Count wrote it, I didn't stop to think."
"That was only mischief on her part. You might much better say her son wrote it than the Count."
"Her son?" repeated Barnstable, starting to his feet. "That's who it is! Why, of course it was to turn suspicion away from him that his mother—"
"Good heavens!" Mrs. Harbinger broke in, "don't make another blunder. Jack Neligage couldn't—"
"I see it all!" Barnstable cried, not heeding her. "Mr. Neligage was in Chicago just after my divorce. I heard him say he was there that winter. Oh, of course he's the man."
"But he isn't a writer," Mrs. Harbinger protested.
She rose to face Barnstable, whose inflammable temper had evidently blazed up again with a suddenness entirely absurd.
"That's why he wrote anonymously," declared the other; "and that's why he had to put in real things instead of making them up! Oh, of course it was Mr. Neligage."
"Mr. Barnstable," she said with seriousness, "be reasonable, and stop this nonsense. I tell you Mr. Neligage couldn't have written that book."
He glared at her with eyes which were wells of obstinacy undiluted.
"I'll see about that," he said.
Without other salutation than a nod he walked away, and left her.
She gazed after him with the look which studies a strange animal.
"Well," she said softly, aloud, "of all the fools—"
Where a number of persons are in the same place, all interested in the same matter, yet convinced that affairs must be arranged not by open discussion but by adroit management, the result is inevitable. Each will be seeking to speak to some other alone; there will be a constant shifting and rearranging of groups as characters are moved on and off the stage in the theatre. Life for the time being, indeed, takes on an artificial air not unlike that which results from the studied devices of the playwright. The most simple and accurate account of what takes place must read like the arbitrary conventions of the boards; and the reader is likely to receive an impression of unreality from the very closeness with which the truth has been followed.
At the County Club that April afternoon there were so many who were in one way or another interested in the fate of the letter which in a moment of wild fun Mrs. Neligage had handed over to the Count, that it was natural that the movements of the company should have much the appearance of a contrived comedy. No sooner, for instance, had Barnstable hastened away with a new bee in his bonnet, than Mrs. Harbinger was joined by Fairfield. He had come on in advance of the girls, and now at once took advantage of the situation to speak about the matter of which the air was full.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I left the young ladies chatting with Mrs. Staggchase, and they'll be here in a minute. I wanted to speak to you."
She bestowed the letter which she had received from Barnstable in some mysterious recess of her gown, some hiding-place which had been devised as an attempted evasion of the immutable law that in a woman's frock shall be no real pocket.
"Go on," she said. "I am prepared for anything now. After Mr. Barnstable anything will be tame, though; I warn you of that."
"Mr. Barnstable? I didn't know you knew him till his circus last night."
"I didn't. He came to me here, and I thought he was going to apologize; but he ended with a performance crazier than the other."
"What did he do?" asked Fairfield, dropping into the chair which Barnstable had recently occupied. "He must be ingenious to have thought of anything madder than that. He might at least have apologized first."
"I wasn't fair to him," Mrs. Harbinger said. "He really did apologize; but now he's rushing off after Jack Neligage to accuse him of having written that diabolical book that's made all the trouble."
"Jack Neligage? Why in the world should he pitch upon him?"
"Apparently because I mentioned Jack as the least likely person I could think of to have written it. That was all that was needed to convince Mr. Barnstable."
"The man must be mad."
"We none of us seem to be very sane," Mrs. Harbinger returned, laughing. "I wonder what this particular madman will do."
"I'm sure I can't tell," answered Fairfield absently. Then he added quickly: "I wanted to ask you about that letter. Of course it isn't you that's been writing to me, but you must know who it is."
She stared at him in evident amazement, and then burst into a peal of laughter.
"Well," she said, "we have been mad, and no mistake. Why, we ought to have known in the first place that you were Christopher Calumus. How in the world could we miss it? It just shows how we are likely to overlook the most obvious things."
Fairfield smiled, and beat his fist on the arm of his chair.
"There," he laughed, "I've let it out! I didn't mean to tell it."
"What nonsense!" she said, as if not heeding. "To think that it was you that May wrote to after all!"
"May!" cried Fairfield. "Do you mean that Miss Calthorpe wrote those letters?"
The face of Mrs. Harbinger changed color, and a look of dismay came over it.
"Oh, you didn't know it, of course!" she said. "I forgot that, and now I've told you. She will never forgive me."
He leaned back in his chair, laughing gayly.
"A Roland for an Oliver!" he cried. "Good! It is only secret for secret."
"But what will she say to me?"
"Say? Why should she say anything? You needn't tell her till she's told me. She would have told me sometime."
"She did tell you in that wretched letter; or rather she gave you a sign to know her by. How did you dare to write to any young girl like that?"
The red flushed into his cheeks and his laughter died.
"You don't mean that she showed you my letters?"
"Oh, no; she didn't show them to me. But I know well enough what they were like. You are a pair of young dunces."
Fairfield cast down his eyes and studied his finger-nails in silence a moment. When he looked up again he spoke gravely and with a new firmness.
"Mrs. Harbinger," he said, "I hope you don't think that I meant anything wrong in answering her letters. I didn't know who wrote them."
"You must have known that they were written by a girl that was young and foolish."
"I'm afraid I didn't think much about that. I had a letter, and it interested me, and I answered it. It never occurred to me that—"
"It never occurs to a man that he is bound to protect a girl against herself," Mrs. Harbinger responded quickly. "At least now that you do know, I hope that there'll be no more of this nonsense."
Fairfield did not reply for a moment. Then he looked out over the landscape instead of meeting her eyes.
"What do you expect me to say to that?" he asked.
"I don't know that I expect anything," she returned dryly. "Hush! They are coming."
He leaned forward, and spoke in a hurried whisper.
"Does she know?" he demanded.
"Of course not. She thinks it's the Count, for all I can tell."
The arrival of Alice and May put an end to any further confidential discourse. Fairfield rose hastily, looking dreadfully conscious, but as the two girls had some interesting information or other to impart to Mrs. Harbinger, he had an opportunity to recover himself, and in a few moments the party was on its way to the polo-field.
With the game this story has nothing in particular to do. It was not unlike polo games in general. The playing was neither especially good nor especially bad. Jack Neligage easily carried off the honors, and the men pronounced his playing to be in remarkable form for so early in the season. Fairfield sat next to Miss Calthorpe, but he was inclined to be quiet, and to glance at Mrs. Harbinger when he spoke, as if he expected her to be listening to his conversation. Now and then he fixed his attention on the field, but when the game was over, and the clever plays were discussed, he showed no signs of knowing anything about them. To him the game had evidently been only an accident, and in no way a vital part of the real business of the day.
There was afternoon tea at the club-house,—groups chatted and laughed on the piazza and the lawn; red coats became more abundant on the golf links despite the lateness of the hour; carriages were brought round, one by one took their freights of pleasure-seekers, and departed. Fairfield still kept in the neighborhood of Miss Calthorpe, and although he said little he looked a great deal. Mrs. Harbinger did not interfere, although for the most part she was within ear-shot. Fairfield was of good old family, well spoken of as a rising literary man, and May had money enough for two, so that there were no good grounds upon which a chaperone could have made herself disagreeable, and Mrs. Harbinger was not in the least of the interfering sort.
Before leaving the County Club Mrs. Harbinger had a brief talk with Mrs. Neligage.
"I wish you'd tell me something about the Count's past," she said. "You knew him in Europe, didn't you?"
"Yes, I met him in Rome one winter; and after that I saw a good deal of him for a couple of seasons."
"Was he received?"
"Oh, bless you, yes. He's real. His family tree goes back to the tree in the Garden of Eden."
"Perhaps his ancestor then was the third person there."
Mrs. Neligage laughed, and shook her head.
"Come, Letty," she said, "that is taking an unfair advantage. But really, the Count is all right. He's as poor as a church mouse, and I've no doubt he came over here expressly to marry money. That is a foreign nobleman's idea of being driven to honest toil,—to come to America and hunt up an heiress."
Mrs. Harbinger produced the letter which she had received from Barnstable earlier in the afternoon.
"That crazy Mr. Barnstable that made an exhibition of himself at my house yesterday has given me a letter about the Count. I haven't read much of it; but it's evidently an attack on the man's morals."
"Oh, his morals," Mrs. Neligage returned with a pretty shrug; "nobody can find fault with the Count's morals, my dear, for he hasn't any."
"Is he so bad then?" inquired Mrs. Harbinger with a sort of dispassionate interest.
"Bad, bless you, no. He's neither good nor bad. He's what all his kind are; squeamishly particular on a point of honor, and with not a moral scruple to his name."
Mrs. Harbinger held the letter by the corner, regarding it with little favor.
"I'm sure I don't want his old letter," she observed. "I'm not a purveyor of gossip."
"Why did he give it to you?"
"He wanted me to read it, and then to show it to my friends. He telegraphed to New York last night, Tom said, to find out about the Count, and the letter must have come on the midnight."
"Characters by telegraph," laughed Mrs. Neligage. "The times are getting hard for adventurers and impostors. But really the Count isn't an impostor. He'd say frankly that he brought over his title to sell."
"That doesn't decide what I am to do with this letter," Mrs. Harbinger remarked. "You'd better take it."
"I'm sure I don't see what I should do with it," Mrs. Neligage returned; but at the same time she took the epistle. "Perhaps I may be able to make as much mischief with this as I did with that letter yesterday."
The other looked at her with serious disfavor expressed in her face.
"For heaven's sake," she said, "don't try that. You made mischief enough there to last for some time."