"Yes, Miss Annesley."
"Do you still possess it?"
"Yes, Miss."
"And why did you pick it up?"
"It was fresh and beautiful; and I believed that some lady at the dinner had worn it."
"And so you picked it up? Where did you find it?"
"Outside the bow-window, Miss."
"When?"
He thought for a moment. "In the morning, Miss."
"Take care, James; it was not yet eleven o'clock, at night."
"I admit what I said was not true, Miss. As you say, it was not yet eleven." James was pale. So she had thrown it away, confident that this moment would arrive. This humiliation was premeditated. Patience, he said inwardly; this would be the last opportunity she should have to humiliate him.
"Have you the flower on your person?"
"Yes, Miss."
"Did you know that it was mine?"
He was silent.
"Did you know that it was mine?"—mercilessly.
"Yes; but I believed that you had deliberately thrown it away. I saw no harm in taking it."
"But therewas harm."
"I bow to your superior judgment, Miss,"—ironically.
She deemed it wisest to pass over this experimental irony. "Give the flower back to me. It is not proper that a servant should have in his keeping a rose which was once mine, even if I had thrown it away or discarded it."
Carefully he drew forth the crumpled flower. He looked at her, then at the rose, hoping against hope that she might relent. He hesitated till he saw an impatient movement of the extended hand. He surrendered.
"Thank you. That is all. You may go."
She tossed the withered flower into the waste-basket.
"Pardon me, but before I go I have to announce that I shall resign my position next Monday. The money which has been advanced to me, deducting that which is due me, together with the amount of my fine at the police-court, I shall be pleased to return to you on the morning of my departure."
Miss Annesley's lips fell apart, and her brows arched. She was very much surprised.
"You wish to leave my service?"—as if it were quite impossible that such a thing should occur to him.
"Yes, Miss."
"You are dissatisfied with your position?"—icily.
"It is not that, Miss. As a groom I am perfectly satisfied. The trouble lies in the fact that I have too many other things to do. It is very distasteful for me to act in the capacity of butler. My temper is not equable enough for that position." He bowed.
"Very well. I trust that you will not regret your decision." She sat down and coolly resumed her work.
"It is not possible that I shall regret it."
"You may go."
He bowed again, one corner of his mouth twisted. Then he took himself off to the stables. He was certainly in what they call a towering rage.
If I were not a seer of the first degree, a narrator of the penetrative order, I should be vastly puzzled over this singular action on her part.
When a dramatist submits hisscenario, he always accompanies it with drawings, crude or otherwise, of the various set-scenes and curtains known as drops. To the uninitiated these scrawls would look impossible; but to the stage-manager's keen, imaginative eye a whole picture is represented in these few pothooks. Each object on the stage is labeled alphabetically; thus A may represent a sofa, B a window, C a table, and so forth and so on. I am not a dramatist; I am not writing an acting drama; so I find that a diagram of the library in Senator Blank's house is neither imperative nor advisable. It is half after eight; the curtain rises; the music of a violin is heard coming from the music-room; Colonel Annesley is discovered sitting in front of the wood fire, his chin sunk on his breast, his hands hanging listlessly on each side of the chair, his face deeply lined. From time to time he looks at the clock. I can imagine no sorrier picture than that of this loving, tender-hearted, wretched old man as he sits there, waiting for Karloff and the ignominious end. Fortune gone with the winds, poverty leering into his face, shame drawing her red finder across his brow, honor in sackcloth and ashes!
And but two short years ago there had not been in all the wide land a more contented man than himself, a man with a conscience freer. God! Even yet he could hear the rolling, whirring ivory ball as it spun the circle that fatal night at Monte Carlo. Man does not recall the intermediate steps of his fall, only the first step and the last. In his waking hours the colonel always heard the sound of it, and it rattled through his troubled dreams. He could not understand how everything had gone as it had. It seemed impossible that in two years he had dissipated a fortune, sullied his honor, beggared his child. It was all so like a horrible dream. If only he might wake; if only God would be so merciful as to permit him to wake! He hid his face. There is no hell save conscience makes it.
The music laughed and sighed and laughed. It was the music of love and youth; joyous, rollicking, pulsing music.
The colonel sprang to his feet suddenly, his hands at his throat. He was suffocating. The veins gnarled on his neck and brow. There was in his heart a pain as of many knives. His arms fell: of what use was it to struggle? He was caught, trapped in a net of his own contriving.
Softly he crossed the room and stood by the portiere beyond which was the music-room. She was happy, happy in her youth and ignorance; she could play all those sprightly measures, her spirit as light and conscience-free; she could sing, she could laugh, she could dance. And all the while his heart was breaking, breaking!
"How shall I face her mother?" he groaned.
The longing which always seizes the guilty to confess and relieve the mind came over him. If only he dared rush in there, throw himself at her feet, and stammer forth his wretched tale! She was of his flesh, of his blood; when she knew she would not wholly condemn him . . . No, no! He could not. She honored and trusted him now; she had placed him on so high a pedestal that it was utterly impossible for him to disillusion her young mind, to see for ever and ever the mute reproach in her honest eyes, to feel that though his arm encircled her she was beyond his reach…. God knew that he could not tell this child of the black gulf he had digged for himself and her.
Sometimes there came to him the thought to put an end to this maddening grief, by violence to period this miserable existence. But always he cast from him the horrible thought. He was not a coward, and the cowardice of suicide was abhorrent to him. Poverty he might leave her, but not the legacy of a suicide. If only it might be God's kindly will to let him die, once this abominable bargain was consummated! Death is the seal of silence; it locks alike the lips of the living and the dead. And she might live in ignorance, till the end of her days, without knowing that her wealth was the price of her father's dishonor.
A mist blurred his sight; he could not see. He steadied himself, and with an effort regained his chair noiselessly. And how often he had smiled at the drama on the stage, with its absurdities, its tawdriness, its impossibilities! Alas, what did they on the stage that was half so weak as he had done: ruined himself without motive or reason!
The bell sang its buzzing note; there was the sound of crunching wheels on the driveway; the music ceased abruptly. Silence. A door opened and closed. A moment or so later Karloff, preceded by the girl, came into the study. She was grave because she remembered Mrs. Chadwick. He was grave also; he had various reasons for being so.
"Father, the count tells me that he has an engagement with you," she said. She wondered if this appointment in any way concerned her.
"It is true, my child. Leave us, and give orders that we are not to be disturbed."
She scrutinized him sharply. How strangely hollow his voice sounded!Was he ill?
"Father, you are not well. Count, you must promise me not to keep him long, however important this interview may be. He is ill and needs rest,"—and her loving eyes caressed each line of care in her parent's furrowed cheeks.
Annesley smiled reassuringly. It took all the strength of his will, all that remained of a high order of courage, to create this smile. He wanted to cry out to her that it was a lie, a mockery. Behind that smile his teeth grated.
"I shall not keep him long, Mademoiselle," said the count. He spoke gently, but he studiously avoided her eyes.
She hesitated for a moment on the threshold; she knew not why. Her lips even formed words, but she did not speak. What was it? Something oppressed her. Her gaze wandered indecisively from her father to the count, from the count to her father.
"When you are through," she finally said, "bring your cigars into the music-room."
"With the greatest pleasure, Mademoiselle," replied the count. "And play, if you so desire; our business is such that your music will be as a pleasure added.'"
Her father nodded; but he could not force another smile to his lips. The brass rings of the portiere rattled, and she was gone. But she left behind a peculiar tableau, a tableau such as is formed by those who stand upon ice which is about to sink and engulf them.
The two men stood perfectly still. I doubt not that each experienced the same sensation, that the same thought occurred to each mind, though it came from different avenues: love and shame. The heart of the little clock on the mantel beat tick-tock, tick-tock; a log crackled and fell between the irons, sending up a shower of evanescent sparks; one of the long windows giving out upon the veranda creaked mysteriously.
Karloff was first to break the spell. He made a gesture which was eloquent of his distaste of the situation.
"Let us terminate this as quickly as possible," he said.
"Yes, let us have done with it before I lose my courage," replied the colonel, his voice thin and quavering. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. His hand shone white and his nails darkly blue.
The count stepped over to the table, reached into the inner pocket of his coat, and extracted a packet. In this packet was the enormous sum of one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in notes of one thousand denomination; that is to say, one hundred and eighty slips of paper redeemable in gold by the government which had issued them. On top of this packet lay the colonel's note for twenty thousand dollars.
(It is true that Karloff never accepted money from his government in payment for his services; but it is equally true that for every penny he laid out he was reimbursed by Russia.)
Karloff placed the packet on the table, first taking off the note, which he carelessly tossed beside the bank-notes.
"You will observe that I have not bothered with having your note discounted. I have fulfilled my part of the bargain; fulfil yours." The count thrust his trembling hands into his trousers pockets. He desired to hide this embarrassing sign from his accomplice.
Annesley went to a small safe which stood at the left of the fireplace and returned with a packet somewhat bulkier than the count's. He dropped it beside the money, shudderingly, as though he had touched a poisonous viper.
"My honor," he said simply. "I had never expected to sell it so cheap."
There was a pause, during which neither man's gaze swerved from the other's. There was not the slightest, not even the remotest, fear of treachery; each man knew with whom he was dealing; yet there they stood, as if fascinated. One would have thought that the colonel would have counted his money, or Karloff his plans; they did neither. Perhaps the colonel wanted Karloff to touch the plans first, before he touched the money; perhaps Karloff had the same desire, only the other way around.
[Illustration: "I am simply Miss Annesly's servant."—ACT III.]
The colonel spoke.
"I believe that is all" he said quietly. The knowledge that the deed was done and that there was no retreat gave back to him a particle of his former coolness and strength of mind. It had been the thought of committing the crime that had unnerved him. Now that his bridges were burned, a strange, unnatural calm settled on him.
The count evidently was not done. He moistened his lips. There was a dryness in his throat.
"It is not too late" he said; "I have not yet touched them."
"We shall not indulge in moralizing, if you please," interrupted the colonel, with savage irony. "The moment for that has gone by."
"Very well." Karloff's shoulders settled; his jaws became aggressively angular; some spirit of his predatory forebears touched his face here and there, hardening it. "I wish to speak in regard to your daughter."
"Enough! Take my honor and be gone!" The colonel's voice was loud and rasping.
Karloff rested his hands on the table and inclined his body toward the colonel.
"Listen to me," he began. "There is in every man the making and the capacity of a great rascal. Time and opportunity alone are needed—and a motive. The other night I told you that I could not give up your daughter. Well, I have not given her up. She must be my wife."
"Must?" The colonel clenched his hands.
"Must. To-night I am going to prove myself a great rascal—with a great motive. What is Russia to me? Nothing. What is your dishonor or my own? Less than nothing. There is only one thing, and that is my love for your daughter." He struck the table and the flame of the student-lamp rose violently. "She must be mine, mine! I have tried to win her as an honorable man tries to win the woman he loves; now she must be won by an act of rascality. Heaven nor hell shall force me to give her up. Yes, I love her; and I lower myself to your level to gain her."
"To my level! Take care; I am still a man, with a man's strength," cried the colonel.
Karloff swept his hand across his forehead. "I have lied to myself long enough, and to you. I can see now that I have been working solely toward one end. My country is not to be considered, neither is yours. Do you realize that you stand wholly and completely in my power?" He ran his tongue across his lips, which burned with fever.
"What do you mean?"—hoarsely.
"I mean, your daughter must become my wife, or I shall notify your government that you have attempted to betray it."
"You dishonorable wretch!" The colonel balled his fists and protruded his nether lip. Only the table stood between them.
"That term or another, it does not matter. The fact remains that you have sold to me the fortification plans of your country; and though it be in times of peace, you are none the less guilty and culpable. Your daughter shall be my wife."
"I had rather strangle her with these hands!"—passionately.
"Well, why should I not have her for my wife? Who loves her more than I? I am rich; from hour to hour, from day to day, what shall I not plan to make her happy? I love her with all the fire and violence of my race and blood. I can not help it. I will not, can not, live without her! Good God, yes! I recognize the villainy of my actions. But I am mad to-night."
"So I perceive." The colonel gazed wildly about the walls for a weapon.There was not even the usual ornamental dagger.
A window again stirred mysteriously. A few drops of rain plashed on the glass and zigzagged down to the sash.
"Sooner or later your daughter must know. Request her presence. It rests with her, not with you, as to what course I must follow." Karloff was extraordinarily pale, and his dark eyes, reflecting the dancing flames, sparkled like rubies.
He saw the birth of horror in the elder's eyes, saw it grow and grow.He saw the colonel's lips move spasmodically, but utter no sound. Whatwas it he saw over his (the count's) shoulders and beyond?Instinctively he turned, and what he saw chilled the heat of his blood.
There stood the girl, her white dress marble-white against the dark wine of the portiere, an edge of which one hand clutched convulsively. Was it Medusa's beauty or her magic that turned men into stone? My recollection is at fault. At any rate, so long as she remained motionless, neither man had the power to stir. She held herself perfectly erect; every fiber in her young body was tense. Her beauty became weirdly powerful, masked as it was with horror, doubt, shame, and reproach. She had heard; little or much was of no consequence. In the heat of their variant passions, the men's voices had risen to a pitch that penetrated beyond the room.
Karloff was first to recover, and he took an involuntary step toward her; but she waved him back disdainfully.
"Do not come near me. I loathe you!" The voice was low, but every note was strained and unmusical.
He winced. His face could not have stung or burned more hotly had she struck him with her hand.
"Mademoiselle!"
She ignored him. "Father, what does this mean?"
"Agony!" The colonel fell back into his chair, pressing his hands over his eyes.
"I will tell you what it means!" cried Karloff, a rage possessing him. He had made a mistake. He had misjudged both the father and the child. He could force her into his arms, but he would always carry a burden of hate. "It means that this night you stand in the presence of a dishonored parent, a man who has squandered your inheritance over gambling tables, and who, to recover these misused sums, has sold to me the principal fortification plans of his country. That is what is means, Mademoiselle."
She grasped the portiere for support.
"Father, is this thing true?" Her voice fell to a terror-stricken whisper.
"Oh, it is true enough," said Karloff. "God knows that it is true enough. But it rests with you to save him. Become my wife, and yonder fire shall swallow his dishonor—and mine. Refuse, and I shall expose him. After all, love is a primitive state, and with it we go back to the beginning; before it honor or dishonor is nothing. To-night there is nothing, nothing in the world save my love for you, and the chance that has given me the power to force you to be mine. What a fury and a tempest love produces! It makes an honorable man of the knave, a rascal of the man of honor; it has toppled thrones, destroyed nations, obliterated races. … Well, I have become a rascal. Mademoiselle, you must become my wife." He lifted his handsome head resolutely.
Without giving him so much as a glance, she swept past him and sank on her knees at her father's side, taking his hands by the wrists and pressing them down from his face.
"Father, tell him he lies! Tell him he lies!" Ah, the entreaty, the love, the anxiety, the terror that blended her tones!
He strove to look away.
"Father, you are all I have," she cried brokenly. "Look at me! Look at me and tell him that he lies!… You will not look at me? God have mercy on me, it is true, then!" She rose and spread her arms toward heaven to entreat God to witness her despair. "I did not think or know that such base things were done… That these loving hands should have helped to encompass my father's dishonor, his degradation! … For money! What is money? You knew, father, that what was mine was likewise yours. Why did you not tell me? I should have laughed; we should have begun all over again; I could have earned a living with my music; we should have been honest and happy. And now!… And I drew those plans with a heart full of love and happiness! Oh, it is not that you gambled, that you have foolishly wasted a fortune; it is not these that hurt here,"—pressing her heart. "It is the knowledge that you, my father, should letmedraw those horrible things. It hurts! Ah, how it hurts!" A sob choked her. She knelt again at her parent's side and flung her arms around the unhappy, wretched man. "Father, you have committed a crime to shield a foolish act. I know, I know! What you have done you did for my sake, to give me back what you thought was my own. Oh, how well I know that you had no thought of yourself; it was all for me, and I thank God for that. But something has died here, something here in my heart. I have been so happy! … too happy! My poor father!" She laid her head against his breast.
"My heart is broken! Would to God that I might die!" Annesley threw one arm across the back of the chair and turned his face to his sleeve.
Karloff, a thousand arrows of regret and shame and pity quivering in his heart, viewed the scene moodily, doggedly. No, he could not go back; there was indeed a wall behind him: pride.
"Well, Mademoiselle?"
She turned, still on her knees.
"You say that if I do not marry you, you will ruin my father, expose him?"
"Yes,"—thinly.
"Listen. I am a proud woman, yet will I beg you not to do this horrible thing—force me into your arms. Take everything, take all that is left; you can not be so utterly base as to threaten such a wrong. See!"—extending her lovely arms, "I am on my knees to you!"
"My daughter!" cried the father.
"Do not interrupt me, father; he will relent; he is not wholly without pity."
"No, no! No, no!" Karloff exclaimed, turning his head aside and repelling with his hands, as if he would stamp out the fires of pity which, at the sound of her voice, had burst anew in his heart. "Iwillnot give you up!"
She drew her sleeve across her eyes and stood up. All at once she wheeled upon him like a lioness protecting its young. In her wrath she was as magnificent as the wife of—Aeneas at the funeral pyre of that great captain.
"She knew! That was why she asked me all those questions; that is why she exacted those promises! Mrs. Chadwick knew and dared not tell me! And I trusted you as a friend, as a gentleman, as a man of honor!" Her laughter rang out wildly. "And for these favors you bring dishonor! Shame! Shame! Your wife? Have you thought well of what you are about to do?"
"So well," he declared, "that I shall proceed to the end, to the very end." How beautiful she was! And a mad desire urged him to spring to her, crush her in his arms, and force upon her lips a thousand mad kisses!
"Have you weighed well the consequences?"
"Upon love's most delicate scales."
"Have you calculated what manner of woman I am?"—with subdued fierceness.
"To me you are the woman of all women."
"Do you think that I am a faint-hearted girl? You are making a mistake. I am a woman with a woman's mind, and a thousand years would not alter my utter contempt of you. Force me to marry you, and as there is a God above us to witness, every moment of suffering you now inflict upon me and mine, I shall give back a day, a long, bitter, galling day. Do you think that it will be wise to call me countess?" Her scorn was superb.
"I am waiting for your answer. Will you be my wife, or shall I be forced to make my villainy definitive?"
"Permit me to take upon these shoulders the burden of answering that question," said a voice from the window.
Warburton, dressed in his stable clothes and leggings, hatless and drenched with rain, stepped into the room from the veranda and quickly crossed the intervening space. Before any one of the tragic group could recover from the surprise caused by his unexpected appearance, he had picked up the packet of plans and had dropped it into the fire. Then he leaned with his back against the mantel and faced them, or rather Karloff, of whom he was not quite sure.
Tick-lock, tick-tock went the voice of the little friend of eternity on the mantel-piece; the waxen sheets (to which so much care and labor had been given) writhed and unfolded, curled and crackled, and blackened on the logs; the cold wind and rain blew in through the opened window; the lamp flared and flickered inside its green shade; a legion of heroes peered out from the book-cases, no doubt much astonished at the sight of this ordinary hero of mine and his mean, ordinary clothes. I have in my mind's eye the picture of good D'Artagnan's frank contempt, Athos' magnificent disdain, the righteous (I had almost said honest!) horror of the ultra-fashionable Aramis, and the supercilious indignation of the bourgeois Porthos. What! this a hero? Where, then, was his rapier, his glittering baldric, his laces, his dancing plumes, his fine air?
Several times in the course of this narrative I have expressed my regret in not being an active witness of this or that scene, a regret which, as I am drawing most of these pictures from hearsay, is perfectly natural. What must have been the varying expressions on each face! Warburton, who, though there was tumult in his breast, coolly waited for Karloff to make the next move; Annesley, who saw his terrible secret in the possession of a man whom he supposed to be a stable-man; Karloff, who saw his house of cards vanish in the dartling tongues of flame, and recognized the futility of his villainy; the girl… Ah, who shall describe the dozen shadowy emotions which crossed and recrossed her face?
From Warburton's dramatic entrance upon the scene to Karloff's first movement, scarce a minute had passed, though to the girl and her father an eternity seemed to come and go. Karloff was a brave man. Upon the instant of his recovery, he sprang toward Warburton, silently and with predetermination: he must regain some fragment of those plans. He would not, could not, suffer total defeat before this girl's eyes; his blood rebelled against the thought. He expected the groom to strike him, but James simply caught him by the arms and thrust him back.
"No, Count; no, no; they shall burn to the veriest crisp!"
"Stand aside, lackey!" cried Karloff, a sob of rage strangling him. Again he rushed upon Warburton, his clenched hand uplifted. Warburton did not even raise his hands this time. So they stood, their faces within a hand's span of each other, the one smiling coldly, the other in the attitude of striking a blow. Karloff's hand fell unexpectedly, but not on the man in front of him. "Good God, no! a gentleman does not strike a lackey! Stand aside, stand aside!"
"They shall burn, Count,"—quietly; "they shall burn, because I am physically the stronger." Warburton turned quickly and with the toe of his boot shifted the glowing packet and renewed the flames. "I never realized till to-night that I loved my country half so well. Lackey? Yes, for the present."
He had not yet looked at the girl.
"Ah!" Karloff cried, intelligence lighting his face. "You are no lackey!"—subduing his voice.
James smiled. "You are quite remarkable."
"Who are you? I demand to know!"
"First and foremost, I am a citizen of the United States; I have been a soldier besides. It was my common right to destroy these plans, which indirectly menaced my country's safety. These,"—pointing to the bank-notes, "are yours, I believe. Nothing further requires your presence here."
"Yes, yes; I remember now! Fool that I have been!" Karloff struck his forehead in helpless rage. "I never observed you closely till now. I recall. The secret service: Europe, New York, Washington; you have known it all along. Spy!"
"That is an epithet which easily rebounds. Spy? Why, yes; I do for my country what you do for yours."
"The name, the name! I can not recollect the name! The beard is gone, but that does not matter,"—excitedly.
Warburton breathed easier. While he did not want the girl to know who he was just then, he was glad that Karloffs memory had taken his thought away from the grate and its valuable but rapidly disappearing fuel.
"Father! Father, what is it?" cried the girl, her voice keyed to agony."Father!"
The two men turned about. Annesley had fainted in his chair. Both Warburton and Karloff mechanically started forward to offer aid, but she repelled their approach.
"Do not come near me; you have done enough. Father, dear!" She slapped the colonel's wrists and unloosed his collar.
The antagonists, forgetting their own battle, stood silently watching hers. Warburton's mind was first to clear, and without a moment's hesitation he darted from the room and immediately returned with a glass of water. He held it out to the girl. Their glances clashed; a thousand mute, angry questions in her eyes, a thousand mute, humble answers in his. She accepted the glass, and her hand trembled as she dipped her fingers into the cool depths and flecked the drops into the unconscious man's face.
Meanwhile Karloff stood with folded arms, staring melancholically into the grate, where his dreams had disappeared in smoke. By and by the colonel sighed and opened his eyes. For a time he did not know where he was, and his gaze wandered mistily from face to face. Then recollection came back to him, recollection bristling with thorns. He struggled to his feet and faced Warburton. The girl put her arms around him to steady him, but he gently disengaged himself.
"Are you from the secret service, sir? If so, I am ready to accompany you wherever you say. I, who have left my blood on many a battleground, was about to commit a treasonable act. Allow me first to straighten up my affairs, then you may do with me as you please. I am guilty of a crime; I have the courage to pay the penalty." His calm was extraordinary, and even Karloff looked at him with a sparkle of admiration.
As a plummet plunges into the sea, so the girl's look plunged into Warburton's soul; and had he been an officer of the law, he knew that he would have utterly disregarded his duty.
"I am not a secret service man, sir," he replied unevenly. "If I were,"—pointing to the grate, "your plans would not have fed the fire."
"Who are you, then, and what do you in my house in this guise?"—proudly.
"I am your head stable-man—for the present. It was all by chance. I came into this room yesterday to get a book on veterinary surgery. I accidentally saw a plan. I have been a soldier. I knew that such a thing had no rightful place in this house…. I was coming across the lawn, when I looked into the window. … It is not for me to judge you, sir. My duty lay in destroying those plans before they harmed any one."
"No, it is not for you to judge me," said the colonel. "I have gambled away my daughter's fortune. To keep her in ignorance of the fact and to return to her the amount I had wrongfully used, I consented to sell to Russia the coast fortification plans of my country, such as I could draw from memory. No, it is not for you to judge me; only God has the right to do that."
"I am only a groom," said Warburton, simply. "What I have heard I shall forget."
Ah, had he but looked at the girl's face then!
A change came over Karloff's countenance; his shoulders drooped; the melancholy fire died out of his face and eyes. With an air of resignation and a clear sense of the proportion of things, he reached out and took up the note upon which Annesley had scrawled his signature.
Warburton, always alert, seized the count's wrist. He saw the name of a bank and the sum of five figures.
"What is this?" he demanded.
"It is mine," replied the count, haughtily.
Warburton released him.
"He speaks truly," said the colonel. "It is his."
"The hour of madness is past," the Russian began, slowly and musically. The tone was musing. He seemed oblivious of his surroundings and that three pairs of curious eyes were leveled in his direction. He studied the note, creased it, drew it through his fingers, smoothed it and caressed it. "And I should have done exactly as I threatened. There is, then, a Providence which watches jealously over the innocent? And I was a skeptic!… Two hundred thousand dollars,"—picking up the packet of banknotes and balancing it on his hand. "Well, it is a sum large enough to tempt any man. How the plans and schemes of men crumble to the touch! Ambition is but the pursuit of mirages…. Mademoiselle, you will never know what the ignominy of this moment has cost me—nor how well I love you. I come of a race of men who pursue their heart's desire through fire and water. Obstacles are nothing; the end is everything. In Europe I should have won, in honor or in dishonor. But this American people, I do not quite understand them; and that is why I have played the villain to no purpose."
He paused, and a sad, bitter smile played over his face.
"Mademoiselle," he continued, "henceforth, wherever I may go, your face and the sound of your voice shall abide with me. I do not ask you to forget, but I ask you to forgive." Again he paused.
She uttered no sound.
"Well, one does not forget nor forgive these things in so short a time. And, after all, it was your own father's folly. Fate threw him across my path at a critical moment—but I had reckoned without you. Your father is a brave man, for he had the courage to offer himself to the law; I have the courage to give you up. I, too, am a soldier; I recognize the value of retreat." To Warburton he said: "A groom, a hostler, to upset such plans as these! I do not know who you are, sir, nor how to account for your timely and peculiar appearance. But I fully recognize the falseness of your presence here. Eh, well, this is what comes of race prejudice, the senseless battle which has always been and always will be waged between the noble and the peasant. Had I observed you at the proper time, our positions might relatively have been changed. Useless retrospection!" To Annesley: "Sir, we are equally culpable. Here is this note of yours. I might, as a small contribution toward righting the comparative wrong which I have done you, I might cast it into the fire. But between gentlemen, situated as we are, the act would be as useless as it would be impossible. I might destroy the note, but you would refuse to accept such generosity at my hands,—which is well."
"What you say is perfectly true." The colonel drew his daughter closer to him.
"So," went on the count, putting the note in his pocket, "to-morrow I shall have my ducats."
"My bank will discount the note," said the colonel, with a proud look; "my indebtedness shall be paid in full."
"As I have not the slightest doubt. Mademoiselle, fortune ignores you but temporarily; misfortune has brushed only the hem of your garment, as it were. Do not let the fear of poverty alarm you,"—lightly. "I prophesy a great public future for you. And when you play thatLargoof Handel's, to a breathless audience, who knows that I may not be hidden behind the curtain of some stall, drinking in the heavenly sound made by that loving bow?…. Romance enters every human being's life; like love and hate, it is primitive. But to every book fate writesfinis."
He thrust the bank-notes carelessly into his coat pocket, and walked slowly toward the hallway. At the threshold he stopped and looked back. The girl could not resist the magnetism of his dark eyes. She was momentarily fascinated, and her heart beat painfully.
"If only I might go with the memory of your forgiveness," he said.
"I forgive you."
"Thank you." Then Karloff resolutely proceeded; the portiere fell behind him. Shortly after she heard the sound of closing doors, the rattle of a carriage, and then all became still. Thus the handsome barbarian passed from the scene.
The colonel resumed his chair, his arm propped on a knee and his head bowed in his hand. Quickly the girl fell to her knees, hid her face on his breast, and regardless of the groom's presence, silently wept.
"My poor child!" faltered the colonel. "God could not have intended to give you so wretched a father. Poverty and dishonor, poverty and dishonor; I who love you so well have brought you these!"
Warburton, biting his trembling lips, tiptoed cautiously to the window, opened it and stepped outside. He raised his fevered face gratefully to the icy rain. A great and noble plan had come to him.
As Mrs. Chadwick said, love is magnificent only when it gives all without question.
Karloff remained in seclusion till the following Tuesday; after that day he was seen no more in Washington. From time to time some news of him filters through the diplomatic circles of half a dozen capitals to Washington. The latest I heard of him, he was at Port Arthur. It was evident that Russia valued his personal address too highly to exile him because of his failure in Washington. Had he threatened or gone about noisily, we should all have forgotten him completely. As it is, the memory of him to-day is as vivid as his actual presence. Thus, I give him what dramatists call an agreeable exit.
I was in the Baltimore and Potomac station the morning after that unforgetable night at Senator Blank's house. I had gone there to see about the departure of night trains, preparatory to making a flying trip to New York, and was leaving the station when a gloved hand touched me on the arm. The hand belonged to Mrs. Chadwick. She was dressed in the conventional traveling gray, and but for the dark lines under her eyes she would have made a picture for any man to admire. She looked tired, very tired, as women look who have not slept well.
"Good morning, Mr. Orator," she said, saluting me with a smile.
"You are going away?" I asked, shaking her hand cordially.
"'Way, 'way, away! I am leaving for Nice, where I expect to spend the winter. I had intended to remain in Washington till the holidays; but I plead guilty to a roving disposition, and I frequently change my mind."
"Woman's most charming prerogative," said I, gallantly.
What a mask the human countenance is! How little I dreamed that I was jesting with a woman whose heart was breaking, and numbed with a terrible pain!
Her maid came up to announce that everything was ready for her reception in the state-room, and that the train was about to draw out of the station. Mrs. Chadwick and I bade each other good-by. Two years passed before I saw her again.
At eleven o'clock I returned to my rooms to pack a case and have the thing off my mind. Tramping restlessly up and down before my bachelor apartment house I discerned M'sieu Zhames. His face was pale and troubled, but the angle of his jaw told me that he had determined upon something or other.
"Ha!" I said railingly. He wore a decently respectable suit of ready-made clothes. "Lost your job and want me to give you a recommendation?"
"I want a few words with you, Chuck, and no fooling. Don't say that you can't spare the time. You've simplygotto."
"With whom am I to talk, James, the groom, or Warburton, the gentleman?"
"You are to talk with the man whose sister you are to marry."
I became curious, naturally. "No police affair?"
"No, it's not the police. I can very well go to a lawyer, but I desire absolute secrecy. Let us go up to your rooms at once."
I led the way. I was beginning to desire to know what all this meant.
"Has anybody recognized you?" I asked, unlocking the door to my apartment.
"No; and I shouldn't care a hang if they had."
"Oho!"
Warburton flung himself into a chair and lighted a cigar. He puffed it rapidly, while I got together my shaving and toilet sets.
"Start her up," said I.
"Chuck, when my father died he left nearly a quarter of a million in five per cents; that is to say, Jack, Nancy and I were given a yearly income of about forty-five hundred. Nancy's portion and mine are still in bonds which do not mature till 1900. Jack has made several bad investments, and about half of his is gone; but his wife has plenty, so his losses do not trouble him. Now, I have been rather frugal during the past seven years. I have lived entirely upon my Army pay. I must have something like twenty-five thousand lying in the bank in New York. On Monday, between three and four o'clock, Colonel Annesley will become practically a beggar, a pauper."
"What?" My shaving-mug slipped from my hand and crashed to the floor, where it lay in a hundred pieces.
"Yes. He and his daughter will not have a roof of their own: all gone, every stick and stone. Don't ask me any questions; only do as I ask of you." He took out his check-book and filled out two blanks. These he handed to me. "The large one I want you to place in the Union bank, to the credit of Colonel Annesley."
I looked at the check. "Twenty thousand dollars?" I gasped.
"The Union bank has this day discounted the colonel's note. It falls due on Monday. In order to meet it, he will have to sell what is left of the Virginian estate and his fine horses. The interest will be inconsiderable."
"What—" I began, but he interrupted me.
"I shall not answer a single question. The check for three thousand is for the purchase of the horses, which will be put on sale Saturday morning. They are easily worth this amount. Through whatever agency you please, buy these horses for me, but not in my name. As for the note, cash my check first and present the currency for the note. No one will know anything about it then. You can not trace money."
"Good Lord, Bob, you are crazy! You are giving away a fortune," I remonstrated.
"It is my own, and my capital remains untouched."
"Have you told her that you love her? Does she know who you are?" I was very much excited.
"No,"—sadly, "I haven't told her that I love her. She does not know who I am. What is more, I never want her to know. I have thrown my arms roughly around her, thinking her to be Nancy, and have kissed her. Some reparation is due her. On Monday I shall pack up quietly and return to the West"
"Annesley beggared? What in heaven's name does this all mean?" I was confounded.
"Some day, Chuck, when you have entered the family properly as my sister's husband, perhaps I may confide in you. At present the secret isn't mine. Let it suffice that through peculiar circumstances, the father of the girl I love is ruined. I am not doing this for any theatrical play, gratitude and all that rot,"—with half a smile, "I admire and respect Colonel Annesley; I love his daughter, hopelessly enough. I have never been of much use to any one. Other persons' troubles never worried me to any extent; I was happy-go-lucky, careless and thoughtless. True, I never passed a beggar without dropping a coin into his cup. But often this act was the result of a good dinner and a special vintage. The twenty thousand will keep the colonel's home, the house his child was born in and her mother before her. I am doing this crazy thing, as you call it, because it is going to make me rather happy. I shall disappear Monday. They may or they may not suspect who has come to their aid. They may even trace the thing to you; but you will be honor-bound to reveal nothing. When you have taken up the note, mail it to Annesley. You will find Count Karloff's name on it."
"Karloff?" I was in utter darkness.
"Yes. Annesley borrowed twenty thousand of him on a three months' note. Both men are well known at the Union bank, Karloff having a temporary large deposit there, and Annesley always having done his banking at the same place. Karloff, for reasons which I can not tell you, did not turn in the note till this morning. You will take it up this afternoon."
"Annesley, whom I believed to be a millionaire, penniless; Karloff one of his creditors? Bob, I do not think that you are treating me fairly. I can't go into this thing blind."
"If you will not do it under these conditions, I shall have to find some one who will,"—resolutely.
I looked at the checks and then at him…. Twenty-three thousand dollars! It was more than I ever before held in my hand at one time. And he was giving it away as carelessly as I should have given away a dime. Then the bigness of the act, the absolute disinterestedness of it, came to me suddenly.
"Bob, you are the finest lover in all the world! And if Miss Annesley ever knows who you are, she isn't a woman if she does not fall immediately in love with you." I slapped him on the shoulder. I was something of a lover myself, and I could understand.
"She will never know. I don't want her to know. That is why I am going away. I want to do a good deed, and be left in the dark to enjoy it. That is all. After doing this, I could never look her in the eyes as Robert Warburton. I shall dine with the folks on Sunday. I shall confess all only to Nancy, who has always been the only confidante I have ever had among the women."
There was a pause. I could bring no words to my lips. Finally I stammered out: "Nancy knows. I told her everything last night. I broke my word with you, Bob, but I could not help it She was crying again over what she thinks to be your heartlessness. Ihadto tell her."
"What did she say?"—rising abruptly.
"She laughed, and I do not know when I have seen her look so happy.There'll be a double wedding yet, my boy." I was full of enthusiasm.
"I wish I could believe you, Chuck; I wish I could. I'm rather glad you told Nan. I love her, and I don't want her to worry about me." He gripped my hand. "You will do just as I ask?"
"To the very letter. Will you have a little Scotch to perk you up a bit? You look rather seedy."
"No,"—smiling dryly. "If she smelt liquor on my breath I should lose my position. Good-by, then, till Sunday."
I did not go to New York that night. I forgot all about going. Instead, I went to Nancy, to whom I still go whenever I am in trouble or in doubt.
Friday morning.
Miss Annesley possessed more than the ordinary amount of force and power of will. Though the knowledge of it was not patent to her, she was a philosopher. She always submitted gracefully to the inevitable. She was religious, too, feeling assured that God would provide. She did not go about the house, moaning and weeping; she simply studied all sides of the calamity, and looked around to see what could be saved. There were moments when she was even cheerful. There were no new lines in her face; her eyes were bright and eager. All persons of genuine talent look the world confidently in the face; they know exactly what they can accomplish. As Karloff had advised her, she did not trouble herself about the future. Her violin would support her and her father, perhaps in comfortable circumstances. The knowledge of this gave her a silent happiness, that kind which leaves upon the face a serene and beautiful calm.
At this moment she stood on the veranda, her hand shading her eyes. She was studying the sky. The afternoon would be clear; the last ride should be a memorable one. The last ride! Tears blurred her eyes and there was a smothering sensation in her throat. The last ride! After to-day Jane would have a new, strange mistress. If only she might go to this possible mistress and tell her how much she loved the animal, to obtain from her the promise that she would be kind to it always. How mysteriously the human heart spreads its tendrils around the objects of its love! What is there in the loving of a dog or a horse that, losing one or the other, an emptiness is created? Perhaps it is because the heart goes out wholly without distrust to the faithful, to the undeceiving, to the dumb but loving beast, which, for all its strength, is so helpless.
She dropped her hand and spoke to James, who was waiting near by for her orders.
"James, you will have Pierre fill a saddle-hamper; two plates, two knives and forks, and so forth. We shall ride in the north country this afternoon. It will be your last ride. To-morrow the horses will be sold." How bravely she said it!
"Yes, Miss Annesley." Whom were they going to meet in the north country? "At what hour shall I bring the horses around?"
"At three."
She entered the house and directed her steps to the study. She found her father arranging the morning's mail. She drew up a chair beside him, and ran through her own letters. An invitation to lunch with Mrs. Secretary-of-State; she tossed it into the waste-basket. A dinner-dance at the Country Club, a ball at the Brazilian legation, a tea at the German embassy, a box party at some coming play, an informal dinner at the executive mansion; one by one they fluttered into the basket. A bill for winter furs, a bill from the dressmaker, one from the milliner, one from the glover, and one from the florist; these she laid aside, reckoning their sum-total, and frowning. How could she have been so extravagant? She chanced to look at her father. He was staring rather stupidly at a slip of paper which he held in his trembling fingers.
"What is it?" she asked, vaguely troubled.
"I do not understand," he said, extending the paper for her inspection.
Neither did she at first.
"Karloff has not done this," went on her father, "for it shows that he has had it discounted at the bank. It is canceled; it is paid. I did not have twenty thousand in the bank; I did not have even a quarter of that amount to my credit. There has been some mistake. Our real estate agent expects to realize on the home not earlier than Monday morning. In case it was not sold then, he was to take up the note personally. This is not his work, or I should have been notified." Then, with a burst of grief: "Betty, my poor Betty! How can you forgive me? How can I forgive myself?"
"Father, I am brave. Let us forget. It will be better so."
She kissed his hand and drew it lovingly across her cheek. Then she rose and moved toward the light. She studied the note carefully. There was nothing on it save Karloff's writing and her father's and the red imprint of the bank's cancelation. Out of the window and beyond she saw James leading the horses to the watering trough. Her face suddenly grew crimson with shame, and as suddenly as it came the color faded. She folded the note and absently tucked it into the bosom of her dress. Then, as if struck by some strange thought, her figure grew tense and rigid against the blue background of the sky. The glow which stole over her features this time had no shame in it, and her eyes shone like the waters of sunlit seas. It must never be; no it must never be.
"We shall make inquiries at the bank," she said. "And do not be downcast, father, the worst is over. What mistakes you have made are forgotten The future looks bright to me."
"Through innocent young eyes the future is ever bright; but as we age we find most of the sunshine on either side, and we stand in the shadow between. Brave heart, I glory in your courage. God will provide for you; He will not let my shadow fall on you. Yours shall be the joy of living, mine shall be the pain. God bless you! I wonder how I shall ever meet your mother's accusing eyes?"
"Father, youmustnot dwell upon this any longer; for my sake you must not. When everything is paid there will be a little left, enough till I and my violin find something to do. After all, the world's applause must be a fine thing. I can even now see the criticisms in the great newspapers. 'A former young society woman, well-known in the fashionable circles of Washington, made herdebutas a concert player last night. She is a stunning young person.' 'A young queen of the diplomatic circles, here and abroad, appeared in public as a violinist last night. She is a member of the most exclusive sets, and society was out to do her homage.' 'One of Washington's brilliant young horsewomen,' and so forth. Away down at the bottom of the column, somewhere, they will add that I play the violin rather well for an amateur." In all her trial, this was the one bitter expression, and she was sorry for it the moment it escaped her. Happily her father was not listening. He was wholly absorbed in the mystery of the canceled note.
She had mounted Jane and was gathering up the reins, while James strapped on the saddle-hamper. This done, he climbed into the saddle and signified by touching his cap that all was ready. So they rode forth in the sweet freshness of that November afternoon. A steady wind was blowing, the compact white clouds sailed swiftly across the brilliant heavens, the leaves whispered and fluttered, hither and thither, wherever the wind listed; it was the day of days. It was the last ride, and fate owed them the compensation of a beautiful afternoon.
The last ride! Warburton's mouth drooped. Never again to ride with her! How the thought tightened his heart! What a tug it was going to be to give her up! But so it must be. He could never face her gratitude. He must disappear, like the good fairies in the story-books. If he left now, and she found out what he had done, she would always think kindly of him, even tenderly. At twilight, when she took out her violin and played soft measures, perhaps a thought or two would be given to him. After what had happened—this contemptible masquerading and the crisis through which her father had just passed—it would be impossible for her to love him. She would always regard him with suspicion, as a witness of her innocent shame.
He recalled the two wooden plates in the hamper. Whom was she going to meet? Ah, well, what mattered it? After to-day the abyss of eternity would yawn between them. How he loved her! How he adored the exquisite profile, the warm-tinted skin, the shining hair!… And he had lost her! Ah, that last ride!
The girl was holding her head high because her heart was full. No more to ride on a bright morning, with the wind rushing past her, bringing the odor of the grasses, of the flowers, of the earth to tingle her nostrils; no more to follow the hounds on a winter's day, with the pack baying beyond the hedges, the gay, red-coated riders sweeping down the field; no more to wander through the halls of her mother's birthplace and her own! Like a breath on a mirror, all was gone. Why? What hadshedone to be flung down ruthlessly? She, who had been brought up in idleness and luxury, must turn her hands to a living! Without being worldly, she knew the world. Once she appeared upon the stage, she would lose caste among her kind. True, they would tolerate her, but no longer would her voice be heard or her word have weight.
Soon she would be tossed about on the whirlpool and swallowed up. Then would come the haggling with managers, long and tiresome journeys, gloomy hotels and indifferent fare, curious people who desired to see the one-time fashionable belle; her portraits would be lithographed and hung in shop-windows, in questionable resorts, and the privacy so loved by gentlewomen gone; and perhaps there would be insults. And she was only on the threshold of the twenties, the radiant, blooming twenties!
[Illustration: "Go home, Colonel—and stay home!"—ACT III.]
During the long ride (for they covered something like seven miles) not a word was spoken. The girl was biding her time; the man had nothing to voice. They were going through the woods, when they came upon a clearing through which a narrow brook loitered or sallied down the incline. She reined in and raised her crop. He was puzzled. So far as he could see, he and the girl were alone. The third person, for whom, he reasoned, he had brought the second plate, was nowhere in sight.
A flat boulder lay at the side of the stream, and she nodded toward it. Warburton emptied the hamper and spread the cloth on the stone. Then he laid out the salad, the sandwiches, the olives, the almonds, and two silver telescope-cups. All this time not a single word from either; Warburton, busied with his task, did not lift his eyes to her.
The girl had laid her face against Jane's nose, and two lonely tears trailed slowly down her velvety cheeks. Presently he was compelled to look at her and speak.
"Everything is ready, Miss." He spoke huskily. The sight of her tears gave him an indescribable agony.
She dropped the bridle-reins, brushed her eyes, and the sunshine of a smile broke through the troubled clouds.
"Mr. Warburton," she said gently, "let us not play any more. I am too sad. Let us hang up the masks, for the comedy is done."
How silent the forest was! The brook no longer murmured, the rustle of the leaves was without sound. A spar of sunshine, filtering through the ragged limbs of the trees, fell aslant her, and she stood in an aureola. As for my hero, a species of paralysis had stricken him motionless and dumb. It was all so unexpected, all so sudden, that he had the sensation of being whirled away from reality and bundled unceremoniously into the unreal…. She knew, and had known! A leaf brushed his face, but he was senseless to the touch of it. All he had the power to do was to stare at her. . . . She knew, and had known!
Dick stepped into the brook and began to paw the water, and the intermission of speech and action came to an end.
"You-and you knew?" What a strange sound his voice had in his own ears!
"Yes. From the very beginning—I knew you to be a gentleman in masquerade; that is to say, when I saw you in the police-court. The absence of the beard confused me at first, but presently I recognized the gentleman whom I had noticed on board the ship."
So she had noticed him!
"That night you believed me to be your sister Nancy. But I did not know this till lately. And the night I visited her she exhibited some photographs. Among these was a portrait of you without a beard."
Warburton started. And the thought that this might be the case had never trickled through his thick skull! How she must have laughed at him secretly!
She continued: "Even then I was not sure. But when Colonel Raleigh declared that you resembled a former lieutenant of his, then I knew." She ceased. She turned to her horse as if to gather the courage to go on; but Jane had her nose hidden in the stream, and was oblivious of her mistress' need.
He waited dully for her to resume, for he supposed that she had not yet done.
"I have humiliated you in a hundred ways, and for this I want you to forgive me. I sent the butler away for the very purpose of making you serve in his stead. But you were so good about it all, with never a murmur of rebellion, that I grew ashamed of my part in the comedy. But now—" Her eyes closed and her body swayed; but she clenched her hands, and the faintness passed away. "But for you, my poor father would have been dishonored, and I should have been forced into the arms of a man whom I despise. Whenever I have humiliated you, you have returned the gift of a kind deed. You will forgive me?"
"Forgive you? There is nothing for me to forgive on my side, much on yours. It is you who should forgive me. What you have done I have deserved." His tongue was thick and dry. How much did she know?
"No, not wholly deserved it." She fumbled with the buttons of her waist; her eyes were so full that she could not see. She produced an oblong slip of paper.
When he saw it, a breath as of ice enveloped him. The thing she held out toward him was the canceled note. For a while he did me the honor to believe that I had betrayed him.
"I understand the kind and generous impulse which prompted this deed. Oh, I admire it, and I say to you, God bless you! But don't you see how impossible it is? It can not be; no, no! My father and I are proud. What we owe we shall pay. Poverty, to be accepted without plaint, must be without debts of gratitude. But it was noble and great of you; and I knew that you intended to run away without ever letting any one know."
"Who told you?"
"No one. I guessed it."
And he might have denied all knowledge of it!
"Won't you—won't you let it be as it is? I have never done anything worth while before, and this has made me happy. Won't you let me do this? Only you need know. I am going away on Monday, and it will be years before I see Washington again. No one need ever know."
"It is impossible!"
"Why?"
She looked away. In her mind's eye she could see this man leading a troop through a snow-storm. How the wind roared! How the snow whirled and eddied about them, or suddenly blotted them from sight! But, on and on, resolutely, courageously, hopefully, he led them on to safety…. He was speaking, and the picture dissolved.
"Won't you let it remain just as it is?" he pleaded.
Her head moved negatively, and once more she extended the note. He took it and slowly tore it into shreds. With it he was tearing up the dream and tossing it down the winds.
"The money will be placed to your credit at the bank on Monday. We can not accept such a gift from any one. You would not, I know. But always shall I treasure the impulse. It will give me courage in the future—when I am fighting alone."
"What are you going to do?"
"I? I am going to appear before the public,"—with assumed lightness;"I and my violin."
He struck his hands together. "The stage?"—horrified.
"I must live,"—calmly.
"But a servant to public caprice? It ought not to be! I realize that I can not force you to accept my gift, but this I shall do: I shall buy in the horses and give them back to you."
"You mustn't. I shall have no place to put them. Oh!"—with a gesture full of despair and unshed tears, "why have you done all this? Why this mean masquerade, this submitting to the humiliations I have contrived for you, this act of generosity? Why?"
Perhaps she knew the answers to her own questions, but, womanlike, wanted to be told.
And at that moment, though I am not sure, I believe Warburton's guarding angel gave him some secret advice.
"You ask me why I have played the fool in the motley?"—finding the strength of his voice. "Why I have submitted in silence to your just humiliations? Why I have acted what you term generously? Do you mean to tell me that you have not guessed the riddle?"
She turned her delicate head aside and switched the grasses with her riding-crop.
"Well,"—flinging aside his cap, which he had been holding in his hand, "I will tell you. I wanted to be near you. I wanted to be, what you made me, your servant. It is the one great happiness that I have known. I have done all these things because—because, God help me, I love you! Yes, I love you, with every beat of my heart!"—lifting his head proudly. Upon his face love had put the hallowed seal. "Do not turn your head away, for my love is honest. I ask nothing, nothing; I expect nothing. I know that it is hopeless. What woman could love a man who has made himself ridiculous in her eyes, as I have made myself in yours?"—bitterly.
"No, not ridiculous; never that!" she interrupted, her face still averted.
He strode toward her hastily, and for a moment her heart almost ceased to beat. But all he did was to kneel at her feet and kiss the hem of her riding-skirt. He rose hurriedly.
"God bless you, and good-by!" He knew that if he remained he would lose all control, crush her madly in his arms, and hurt her lips with his despairing kisses. He had not gone a dozen paces, when he heard her call pathetically. He stopped.
"Mr. Warburton, surely you are not going to leave me here alone with the horses?"
"Pardon me, I did not think! I am confused!" he blundered.
"You are modest, too." Why is it that, at the moment a man succumbs to his embarrassment, a woman rises above hers? "Come nearer,"—a command which he obeyed with some hesitation. "You have been a groom, a butler, all for the purpose of telling me that you love me. Listen. Love is like a pillar based upon a dream: one by one we lay the stones of beauty, of courage, of faith, of honor, of steadfastness. We wake, and how the beautiful pillar tumbles about our ears! What right have you to build up your pillar upon a dream of me? What do you know of the real woman—for I have all the faults and vanities of the sex; what do you know of me? How do you know that I am not selfish? that I am constant? that I am worthy a man's loving?"
"Love is not like Justice, with a pair of scales to weigh this or that.I do not askwhyI love you; the knowledge is all I need. And you arenotselfish, inconstant, and God knows that you are worth loving. AsI said, I ask for nothing."
"On the other hand," she continued, as if she had not heard his interpolation, "I know you thoroughly. I have had evidence of your courage, your steadfastness, your unselfishness. Do not misunderstand me. I am proud that you love me. This love of yours, which asks for no reward, only the right to confess, ought to make any good woman happy, whether she loved or not. And you would have gone away without telling me, even!"