Scandal: A Novel

Fraser immediately became the object of Beatrix' whole
attention. FRONTISPIECE. See page [192].

SCANDAL

A NOVEL

BY

COSMO HAMILTON

AUTHOR OF
SINS OF THE CHILDREN, ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
RICHARD CULTER

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1917,
BY COSMO HAMILTON.

All rights reserved

"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,

And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),

Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—

How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."

ROBERT BROWNING.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Fraser immediately became the object of Beatrix' whole attention] . . . Frontispiece

["Don't you think we make a charming picture of connubial felicity?"]

["It won't be many days before we find scandal rearing its head at us"]

[In this picture stood the vital figures of Beatrix and Franklin, hand in hand]

SCANDAL

I

"By Jove, there's Beatrix Vanderdyke!"

"Why not?"

"What on earth is she doing in New York at this time of year?"

There was a laugh and a shrug. "If it comes to that, my dear fellow, what on earth are we doing in New York at this time of year? Anyway, I'm not interested."

"I am. She's with that unpleasant brute, Sutherland York again. I wish to Heaven she wouldn't go about with a second-rate portrait painter who only gets commissions by licking people's boots, or any other man, for the matter of that, at this time of night."

Pelham Franklin laughed. "I'm sorry I can't squeeze up any interest in Miss Vanderdyke," he said. "I've seen her going into York's studio round about midnight several times, but it's her life. She has to lead it. There's no accounting for tastes, you know. You and I, for instance, have a penchant for the Ziegfeld Follies. I vote we walk, it's a little cooler now."

And as the only son of the famous millionaire Franklin, sauntered away with his friend, Sutherland York, the "unpleasant brute," followed Miss Vanderdyke into the elevator.

York had cultivated a peculiar habit of looking at a woman as though she were the only one alive, and by doing so had achieved a list of clients which made the mouth of every other portrait painter in New York water with envy. He also had a way, which amounted to a gift, of running his eyes over women which made them feel that they had nothing on. It caused some to shudder, some to preen themselves, and some—the coarser, indelicate type—to feel a pleasant thrill of excitement. Like many men who paint portraits for a living, Sutherland York had discovered that in order to pay the rent of a very expensive apartment, keep a man, dress to perfection and dine frequently at Sherry's and the Ritz, it is necessary to know something more than how to paint. Women were his clients. They provided him with his butter as well as his bread, and he catered to them with artfulness rather than with art. Miss Vanderdyke came in for all this man's eye-play in the elevator, but without a flicker of a lash bore up against it.

The city had baked beneath a hot June sun that day. The night was airless and oppressive. Beatrix dropped her cloak and went over to one of the open windows and stood there with the discreet lights showing up the smooth whiteness of her shoulders, arms and back. Her dress was one of those so-called smart things that one sees in the windows of fashionable shops which affect French names. It left very little to the imagination and was as short as it was low. In between it was ugly and foolish, and required a very beautiful young body to live it down and put a check on the ribald laughter of sane people. On the other side of Fifth Avenue the Plaza, with its multitudinous windows all gleaming, reared its head up to the clear sky. Along the glistening street below intermittent automobiles glided like black beetles. The incessant hum of the city came like music to the girl's ears. She preferred that sound to the God-sent quietude of the country from which she had just come.

While a bottle of champagne was opened and cigarettes were placed on the table, York stood with his back against a heavily carved oak armoire in an attitude of carefully considered gracefulness and watched the girl with a sense of extreme triumph. The fact that she was young—very young,—not very much more than twenty,—and was generally acknowledged as having been the most beautiful débutante who had come out in New York society in many years, did not matter. He had painted her portrait and had quieted his numerous trades-people with a certain portion of the very substantial cheque which he had received, but that also did not matter. What did matter was the fact that he, himself, had proved attractive to a Vanderdyke—to the only daughter of the man whose name was known all over the world as the head of one of the richest and certainly the most exclusive family in the United States, whose house on Fifth Avenue contained art treasures which made it more notable than the houses of European royalty, and whose country places with their racing stables, their kennels, their swimming pools and tennis courts, golf courses and polo grounds were the pride of all the little eager people who write society paragraphs. It meant a good deal to the son of the man who had kept a dusty-looking antique shop with dirty windows on Fourth Avenue to be able to assure himself that he exercised enough attraction over this girl to make her run the risk of gossip in order to spend a few stolen hours from time to time in his company alone. With the use of consummate tact, his well-practiced flattery, and at the right moment a sudden outburst of passionate words culled from the works of Byron and Swinburne, what might he not achieve!

As these thoughts ran through his brain he turned to the oval glass in an Italian frame that hung on the wall and looked at himself with close examination. He certainly wore his forty-seven years admirably well. His dark, thick, wavy hair was all the more picturesque for its sprinkling of white. His high forehead lent him an air of intellectuality which was most misleading. His straight, black eyebrows and large, almond-shaped eyes gave him a Latin touch which seemed to indicate temperament. His nose, he told himself, was undoubtedly aristocratic, and his moustache—scrupulously lifted away from his lip—added to the effect of a well-shaped mouth and large white, regular teeth. There was a slit in his chin of which he had always been proud. Striking was the word that he applied to himself, and handsome was the one which he knew was generally used about him. The touch of humor which was his saving grace made him very well aware of the fact that with any clothes less well cut and carefully considered he might easily fall in line with the glossy villain of melodrama or with the conventional desperado so necessary to the producers of moving pictures.

With fingers as expert as those of a woman he smoothed his hair here and there, made a quick sign to his man to get out, and moved across the expensively rugged studio to the window. "I was on the point of going out to supper," he said, "when you called me up. It was very kind of you."

Beatrix turned towards him with the most disconcerting air of candor. Not for the first time he was astonished at her perfect finish, her audacious self-possession. This baby was a complete woman of the world. "No, it wasn't," she said. "I was bored. I only got to town at half-past eight and the mere thought of spending the evening with a garrulous companion—a sort of toothless watch-dog—in a house among Holland covers and the persistent smell of camphor was more than I could stand. I had no intention of being kind. Do we smoke?"

"Oh, please!" he said.

She followed him across the large, lofty room to the refectory table which had stood in the back room of the shop on Fourth Avenue for so many years, there acquiring all the age of which it could boast. A silver Jacobean box was open and in it there were Russian cigarettes upon which York's imaginary crest had been stamped. He had himself designed it.

"Thank you. How is it that you're here? The last time I saw you, you said you were going to Gloucester for the summer."

York put his face as near to the girl's round shoulder as he dared. "I went there," he said, "on the last of April, but I had to come back last week to see the architects of a new theatre. They've asked me to paint a series of panels for the foyer. It's a nuisance; but—although I dare say it's never occurred to you—there are some people in the world who must work to live." He raised his glass, adopted an expression of adoration in which there was a mixture of humbleness and confidence, and added: "I'd have come from the ends of the earth for the pleasure of seeing you to-night."

Beatrix looked at him with a smile of amused appreciation. "How well you do that sort of thing," she said. "Better than any man I know. Was it born in you, or did you achieve it?"

York placed what purported to be a Wolsey chair just out of the line of light thrown by a lamp on the table, and metaphorically hauled himself up for having gone a little too far. This imperious girl, as spoiled as a Royal Princess, who had been brought up in the belief that all she had to do was to put her finger on a bell to bring the moon and the sun and the stars to her service, needed more careful handling than a thoroughbred yearling. So York, whose business had taught him far more than the rudiments of psychology, hastened to become general again. Like the filibuster who starts out on an expedition to find hidden treasure, he had always before him the vague, exciting hope that some day he might stand towards this girl in a very different relationship. "How long are you to be in the city?"

"I must go back the day after to-morrow," said Beatrix. "I've only come in to see about a costume for a Shakespeare Pastoral that mother has arranged to give in the Queen Anne gardens. It's going to be produced by one of the long-haired tribe, and the house-party's to be assisted by a sprinkling of professionals. As it'll break the monotony of country life I'm looking forward to it, especially as I'm going to play opposite,—I think that's the word,—to a matinée idol whose profile is Grecian, though his accent is Broadway. You must come and see us."

"I should love to," said York. His interest in pastorals was infinitesimal, but his desire to be included in one of Mrs. Vanderdyke's house-parties was as keen as that of any woman whose whole life is devoted to the difficult gymnastic feat of climbing into society. "When d'you begin rehearsing?"

"The day after to-morrow. The people who are at home at present scattered to-day and the new lot, or many of them, will probably go by train on Wednesday. Pelham Franklin is to be there. D'you know him?"

"Very slightly," said York. "He lives in the twin studio to this, on the other side, but as he is mostly away, either in Europe or big game hunting, there has been very little opportunity for us to meet. I caught sight of him just now leaving the house. He's a good-looking fellow, isn't he?"

"Is he? Yes, I suppose he is. I've met him once or twice and danced with him, but it struck me that he needed some sort of crisis in his life to shake him into becoming a man. At present he's a sort of undergraduate, skimming through life with his feet above the earth. I believe mother entertains secret hopes that he'll one day ask me to marry him." She laughed. "I hear her talking about the union of the two families as though they were the only two families in the world. Aunt Honoria is all in favor of it, too. The question of my marriage seems to affect them as though I were the daughter of King George or someone. Who would suppose that we live in a democracy? It's a joke, isn't it? Probably I shall run away with a good-looking chauffeur with kinky hair, regular teeth, a straight nose and a vocabulary which would put even George Ade to shame. Or, I may fall in love with the matinée idol and fly off with him in a motor-car at midnight, and so be in the fashion. My romantic-minded companion, Mrs. Lester Keene, who lives on novels, cherishes the idea that I'm going to elope with you."

"My God!" cried York. "If only such a thing could come true!"

The passion in the man's voice, the sudden flame in his eyes and the sort of picturesque hunger which suddenly pervaded him filled the girl with interest. She had always regarded him as a sort of Shaw play,—a mixture of easy cynicism, self-conscious cleverness and an obvious pose. She had been leading a quiet life since the season in town had ended, riding and playing tennis and swimming in the pool. She had had no opportunity of trying her powers upon any man who had been worth while. Her parents' friends were all rather pompous, responsible people who talked politics gravely and whose wealth had taken the sting of joy and effort out of life. It was good to be able to play with fire again. It exercised her wits. So she seized the opportunity of leading on this handsome person with whom so many married women had been in love, to see what he would do.

"Is that how you feel?" she asked, instinctively going into the light so that her slim triumphant beauty and bewitching youth should be in full challenging view.

York lost his head. His inherent conceit led him to believe that there was encouragement in the girl's voice and attitude. "You know it is. You know that ever since you came here to sit for me, from the very first instant that I caught sight of you I've been drunk with love. You've revolutionized my life—almost ruined me as painter—because to paint any other woman is sacrilege." He caught her hands and kissed them hotly.

It was all very well done. His words carried most amazing sincerity. His attitude was extremely graceful, and his simulated passion lent a temporary youthfulness to his face and tall, tightly compressed figure. He managed to look the complete lover. The stage had lost a great actor in him.

Beatrix rescued her hands and stood up very straight. This transpontine outburst was foolish. She had merely hoped for a witty passage of arms. "My dear Mr. York," she said, "you and I are very good friends. Please don't run away with the idea that I'm a young married woman in search of adventure."

York was angry. He knew that he had made a fool of himself. He hated to look a fool at any time and he was not sufficiently master of himself to recover his ground by making a well-turned apology. "Women don't come here to be friends," he said thickly. "They certainly don't come alone at this time of night to talk ethics. You've no right to snub me—to lead me on and then cover me with ice-cold water. I'm not the man to stand that sort of thing."

"Your cigarettes are very nice," said Beatrix. "May I have another?"

He held out the box and struck a match. He stood so close to the girl that the fragrance of her hair and the gleam of her white flesh went to his brain. All the sensuality of the man was churned up and stirred and his veneer fell from him like dry plaster. He really did forget for the moment that she was the daughter of one of America's richest men and was not simply the most exquisite young thing that he had ever seen during his long career. He bent down and put his lips on her shoulder, with a hoarse, inarticulate murmur. He had always been very successful in his love-making. The type of woman with whom he came most in contact couldn't resist the primeval. He must have imagined that this unbridled and daring outbreak would carry the girl off her feet. It had happened before.

He was mistaken. Beatrix was as completely mistress of herself as though she were talking to a hairdresser.

"That's a pity," she said. "I'm afraid it puts an end to my coming here. I'm sorry, because I liked the atmosphere of your studio and it broke the monotony of my gilded exclusiveness to indulge in this sort of mild Bohemianism, although I thought that you were clever. Will you please let me have my wrap?"

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes."

York obeyed. He saw that he had completely spoiled his very remote chance. Also it was obvious that his name would not now be included among Mrs. Vanderdyke's list of guests. "You fool!" he said to himself. "You damned infernal fool. This girl's an aristocrat—an autocrat—a hot-house plant. You've treated her like the wife of a Wall Street broker from the Middle West." He put the wrap about the girl's shoulders and stood back endeavoring to assume a dignity that he did not feel.

That kiss on her shoulder was like the touch of a slug on the petal of a rose. Beatrix resented it from the bottom of her soul, but her training, her breeding and her inherent pluck gave her the power to hide her feelings and maintain an air of undisturbed indifference. Her knowledge of men, already great, made her very well aware of the fact that the least show of temper might bring about a most unpleasant scuffle. She dropped her cigarette into a silver bowl. "I shall look forward to seeing your panels in the new theatre with great interest," she said. "Will you come down with me to the car?"

Realizing that he was no match for this young privileged person and cowed by her superbly unconscious sense of quality, York led the way across his elaborate studio in which suits of armor gleamed dully and massive pieces of oak reflected the light, to the door. He rang the bell of the elevator and stood silently waiting for it to come up. Nothing else was said, except by Beatrix, who gave him the one cool word "Good-bye," as he shut the door of the limousine.

York's man-servant, of whom he was so inordinately proud, had gone to bed. Otherwise, he would have been astonished to hear the sound of smashing china. The portrait painter took it out on a Dresden bowl which, in his impotent rage, he dashed with a characteristically coarse oath to the polished floor of the room in which most of his love episodes had ended with peculiar success.

II

The Vanderdyke house on Fifth Avenue faced the Park.

It aroused the admiration of most people not because it was an accurate reproduction of the famous De la Rochefoucauld mansion in Paris, but because on one side of it enough space upon which to build a high apartment house was given up to a stilted garden behind a high arrangement of wrought iron. It did not require a trained real-estate mind to know how valuable was such "waste" ground.

The suite of rooms belonging to Beatrix overlooked this large, square patch, with its well-nursed lawn, its elaborate stonework and its particular sparrows. In the spring, what appeared to be the same tulips suddenly and regularly appeared, standing erect in exact circles, and lilacs broke into almost regal bloom every year about the time that the family left town. A line of balloon-shaped bay trees always stood on the terrace and, whatever the weather, a nude maiden of mature charms watched over a marble fountain in an attitude of resentful modesty.

When her windows were open, as they mostly were, Beatrix and her English companion could hear the pathetic whimpers of the poor caged beasts in the Zoo in front of the house, and the raucous cries of the Semitic-looking parrots above the ceaseless cantata of motor traffic.

The morning after her lucky escape from York's studio, Beatrix slept late. Mrs. Lester Keene had breakfasted alone with the Times, saving Town Topics for her final cup of coffee. She had heard her charge, whom she made no effort to manage, return comparatively early the night before, and could hardly contain her curiosity to know what had happened. It was obvious that something had taken place, because, as a rule, Beatrix came back anywhere between one and two from her visits to the portrait painter. From a sense of duty and a fear of losing her comfortable position, Mrs. Lester Keene forced herself to remain awake on these occasions, sitting over a novel in a Jaeger dressing-gown or writing a long, rambling letter to a friend in London, in which, with tearful pride in her former independence, she wallowed in reminiscence.

Mrs. Lester Keene was the widow of a man of excellent family who had devoted all the best years of his life to the easy and too-well-paid pursuit of winding and unwinding "red tape" in a government office in London. He had died of it before he could retire to a stucco house at Brighton on a pension, and Amelia Keene had found herself in the tragic position of being alone in the world in the middle forties with nothing to bless herself with but an aged pomeranian, her undisputed respectability and the small sum paid to her on her husband's life policy. This, with the laudable and optimistic idea of placing herself forever out of the reach of the lean hand of penury, she had entrusted to the care of a glib city shark whom she had met in a boarding-house and who guaranteed that he would get her in on the ground floor of a new company exploiting the Eldorado Copper Mine and bring her in a regular three hundred and fifty-five per cent. on her capital. With this neat sum and others, however, the expert philanthropist with the waxed moustache and white spats paid his first-class fare to the Argentine and set up a matrimonial bureau for temperamental South Americans. Poor Amelia Keene sold her modest jewels and applied for work at the Employment Agency for Impoverished Gentlewomen, in George Street, Hanover Square.

It so happened that Mr. and Mrs. Vanderdyke were in London at that time and in need of a refined companion for their only daughter. Mrs. Lester Keene was one of the several dozen applicants and had the great good fortune to secure the much coveted post owing to the fact that her hair was grey, her complexion her own and her accent irreproachably Kensington. As Mrs. Vanderdyke intended to be the only made-up woman in any of her numerous houses, the other applicants were naturally turned down.

Like most English people the new companion had never been farther away from her native land than Boulogne. She thrilled with excitement, fright and the spirit of adventure when she joined the Vanderdyke entourage on board the Olympic. To be five or six days at sea was in itself an almost unbelievable exploit, full of hidden dangers and obvious terrors. The mere thought of shipwreck and the possibility of floating for days on a raft, in perhaps most unconventional attire, appalled her. But the thing that filled her nightly dreams with phantasmagoria was the knowledge that she was, God and the elements willing, to live in the United States,—a great wild country in which, she had been led to believe, men shot each other in the fashionable restaurants, broncho busters galloped madly along the principal streets of the big cities and lassoed helpless virgins, murderers in masks held up trains, black men were hanged to lamp-posts, as a matter of course, and comic creatures with large feet hammered people on the head with mallets. She had arrived at this point of view from several visits to the moving picture theatres in London, where American films do much to prejudice untravelled Europeans against the United States. Her astonishment when finally she arrived in New York and found herself in what she described to her friends at home as the Vanderdyke Palace, was almost childish.

In no sense of the word was she a companion to Beatrix. Her narrow and insular point of view, her characteristic English method of clinging to shibboleths and rococo ideas, and her complete and triumphant ignorance of all fundamental things made her, to Beatrix, more of a curiosity, like an early Victorian stuffed canary in a glass case, than a useful and helpful person. Beatrix had been born sophisticated. As a child and a young girl her arresting and palpable beauty had made her an irresistible mark for boys and young men, and one or two only of her early episodes, nearly all of which began well enough but ended in sometimes very rough attempts at seduction, would have crowded out of Mrs. Lester Keene's whole humdrum, drone-like life every incident that she could recall. Beatrix at once became her companion's guide, philosopher, friend and guardian, and derived constant amusement from the little garrulous, plump, hen-like woman, who knew no more about life than the average dramatist knows about people, and who, though completely dazzled by the hard, almost casual magnificence of her present surroundings, delighted to live in the past, telling long and pointless stories of "my house in Clanricarde Gardens, you know," "Mrs. Billings, my cook," "The summer when Algernon and I took the Edward Jones's house at Bognor," "My drawing-room was always crowded every second and fourth Thursday, quite a Salon, in fact," and so on, in a glorification of the commonplace that was as pathetic as it was tiresome.

Before Mrs. Keene had waded through the first few pages of her favorite weekly paper, a maid disturbed her. "Miss Vanderdyke would be glad to see you," she said, conveying the kindly but nevertheless royal command with full appreciation.

Mrs. Lester Keene was glad to obey. Even if dear Beatrix had nothing exciting to tell her, she had a very curious piece of news to impart to dear Beatrix. So she gathered herself together, rather in the same way as her prototype, the barnyard hen rising from a bath of sun-baked earth, and made her way along a wide passage hung with the priceless old prints which had overflowed from the lower rooms, to the bedroom of the daughter of the house.

Beatrix was sitting on the edge of a four-post bed, in a pink, transparent nightgown, her little feet in heelless slippers. On a table at her elbow there was a just placed breakfast tray and a new copy of Town and Country. Fresh from sleep, with her fair hair all about her shoulders, Beatrix, the one alive and exquisite thing in that too-large, too-lofty, pompous room, looked like a single rosebud in a geometrically designed garden.

"Come along, Brownie," she said, stretching herself with catlike grace, "and talk to me while I feed."

"You'll put something on, dear, won't you?"

"No, dear Brownie, I won't. No one can spy into the room and there isn't a single portrait of a man on the walls. So please don't fuss. It's far too hot for a dressing-gown and in my case why should I hide my charms from you?" She laughed at her wholly justified conceit, gave herself a very friendly nod in a pier-glass in the distance and poured out a cup of coffee.

Amelia Keene could never at any time, even in her isolated spinster days in the heart of the country, have brought herself to wear such an excuse for a nightgown. Flannel was her wear. She was, as usual, more than a little uneasy at the all-conquering individualism and supreme naturalness of the girl to whom she utterly subjected herself. With the slightest shrug of her shoulders,—she dared to do nothing further,—she put the dressing-gown that she had offered back in its place, and sat down. At any rate she could assure herself that she had endeavored to do her duty.

"You came in earlier than I expected last night, dear," she said, throwing the obvious bait of her insatiable curiosity.

Beatrix laughed again. "Why don't you say that you're dying to know what happened and lay awake all night making up exciting stories, Brownie?"

Mrs. Keene almost succeeded in looking dignified. "You know that I'm very, very much against these late visits to bachelor rooms," she said, "and have always done my best to dissuade you from making them. Therefore I can truly say that I'm far from being curious and am unable to feel any sort of excitement."

Beatrix bent forward and touched her companion's cheek with an affectionate hand. "Good for you, dear old wise-acre. You'll never have to take any blame for my blazing indiscretions, so don't worry, and as you don't feel any interest in my adventures I won't bother you with them."

Keen disappointment took the place of dignity. "I hope the time will never come," said Mrs. Keene, "when you'll cease to make me your confidante, dear."

Feeling that she had teased the little, naïve, narrow-minded, well-meaning and very human woman enough, Beatrix finished her coffee and lit a cigarette. "Last night, Sutherland York dropped his pose," she said. "I hadn't ever taken the trouble to analyze the reason why I went to his studio, but thinking it over now I see that it was because I knew that sooner or later his assumption of super-refined Bohemianism would break down and I wanted to be there to see the smash. Well, dear Brownie, I saw it. I also heard it and, to go into the exact details, I felt it,—on my shoulder." She put her right hand on the spot as though the touch of his sensual lips still stung her.

Amelia Keene gasped. "You don't mean that he kissed——"

"Yes, I do. Just here. I think of consulting a specialist on the matter."

"My dear!"

Beatrix got up, walked across the wide room and stood in front of the pier-glass. Through her thin, clinging nightgown she could see the lines of her slim, lithe, deliciously young form. For a moment she stood in frank and open admiration of it. She had a keenly appreciative eye for beautiful things. Then she walked about the room, like a young Diana, her heels rapping as she went. "It wasn't so amusing as I hoped it might be," she added. "Scratch a gentleman and you find the man. Break the veneer of a cad and you discover the beast. D'you think that Pond's Extract is strong enough to cleanse the spot?"

"He dared to kiss you!—— I can hardly believe it." Mrs. Keene looked like a pricked balloon. "Surely you'll never go near him again now."

"Only if I can get a policeman to go with me, or an inspector of nuisances. Brownie, dear, my occasional evenings with art and old armor are over. I must find some other excuse for breaking all the rules that hedge round the life of an ex-débutante."

"Thank Heaven!" said Mrs. Keene. "I've only seen that man once and he reminded me of a person who used to go down the area of my London house and try and persuade the maids to buy imitation jewelry on the instalment plan."

Beatrix burst into a ripple of laughter. "Well done, Brownie. That's perfect,—perfect." But again her hand went up to her shoulder.

And then the hen-like lady gathered her scattered wits together and came up to her own little surprise. "It's quite time that episode is at an end, my dear," she said. "Only about ten minutes after you drove away last night,—I was having a sandwich and a glass of port wine before going to my room,—your Aunt Honoria bore down upon me. May I say that without giving offense?"

Beatrix drew up short. "Aunt Honoria!"

"Yes; she came straight up to these apartments, looking more like a beautiful eagle than ever,—my heart fell straight into my boots,—and asked, or rather demanded to see you."

"Aunt Honoria! But yesterday she was staying with the Mordens at Morristown."

Mrs. Keene was delighted to find that she held a full hand. "I said that you were out. My dear, she didn't take my word for it. She marched, or rather sailed along the passage to your room and stabbed your empty bed with her long, thin fingers. Of course I followed. Then she turned to me and said: 'Where is she?' I'm sure she didn't add 'woman,' but she as good as did. She always does. I was terrified. I felt like a shop-lifter before the Lord Chief Justice. She always reminds me of a great legal dignitary with her snow-white hair and aquiline nose and the cold, direct gaze."

"Thank you, Brownie, dear, for your very charming literary touch, but please go on." Beatrix was really interested and curious. Her Aunt Honoria Vanderdyke, the outstanding figure in New York's most exclusive society, at whose entrance into her box at the opera the whole house very nearly rose to its feet, did nothing without a very strong motive.

"I tried to tell a lie—I did indeed—but somehow it stuck in my throat. Under those two mind-searching eyes I had to say that you had driven away with Mr. Sutherland York."

"Well, this is interesting!"

"'Ah!' she said. 'Indeed! And how often has Miss Vanderdyke stained herself with the paint of that mountebank?' 'I really do not know,' I replied. 'Thank you,' she said. 'That will do,' and went, or rather floated out of your bedroom and along the passage. I watched her from the gallery as she went down-stairs and through the door and away. A wonderful woman! If only Queen Elizabeth had been a lady she might have looked like her. I honestly confess, my dear——"

Beatrix held up one pink-nailed finger. "Brownie," she said, "I feel in my bones that there is going to be a row in the family. I've been seen going into York's studio, Aunt Honoria has been informed! She heard that I had come to town,—came to spy——"

"Oh, not spy, dear. She could never spy!"

"No, that's true. Inquire first hand, then,—and has now gone home to——"

The telephone bell rang. Beatrix's eyes gleamed with fun and a sort of impish amusement. "Brownie, I'll bet you any money you like that that's mother!"

Mrs. Keene rose. "Oh, no, my dear. Why should it be? It's the dressmaker, of course." All the same she hesitated apprehensively.

"Well, I'll bet you. The row is simmering."

Mrs. Keene nearly dropped the receiver. "It is your mother," she said. "She asks for you. And, oh dear me, how icy her voice is!"

Before going to the telephone, Beatrix lit another cigarette, gave a tilt to a comfortable arm-chair that stood near the little table, sat down, crossed one round leg over the other in a most leisurely way and took up the instrument. She looked like a water-color by Van Beers come to life.

"Good morning, Mamma! How sweet of you to call me up—I shall be glad to get away from the glare of the streets and reek of gasoline, but I can't leave until to-morrow. I must try on my costume twice before then—I'm very sorry, Mamma, darling, but—Well, give father my love and tell him that he simply must curb his impatience to see me, because it's absolutely necessary—Aunt Honoria! Is Aunt Honoria there?" She shot a wink at Amelia Keene, who stood in an attitude of piteous trepidation. "My very best love to Aunt Honoria. But it will be impossible for me to leave town at once. Well, then, expect to see me at tea to-morrow. Au revoir, Mamma. I wish I could stay for a longer chat, but I'm just on my way out, with so much to do."

She rang off and burst out laughing. "A very good thing you were not betting, Brownie."

"Did Mrs. Vanderdyke sound——?"

"Angry? Yes, in a white heat. Every word was like a grain of Cayenne pepper."

"And is it about last night?"

"Yes, obviously, and probably the others. There has been a family council, that's easy to guess. Scandal has been at work. Isn't it absurd?"

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" cried Mrs. Keene, who dreaded disturbances, would do anything in her power to keep trouble away from her charge, to whom she was genuinely attached, and saw starvation facing her if she were to lose her position. "How very unfortunate and distressing all this is! And, oh, my dear, how could you talk to your mother like that?"

"My dear good Brownie," said Beatrix, tipping off the end of her cigarette, "what's the use of belonging to this generation if I can't keep my parents in their place?"

She was just the least little bit disappointed that her companion failed to catch her touch of satirical humor.

III

At the moment when her maid was getting a bath ready for Beatrix and was waiting in a white marble room filled with the pleasant aroma of scented bath salts, Pelham Franklin wandered into the dining room of his studio apartment with his friend, Malcolm Fraser. Both men were in pajamas, and even then welcomed the occasional soft puff of air that came through the open window. Another hot day had fallen upon the city and a blistering sun was already high in a cloudless sky.

The dining room, like the studio and the passages, was filled with antlered heads and stuffed tarpon, and the skins of bear and tiger and wild-cat. There was something finely and healthily inartistic about the whole place, which more nearly resembled the work-rooms of a naturalist than anything else. The same note was struck by Franklin, who, with his broad shoulders and deep chest, his six feet of wiry body and small head, was obviously nothing but a man and not one who had ever been accused of being handsome either. He shuddered at the word except when it was applied to the royal mate of a fallow deer. All the same, he caught all discriminating eyes for the shortness of his thick, dark hair, the cleanness and humor of his grey, deep-set eyes, the rather aggressive squareness of his jaw, the small, soldierly moustache that covered a short upper lip and the strong, white teeth that gleamed beneath it when he laughed or was very angry. He had the look, too, of a man who mostly sleeps out under the sky, and the sun-baked skin of one who is not chained to a city or doomed to the petty slavery of the social push.

"This damned city," he said. "This time eight days ago we were well out to sea. If I hadn't been ass enough to put the yacht back for another stock of tobacco the mail would have waited and grown stale. Rotten bad luck, eh?"

Fraser grinned ironically. "If it was a question of my having to chuck a few fish and give up two or three weeks of the open sea to come to the city to see about adding a million or two to my capital, d'you think I'd grumble?"

"But you're such a mercenary brute. You think of nothing but money."

"Yes, and the only reason you're not mercenary is that you don't have to think about it. Thanks, I'll have a sausage. What are you going to do to-day?"

Franklin groaned. "Sign deeds and things most of the morning at the lawyer's, having tried to make out what the devil they mean, and after lunch I'm going to buy a Rolls Royce. Say why?"

"I was going to say why."

"Well, I say why not?"

"But you've got five cars already. You don't want another."

"My dear chap, don't rub it in. I can't help being one of those unlucky beggars who's got so much, through no fault of his own, that he doesn't want anything else. Don't heave bricks at me when I wake up with a mild desire for something I don't need. Encourage me. Help me to work up an interest in an expensive toy. Tempt me into getting rid of some of my superfluous cash. It helps some other feller, y'know, and anyway the only thing I've never done is to desire a Rolls Royce, and I dreamt about it all night. Will you come and let me see if I can break your neck?"

"All right! A good way of getting it in shape for to-morrow. You'll drive out to Greenwich, won't you?"

Franklin looked up quickly from the plate which had been occupying his close attention. "Greenwich? Why Greenwich?"

Fraser grinned again. He seemed to find a lot of grim amusement in Franklin. "You read me a telegram that you sent off from the yacht accepting Mrs. Vanderdyke's invitation for the Pastoral house-party."

"Oh, my God, yes!"

"But perhaps you'll have to undergo a slight operation or sit by the bedside of a sick relative, or something."

"No; I shall go. I promised Ida Larpent I'd meet her there."

"Oh!" said Fraser, dryly. "I see." He hoped to draw further details.

But Franklin let it go. There were so many far more vital things to talk about than women.

"By Jove!" said Fraser, going off at a tangent. "I envy you this house-party. You'll be able to talk to Beatrix."

"Well, that won't worry me much." Franklin had passed from sausages to Virginia ham and was still going strong.

"Maybe not. Your attention is occupied. It would worry me a whole lot, though. That girl has a strange effect on me. Always has, ever since I met her. That was before she left this country to be put to school in England. I only have to catch her eyes to begin to tremble at the knees. Ever had that queer sensation?"

"Twice," said Franklin, taking another cup of coffee.

"Who were they?"

"One was a tiger in the Indian bush, and the other a crazy Chinaman running amuck in San Francisco. They both made my knees waggle."

Fraser lit a cigarette, inhaled a mouthful of smoke and let it dribble through his nostrils. The first cigarette is worth going through breakfast to achieve. "Well," he said, without any of the self-consciousness that generally goes with the pulling down of the fourth wall, "I don't mind telling you, Pel, old man, but I'd give ten years of my life to marry Beatrix Vanderdyke."

"An expensive hobby," said Franklin.

"Yes, quite. But I knew her when she was a little bit of a slip of a thing, before she realized what it meant to bear that dollar-weighted name. She was the sweetest kid I ever saw. She might have been left behind by the fairies. I watched the gradual change take place in her and the disastrous effect of governesses who licked the blacking off her boots and the army of servants who treated her as though she were the First National Bank come to life. I was one of the people, almost unnoticed, who stood on the pier and watched her sail for England with her mother and father and their retinue. Since her return and during the time that she was a débutante and every newspaper in the country knelt at her feet I have met her perhaps a dozen times—the opera, the horse show, the races, and so on. She has given me two fingers and half a smile. She has been utterly and absolutely spoiled. She doesn't seem to be even distantly related to the little girl with the fairy face with whom I used to play in the country. And that's why I should like to marry her, and would make a huge sacrifice to do it. You may laugh and call me all sorts of a fool, but I should like to make it my business to chip off the outer layer of artificiality and affectation which has been plastered all over by her training and atmosphere. I would willingly die in hefty middle-age in order to bring back into that girl's eyes once more the look that she used to have as a child, so help me God!"

With extreme surprise Franklin watched his usually unemotional friend get up and walk over to the window. His voice had shaken with deep feeling and there was a sincerity so profound in the sudden disclosure of his soul that it put him outside the region of chaff. And so Franklin left him alone and swallowed the badinage which he had intended to throw at him. "Ye gods!" he thought. "I wonder if I shall ever meet a woman who will make me think such things as that, or go the eighth of an inch out of my way. I rather wish I could." He possessed enough humor and imagination to know that he was not unlike the girl under discussion; that he, like her, had been born in surroundings that were peculiarly artificial and altogether unlike those of the average man; that the enormous wealth to which he had succeeded made any sort of effort unnecessary, and left him without the urgent incentive for the good and glorious grapple for a place in the sun, which made most of his countrymen prove themselves and their worth.

He led the way into the studio where all that his life could show hung on the walls. Each head and each stuffed fish and every one of the skins had its interest, but as he looked round the huge room he told himself that they all came to very little and proved that he was a fine example of a man who had done nothing but play games. His toys were very empty and meaningless. A new and curious impatience with himself came over him. He was rather annoyed with Fraser for having shown him the quivering nerve of his hitherto hidden sincerity. "My God!" he thought. "I wonder when I shall begin to live!"

IV

It was twelve o'clock before Beatrix left the house with Mrs. Lester Keene and walked down to Fifty-seventh Street. To the relief of the gasping city, a phalanx of dark clouds had put out the sun. A storm which had burst with great violence over Westchester County was bearing slowly down. The air was heavy and windless, and the gasoline vapor from all motor traffic hung like an oily veil everywhere. The seats in the Park were filled with listless people. Men sat on the tops of busses with their coats off. The very trees looked tired and sapless.

"I wonder how soon we shall get the storm," said Beatrix.

Mrs. Keene fanned herself with an envelope. "The sooner the better. This heat is unbearable. Don't you think, dear, that you can leave town to-night? I'm longing to get back to the country."

Beatrix crossed the street. The only cool figure in the city was that of the rather too plump young woman who stood naked and unashamed over the fountain in the geometrical open space in front of the Plaza. "Oh, yes, I could, of course," she said, "but if you can put up with another night here, I won't. I'm not going to allow mother and father and Aunt Honoria to imagine that I'm awed by them—that would be weak. For the sake of the whole of the younger generation I must maintain my attitude of complete independence." She glanced at the line of automobiles which were drawn up outside the famous shop in Fifty-seventh Street. "The Dames from Virginia seem to be keeping Raoul fairly busy. I rather hope that Tubby will be here to-day. She is such fun."

"Tubby" was the nickname which had been given to the astute woman who had started her dressmaking business in London and extended it to New York,—a woman who had married an Italian Count and who, with consummate art and the assistance of an imaginative press agent, ran herself as though she were an actor-manager and her shops as though they were theatres. By charging enormous prices and calling her frocks by poetical names she had bluffed the gullible public into believing that she was the last word—the very acme of fashion. Like most charlatans who succeed, she had grown to believe that she was what she said she was,—an artist who had been sent into the world not for the purpose of making money or any such vulgar and banal proceeding, but in order to design coverings for female forms which would leave as much of them as possible open to the gaze without causing the arrest of the wearer.

At the first sight of Beatrix there was a stir and a rustle among a collection of tall, willowy and rather insolent young women who were lolling about, and a whisper of "Miss Vanderdyke" was passed from one to the other. Tubby's deputy wabbled forward,—herself a lady of very generous proportions who shone, like a fat seal, in very shiny satin. "Oh, good morning, Miss Vanderdyke!" she said, deferentially. "Your costume is well advanced. Will you be good enough to step upstairs?"

Beatrix nodded. "Is Tubby here to-day?" she asked.

The seal-like lady looked as though she had received a prod from a sharp fork. "No," she said, "the Countess is feeling the strain of an even more than usually busy season. She is undergoing a rest cure. As you know, she's very high-strung."

"I'm sorry," said Beatrix.

Followed by Mrs. Keene, she went up a wide staircase painted white and arrived at what Tubby invariably called the "atelier," on the first floor. Here the Southerners, to whom Beatrix had referred, were undergoing the apparently exciting process of being tried on. There were perhaps a dozen women in the large airy room, and each one was surrounded by fitters sticking pins into various parts of them and paying no sort of attention to the suggestions or the protests of their victims.

A very special girl came forward with the Shakesperian costume that was being carried out, or "created," as Tubby would say, for Beatrix. It was a sort of Titania costume, white, loose and airy, with a shimmer here and there of silver, which could very easily have been made at home for a mere nothing. The special girl, with a quiet "If you will allow me," unhooked Beatrix's frock, murmuring one or two well-turned compliments as to her figure, and helped her into the robe that was to cause a sensation in the Queen Anne gardens of the Vanderdyke country house.

Utterly unconscious of the other women in the room, Beatrix swept up to the astonished Mrs. Keene, and in a high clear voice, cried out: "Set your heart at rest; the fairy land buys not the child of me. His mother was a votaress of my order; and in the spiced Indian air, by night, full often hath she gossip'd by my side; and sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, marking the embarked traders on the flood; when we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind——"

"Oh, my dear!" cried Mrs. Keene. "Do you remember that there are people present. That may be Shakespeare, but really his choice of words is very shocking."

Beatrix burst out laughing. "You should have waited for the next few lines, Brownie. Even I am going to blush when I spout them under the trees. Yes," she said to the girl, "I think this costume will do quite well. Don't forget to let me have a wand. The wreath I'll make myself of real flowers. Shall I have to come again?"

"No, Miss Vanderdyke, there's nothing to do now except the silver belt, and we needn't trouble you as to that."

"Well," said Beatrix, "I shall leave town to-morrow directly after lunch. Be sure you send the dress round to my house in good time. Thank you. Good morning."

Mrs. Keene gave a little cry. "Oh, you've forgotten to put on your frock, dear," she said.

"Have I? It's so hot it didn't seem necessary."

Beatrix came back. She had already arrived half-way towards the staircase in what was a most bewitching undress. She never could resist the temptation of putting Mrs. Keene on tenter-hooks. She stepped into her frock and submitted to being hooked up. She noticed that the girl who had tried her on looked very pale and tired. "Aren't you going away?" she asked.

A rather wan smile passed over the girl's pretty face. "No, Miss Vanderdyke, not this year."

"What, you aren't going to take any holiday at all?"

The girl shook her head. "My mother has been very ill, and doctor's bills——"

"I'm so sorry," said Beatrix. "What's your name?"

"Mary Nicholson."

Beatrix went over to Mrs. Keene, who was examining a Paris model between the windows. She opened a bag which hung on the elderly lady's arm and took out a cheque-book. Armed with this she made her way over to a desk, sat down and wrote a cheque for five hundred dollars, payable to the girl whom she had seen constantly on duty since the previous October. This she slipped into an envelope and wrote on it, "Please take a little holiday to oblige me?" And having returned the cheque-book to the ample bag in which Mrs. Keene kept enough necessities to provide against shipwreck or other likely accidents, slipped the envelope into the girl's hand and said "Good-bye. Let me know about your mother."

On the way down stairs the first crash of thunder broke over the city and heavy rain beat against the window. "We shall have to drive home," said Beatrix. "Will you ask them to call up a taxi?"

Her ladyship's deputy came forward. "I hope you found the costume to your liking, Miss Vanderdyke."

"Oh, yes," said Beatrix. "It'll do very well. I shall have to be very careful how I'm photographed, because if I stand against the light there'll be very little left to the imagination."

"This's an artistic age," replied Madame, with a sly smile.

Beatrix joined her companion under the shop's awning, from the corners of which the rain came down in long streams. The uniformed man, with "Raoul" on his hat, was making frantic endeavors to obtain a cab, but without success. The line of taxis outside the Great Northern Hotel had been taken.

"I'm afraid we shall have to wait," said Mrs. Keene.

"I don't mind the rain," said Beatrix. "Let's walk."

"I'd so much rather not, dear," said Mrs. Keene. "Getting wet always brings on my rheumatism, and will absolutely spoil my dress. Have patience for at least five minutes."

"D'you think I can?" asked Beatrix. "Five minutes is a long time."

Two men drove by in a new and beautiful limousine. The one who was not driving turned round and saw the two ladies standing under the awning. The car slowed down, turned and came smoothly up to Raoul's. Fraser jumped out and stood bare-headed in front of Beatrix.

"How d'you do?" he said. "Pretty bad storm this. Can we drive you anywhere?"

"Oh, hello!" said Beatrix. "I thought it must be you. Yes, it'll be awfully kind of you to give us a lift. Taxis seem to be at a premium. Mrs. Lester Keene—Mr. Malcolm Fraser."

"How d'you do," said Mrs. Keene, the thought of rheumatism and a spoiled dress at the back of her cordiality. "It is very kind of you to come to our rescue."

Fraser beamed at Beatrix. His whole whimsical, sincere and honest personality paid deference to her loveliness. "You owe me nothing," he said. "I wish you did. I only happened to see you standing here. It's Franklin's car."

Beatrix smiled back at him. He still seemed to her to be the self-constituted brother—the round-faced serious boy who used to look after her sled and carry her skates and make himself generally and generously useful. "You have a gift for happening to see people when they need you, Malcolm," she said, and he was amply rewarded.

Franklin got out of the car and came to meet Beatrix as she led the way under the rain-splashed awning.

"How are we to thank you, Mr. Franklin?" Beatrix held out a most gracious hand. "You come just at the moment when I was going to plough through all this wet."

"You'd have been soaked to the skin in about a minute," he said. "It's tropical." He held open the door of the limousine.

He showed a touch of reproof at her impatience which Beatrix was quick to catch. She remembered that invariably when she had met him there had been a suggestion of antagonism in his manner. For some reason she was not, she knew, altogether to his liking. It amused her. "I'll ride in front, if I may," she said, with the mischievous intention of seeing whether he would try to coerce her as he had done once before, "but I'll wait until you get in."

He, too, remembered the incident at a dance the year before when he had told her that she was sitting in a dangerous draught and asked her to move, and she had declined. He stood up to her. This spoiled, wilful girl needed a master. He felt an impish desire to prevent her from getting her own way. "I'd rather you rode inside," he replied. "Then there'll be no chance of your getting wet."

"Please let me ride in front," said Beatrix, and a bewitching smile and a little upward look of appeal settled the matter.

Franklin returned to his seat and, when Beatrix was in, made a long arm over her knees and shut the door with a bang. "What a girl!" he said to himself. "As pretty as paint; but, ye gods, how she needs the spurs."

As sick as a dog that Beatrix was not with him, Fraser handed Mrs. Keene in and yelled, through another crash of thunder: "Go ahead, Pel!"

"Where may I drive you?"

"Anywhere you like," said Beatrix, airily. "I've nothing to do."

The rain was running in streams along the gutters and the day had gone as dark as though it were late evening. The sidewalks were deserted and people who had been caught were huddling under doorways. A clean, fresh smell had taken the place of stale gasoline.

Franklin was nonplussed. He looked round and saw the girl's delicately-cut profile with its short nose blunted at the tip, its rather full, red lips and round chin. She was sitting with her shoulders back, her head held high, and an air of supreme unconcern. In no part of the world, under any sort of sky, under any kind of condition had he seen a girl so delightful to the eye and so irritating to the temper. He and Fraser were on their way home and two men were going to lunch with them. It didn't matter to her whether he were on his way to a wedding or a funeral. She had nothing to do.

He sent the car forward, turned it into Fifth Avenue and drove up to the Vanderdyke house. Its great doors were boarded up and no footman was ready to spring out with a huge umbrella.

"I'm quite happy," said Beatrix. "May I sit here until this downpour relaxes a little? It's a very nice car."

Franklin sent out a big laugh. This young woman took the biscuit. It might go on pouring for an hour. But she was quite happy, she had nothing to do and therefore he must cry a halt to life and its obligations and engagements and be content, and even thankful, to sit at her side until such time as it pleased her and the storm to make a move.

"Please sit here as long as you like," he said. "Fraser and I have some men coming to lunch at one o'clock. Will you excuse me if we get out and leave you?"

"Of course," said Beatrix, without allowing him to see the remotest inkling of the fact that she knew how much he would love to treat her as though she were an unbroken colt. "Before you have to go, tell me about to-morrow. You'll drive, I suppose? I saw your name on mother's list for the Pastoral house-party, and she told me that you had agreed to play a small part."

"Yes, I shall drive," said Franklin, running his eyes over her curiously, thinking how beautiful she was and how badly she stood in need of coming up against love or grief. "Fraser's an old friend of yours, it appears," he added, looking at his watch.

"Indeed, yes. But mother doesn't know my old friends."

"I see." He knew that this implied question as to why Fraser was not included in the house-party was answered. This girl might have served as First Secretary to an Ambassador, or have been a leader of society for twenty years.

Then he opened the door of the car and stood bareheaded in the downpour. "I hope you won't be obliged to sit here long," he said. "I'll send a man along to look after the car. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Beatrix, with a perfectly straight face, but laughing at him with her eyes. "Thank you so much for rescuing and looking after two lone females."

"Come on, Malcolm," said Franklin, shortly.

And Fraser, wondering what sort of madness had attacked his friend, murmured things to the equally amazed elderly lady, bowed to the calm, slight, alluring figure in the front of the car and went.

Beatrix watched them duck their heads against the slanting rain which bounced up from the pavement and hurry away. "I like him for that," she thought. "I didn't think he would do it." Then she picked up the speaking tube and called out: "Brownie, so that you sha'n't get rheumatism and spoil your dress we're going to enjoy this shelter until the rain stops. And, by the way, I think the house-party's going to be fairly interesting after all."

V

The Vanderdyke house at Greenwich was built upon a point which jutted out into the Sound. It was not merely a house, it was an edifice,—a great florid, stiff, stone building which might easily have been a town hall, a public library, a museum, a lunatic asylum or a hospital. It had a peculiar green roof and many turrets, and it formed a landmark which could be seen for miles from all parts of the country.

A long drive through beautifully wooded gardens ablaze with lilac and rhododendron, and wide lawns bespattered with uncountable groups of erect tulips did much to soften the angular pomposity of the barrack which had been built by Beatrix's grandfather. Stone pergolas covered with climbing roses on the point of bursting into bloom shot out from the house and hid the ample stables and garages. An inspiring and invigorating view of the Sound caught the eye through the trees. There had been a belated spring, after a long and cantankerous winter, but now tree and shrub vied with one another and the first fresh green of them all was almost dazzling. The chestnuts, especially, were prodigal with bloom and looked like great Christmas trees thickly covered with bunches of white candles, and everywhere birds sang and went merrily about the little business of their lives.

The car in which Beatrix and Mrs. Lester Keene drove up was followed closely by Franklin's new Rolls Royce, in the body of which all his baggage was stacked. Franklin, who had been driving, sprang out and opened the door of the other car. "I've been dogging your heels," he said, "and incidentally getting all your dust. How d'you do?"

"Don't blame me for the dust," said Beatrix. "Why didn't you overtake us and finish the journey in bright conversation with the two grateful and admiring females to whom you behaved like a knight errant yesterday? You and I always seem to have a great deal to talk about, don't we?"

Franklin knew that she was pulling his leg. Hitherto, during their occasional meetings, their conversation had been more or less monosyllabic. He felt tempted to say that he preferred driving to talking to women, but held his peace. There would perhaps be plenty of opportunities of getting his own back.

They passed a double line of men-servants and went into the large hall together. Mrs. Keene gave one quick glance round and, imitating a rabbit which hears the approach of enemy, scuttled across to the elaborate staircase and hurried away. Mrs. Vanderdyke,—a very finished, rather too tall, insistently slight woman who never raised her voice and seldom laughed and seemed to be continually watching herself in a mental looking-glass,—met them. Her dark hair was dressed as carefully as a salad. Her perfectly correct and well-balanced face was as well painted as the cover of a magazine, and without any undue compression she wore a white frock which might have been made for a girl of twenty-four. She gave her left hand to Beatrix and placed a mere suggestion of a kiss on her left ear. "So you've come," she said. Her right hand she gave to Franklin, to whom she added, "You are very welcome."

"Thanks," said Franklin. "I'm delighted to be here."

And then Miss Honoria Vanderdyke sailed forward. With her white hair, thin, thoroughbred face, rather frail, tall figure and old-fashioned dress she might have stepped out of one of Jane Austen's books. Without any attempt to act the part, she looked every inch the great lady and stood frankly and proudly for all that was best of the generation which is scoffingly referred to as mid-Victorian. She, too, gave Beatrix a perfunctory greeting and the merest peck on the cheek, and turned with the utmost graciousness to Franklin. "I'm very glad to see you," she said. "Your father and I were old friends. I hope that we may know each other better."

Franklin bowed over her hand. In all his travels he had rarely seen a woman who so well lived up to his ideas of dignity and beauty grown old gracefully. "Thank you very much," he said. "You're very kind."

Then Mr. Vanderdyke made his appearance—the mere husk of a man—uneager, hypochondriacal, melancholy-looking, grey-headed, with a white moustache every hair of which seemed to be in a state of utter depression. Completely ignoring his daughter, he gave a limp hand to Franklin. "I'm glad to see you," he said, without any warmth, and then backed away and began to look at Beatrix with an expression of such pained surprise that she almost burst out laughing.

Her whole reception by the family proved to her that she was now regarded by them as the prodigal daughter. There was obviously going to be a scene presently. Well, she didn't care. She could hold her own against all of them. She almost wished that there was enough in her relations with Sutherland York to warrant their disturbed feelings. It was like eating an egg without salt to proceed into a row without a cause.

"I dare say that you'd like to go up to your room at once," said Mrs. Vanderdyke.

Franklin bowed, smiled and followed the footman upstairs.

Through the French windows Beatrix caught sight of a number of people having tea on one of the terraces. She made no effort to join them, but sat on the edge of a long, narrow table with bulbous legs and selected a magazine. Beneath her short frock rather more than two delicate ankles showed themselves. She saw no reason why they shouldn't, knowing that they were worth infinite admiration. Her father irritably acknowledged that he had never seen her so lovely, so cool, so self-possessed or more utterly desirable in her first sweet flush of beauty and youth. She seemed to say: "Come on, all of you, and get it over, and then let there be peace."

Her challenge was eagerly accepted by her mother, who looked round to see that the hall was deserted of guests and servants, and closed down upon Beatrix with more anger in her eyes than the girl had ever before seen in them.

"I don't quite know what's to be done with you," she said.

"I thought it was agreed that I shall play 'Titania,'" replied Beatrix, glancing up with an air of mild surprise. "I've brought a charming costume with me."

Aunt Honoria joined in. "In my opinion the moment is ill-chosen for this unpleasant business. It might better have been reserved until our guests are changing for dinner. However, there's every excuse for your mother's impatience, Beatrix, and as the matter is one about which we all feel very deeply it will be well for you to take it seriously."

Beatrix gave a little bow.

"In the history of the family," said Mr. Vanderdyke, with more feeling than anyone had ever seen him display, "never before has one of its women been connected with a scandal."

Beatrix laid down the magazine. "Somebody said that scandal comes from the mouth of Ananias." She gave them all the epigram for what it was worth.

Her mother spoke again. "Aunt Honoria has had a letter from a friend of hers telling her that you've been seen going into the apartment of a portrait painter, called Sutherland York, late at night."

"And coming out," added her father.

"I should naturally come out," said Beatrix, smiling at him as though he had said an unintentionally comic thing.

"It has been reported to me," said Aunt Honoria, "that as often as once a week during the winter and spring you've visited this man alone at night. You don't deny that?"

"Oh, no."

"Good God!" said Mr. Vanderdyke.

"And you don't deny that you were there last night?"

"The night before last," said Beatrix quietly.

Mrs. Vanderdyke almost raised her voice. "What you could see in a flamboyant creature of that type——"

"That isn't the point," said Aunt Honoria. "We are not concerned as to whether Beatrix has developed vulgar tastes and has found this painter attractive. We are concerned with the fact that for some utterly inadequate and inexcusable reason, she has surrounded our name with a net-work of vulgar gossip which, inevitably, will find its way into the scurrilous paragraphs of the carrion press."

"For the first time in history!" Mr. Vanderdyke almost wailed.

"We're very jealous of our good name," continued Aunt Honoria. "We've endeavored to set an example to society. It's inconceivable to us that it should have been left to you, old enough as you are to appreciate the truth of things, to put a slur upon us and with an obvious disregard for our reputation the subject of smoke-room gossip. I don't think that even you could make me believe that you've played the fool with this picturesque person, who, I hear, makes professional love to the silly wives of men with more money than sense. I can see that you've been merely indulging your latent sense of adventure or trying to persuade yourself that you've been playing the heroine's part in a romance."

"I wonder," said Mrs. Vanderdyke.

Beatrix gave her a quick look. The implication of those two words hit her hard. But she said nothing, and gave the white-haired lady another little bow.

"A portrait-painting charlatan!" said Mr. Vanderdyke.

Aunt Honoria paid very little attention to these interruptions. "That's my firm belief. Please God, I'm justified. You were asked to return last night, so that this most unfortunate business might be gone into quietly. You exercised the right of modern youth to tell us that we might go to the devil. Let me assure you, my dear Beatrix, now that you've chosen to come, that we do not intend to be relegated to that person, even to oblige you. On the contrary, the point that has been gone into during your absence is the place to which we are going to relegate you."

"I don't quite understand," said Beatrix.

Her mother put in "probably not," to the peculiar discussion which was being conducted, on the face of it, as though its subject were politics,—without outward heat, angry gesture or raised voices, but with an intensity of feeling that made the air vibrate all round these four ultra-civilized people.

"And I am very far from well," said Mr. Vanderdyke, with curious irrelevance.

Beatrix very nearly laughed. "Dear old Daddy," she said to herself, "how funny he can be."

"We came to a decision this morning," said Aunt Honoria, "in which I think you'll be interested. Your attitude over the telephone on top of my very inconvenient visit to New York the night before last,—of which, naturally, your companion told you,—was a pretty conclusive proof that you're quite callous of what has been and will be said about you and that you show no inclination to accept our demands, requests or pleadings to tone down your supreme individualism to a normal level and give up playing the ostrich in town. In short, my dear Beatrix, we realize that unless we assert our authority this once and make it impossible for you to get us all into a deeper scandal, you'll continue to 'carry on,'—I quote the expression from the language of the servants' hall,—either with York or some other equally impossible member of the long-haired brigade."

"I'm old enough to take care of myself, I think," said Beatrix.

"We don't," said her mother.

"Nor of us and the family reputation," added Aunt Honoria, "which, as I've said already, is the point. You'll go through with the pastoral,—that'll avoid comment,—then you'll see a doctor and it'll be given out that your constitution needs an entire change of air and scene. About a week after the present house-party has broken up you'll join me on a visit to my cottage in Maine, and there you'll spend a quiet, thoughtful year learning how to live from nature, with my devoted assistance."

Mrs. Vanderdyke punctuated this sentence of banishment with an inaudible comment.

A sort of groan came from Mr. Vanderdyke. He adored his only child.

With a supreme effort of will, Beatrix controlled an almost overwhelming desire to scream at what was, to her way of thinking, a form of punishment quite barbarian in its severity. She remained, instead, in an attitude of polite patience, determining to die rather than to show how awful the very thought of such an excommunication was to her, who was only really happy when in the whirl of town life. Her inherent honesty made her confess to herself that, little as she realized it at the time,—never having stopped in her impetuous desire to go her own way and carry out her own wishes,—she had laid herself open to every charge brought against her. She owned that her indiscretion had been colossal, and instantly dismissed all idea of giving her family a picture of the utter harmlessness of her relations with York. She disliked and regretted having brought the family name into the mouth of gossipers as much as the three people who stood over her and knew perfectly well that they fully intended to carry the punishment out to its bitter end. But,—and here her fertile mind began to work,—was there a single living person so foolish as to believe that she was made of the feeble stuff that knuckled down to the loss of one whole exciting season in town for the lack of a brain wave? Had she ever yet, either in the nursery or in school, so wanted in courage or in wit as not to have been able to carry out a quick and effective counterstroke against authority? Not she!

She looked up, avoided the eyes of her father, mother and aunt, and saw Pelham Franklin in the gallery that ran round the hall. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at a portrait of the Vanderdyke who had come over from Holland to lay the foundations of a great fortune. A sudden impish and daring idea took possession of her. She would use this man, as she had hitherto used any other likely person, to triumph over her present quandary, and trust to her invariable good luck to see her through. It was the legitimate outcome of her autocratic upbringing, the fact that she had had it instilled into her from babyhood that she had only to raise her finger to obtain her own way. Acting, as usual, on impulse and not stopping to give a second's thought to the complications that might be caused by it, she turned back to the three people who stood waiting for her to speak with a very sweet smile, and the glorious knowledge that she could turn the tables upon them and become top-dog again. She was going to fight for that season in town with all her strength, never mind who paid for her success.

"I'm very sorry about all this," she said, "and I want you to believe that I had no intention of inspiring unpleasant remarks or putting you to all this pain. But you'll be glad to hear that this story about my visits to Sutherland York is only half true,—like most stories of the kind. It hasn't occurred to you, has it, that more than one man may live in York's apartment house and that I may have been going to see him?" She saw, with a quicker action of her heart, that Franklin was coming downstairs.

"It makes no difference whether the man you went to see was York or another," said Aunt Honoria, in her most incisive way. "The fact remains that everyone is talking about your visits to some man, alone at night."

Franklin caught the words, gave a quick, sympathetic glance at Beatrix, whom he rather pitied,—he detested family rows,—and drew up to examine another picture, with well-simulated interest.

Beatrix began to enjoy herself. A wave of exhilaration swept over her. She had a surprise in store for her family that would transfer her from the position of a prodigal daughter to that of a Joan of Arc, a Grace Darling, a Florence Nightingale. Never mind who paid!

She raised her voice so that Franklin should hear her. "I would willingly and without any argument be sent to the backwoods for a year if I'd made a fool of myself with a man like Sutherland York. He was never anything more to me than a poseur and a freak, and as such he amused me. But what will you and all these people with nasty minds say if I tell you that I had every right to pay midnight visits to the man who lived in the studio opposite to York's, and if there is anything attaching to our name it is not scandal, but romance?"

Franklin wheeled round. What on earth was the girl trying to suggest to save her skin?

An amazing change came over the three accusers. They all knew that Franklin's rooms were in the same building as York's,—Franklin, the man whom they would rather see married into their family than anyone alive.

"W-what d'you mean?" cried Mr. Vanderdyke, stammering in his eagerness.

Mrs. Vanderdyke lost her perfect reserve for once and grasped her daughter's arm. "Tell us! Tell us!" she cried.

Over Aunt Honoria's face the beginning of a new understanding came. "What is this right, Beatrix?" she asked. "What is it?"

Beatrix came to the jump, rose to it and cleared it at a bound, with every drop of blood in her lovely body tingling with excitement and a glorious sense of being alive, being beautiful, being able to carry everything before her. She was leaping from one scrape to another, but in this one she was dealing with a sportsman who would help her somehow.

"The right," she said, throwing up her head, "of a girl who goes to see the man to whom she has been secretly married."

She rose, and with exquisite shyness and her fair skin touched with the color that nature paints upon the petals of apple blossoms, went across to Franklin and ran her hand through his arm.

VI

In her relief at being able to put a stop to the ugly story which coupled the names of Beatrix Vanderdyke and Sutherland York, Aunt Honoria,—who invariably took the lead in all matters relating to her family,—not only at once gave out to the house-party the news of the romantic marriage of her niece and Pelham Franklin, but, with her characteristic thoroughness, called up the editor of the New York Times and gave it to him for immediate publication. In her mind's eye she saw the front page of the next day's issue setting forth under big headlines, with photographs of the happy couple, an elaborate account of the wealth and importance of the families of Vanderdyke and Franklin. This would be taken up and spun out by all the other papers in the country, and then, she rejoiced to know, would be killed the insidious scandal with which the family name had been connected to the horror and pain of all who bore it.

Neither she, nor any of the members of the house party, stopped to ask a single question. They had swallowed the story of Beatrix and Sutherland York whole. They now swallowed the news of the secret marriage with the same appetite. It is the human way. The details mattered nothing. The motive which led to so unusual a proceeding as a secret marriage, the place and date of the ceremony, mattered nothing. They had all believed without corroboration that Beatrix had fallen a victim to the picturesque attractions of the much-advertised portrait painter. In the same way they accepted the new and much more exciting fact and hastened to congratulate their hostess and the two young people concerned.

Beatrix found herself, as she knew that she would, the heroine of the family. Her mother smiled upon her during the remainder of the day and frequently placed her usually unemotional hand on her daughter's shoulder and said: "My dear, dear child," or "dear Beatrix."

Her father,—that rather pathetic figure, a man who had never done a stroke of work since his birth—whose immense wealth had utterly deprived him of the initiative to do things, conquer things or achieve things, and who found himself in late middle-age without having discovered the master-secret of life—how to live,—came out of his almost settled melancholia for the time being and behaved at dinner like any ordinary healthy, normal man, laughing frequently and cracking little jokes with his guests.. Whenever he caught his daughter's eyes he gave her the most tender and appreciative smile, and came so far out of his shell as to raise his glass to Franklin, who responded with a very queer smile.

As for Aunt Honoria,—a past-mistress in the art of graciousness,—so proud and happy was she that her pet ambition of a union between her family and Franklin's had been fulfilled, that she readily forgave the unconventional behavior of the two young people, the lack of a wonderful wedding and a great society function, and beamed upon them both. She caught Beatrix as she was about to dash upstairs to change for dinner and folded her arms about the girl, whose eyes danced with the spirit of mischief and the sheer fun of it all. "My darling," she said, "you've made me very happy. No wonder you came home to-day defiant and with a high head. You held a royal flush. You've won the love of a man, my dear. Honor and respect it, and may God bless you!"

Upstairs in her room, whose windows gave a view of the Sound that was indescribably charming, Beatrix had a brief, almost breathless talk with Mrs. Lester Keene, to whom the story of the secret marriage had come as a frightful shock. This amiable, weak woman, hide-bound in her ideas of right and wrong, met her with nerves unstrung, and incoherent in her terror of being implicated in what she knew to be a lie.

But Beatrix waved her stammering reproaches aside. "Brownie," she cried, at the top of her form, "whatever happens you're safe, so don't worry. I've jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, but I'm an excellent jumper and I believe in luck. I dare not think where the next spring will land me, so I'm not going to think. Sufficient unto the day, you know, and Franklin is a sportsman. All I know is that at this moment I'm the little pet of all the world; that I had the unspeakable delight of turning the tables on my people and that I feel as beautiful as I look,—and that's saying a good deal. Now run away and tell Helene to come and dress me as befits a young wife still on her honeymoon." She gave the elderly, disturbed lady a kiss on both her cheeks, shooed her out of the room and broke into song.

Only once during dinner did she permit herself to meet Franklin's eyes and then, for the first time since she had sprung her suddenly conceived surprise upon her irate family, she received a momentary shock which ran through her body like that of electricity, leaving her tingling and frightened. But with her abounding capacity for recovery and her all-conquering belief in herself and her gift for getting out of scrapes she shook the feeling off and went through the rest of the evening in the highest spirits. No one had ever seen her looking so brilliantly or so exquisitely beautiful. Her eyes shone like stars, her dimples came and went and came again. She was the life of the house, moving from group to group like a young Helen—a wood nymph—the very spirit of joy and laughter. Not for the ninety-ninth part of a second did she permit herself to pull up and wonder what she had done; where her impetuous, hare-brained, autocratic desire for self-preservation might lead. Never for an instant, or the fraction of an instant, did she give a thought to the appalling difficult position into which her spur-of-the-moment scheme had placed Franklin. What she had done she had done, and there, for the time being, was the end of it. Somehow or other everything would come right, as it always did. Why else was she who she was? Why else had she been led to believe that the earth, the sun and the moon were hers. It was all the natural correlation of her training since she had been brought into the world.

Franklin allowed Beatrix to avoid a talk with him until many of the guests had gone to bed. Between the moment when she had slipped her arm through his and made that urgent and almost childlike appeal which had carried him off his feet and left him without caution and sanity, and the one when he stalked across the pompous hall to her side and drew her into an alcove, he had done some peculiar thinking. He was a straight-going, honest fellow, who, like Beatrix, had gone through life having his own way. No living soul had ever before coerced him from the path that he had chosen. He was in no sense of the word a lady's man, and he had no idea of marrying and settling down until he had had enough of hunting and camping.

He had watched Beatrix closely. He had seen her reinstated into the family favor, taking the congratulations that were poured upon her by them and their friends with a charming dignity that took his breath away. He guessed, of course, that he had been "used" by Beatrix to save herself from punishment, because he had been obliged to overhear the last part of the family attack. But he expected from moment to moment that she would either permit him to deny the story of the secret marriage or do so herself. It was inconceivable to him that this lie was to be allowed to get them both deeper and deeper into a most deplorable tangle.

He was blazing with anger when at last he found her alone for a moment, and he made no attempt to hide it. "I want a word with you," he said shortly.

Beatrix tried to escape. "A little later," she said.

"No, now."

"I'm so sorry——"

Franklin took her arm and led her into the quiet corner. "Sit down," he said.

There was something so new and refreshing in receiving orders, that Beatrix gave a little laugh and obeyed.

Franklin took a seat at her side. Their knees almost touched.

"You evidently take me for many kinds of a fool," he said.

"Not at all. May I trouble you for a cushion?" She bent slightly forward.

He placed one behind her back. "Whether you do or not, you've made me one,—the most colossal example of a damned idiot I've ever struck."

"Oh, please don't say that."