The scene was the University Club. The talk spread over a good deal of space, as talk will when pink cocktails, or “green gardens in a glass” confront, or are in front of, the talkees. Dickie said it couldn’t be done and Bob said it was possible and that he could do it. He might not have felt such confidence had it not been for the verdant stimulation. He could have done anything just then, so why not this particular feat or stunt? And who was this temerarious one and what was he like?

As an excellent specimen of a masculine young animal, genus homo, Bob Bennett was good to look on. Some of those young ladies who wave banners when young men strain their backs and their arms and their legs in the cause of learning, had, in the days of the not remote past, dubbed him, sub rosa, the “blue-eyed Apollo.” Some of the fellows not so euphemistically inclined had, however, during that same glorious period found frequent occasion to refer to him less classically, if more truthfully, as “that darn fool, Bob Bennett.” That was on account of a streak of wildness in him, for he was a free bold creature, was Bob. Conventional bars and gates chafed him. He may have looked like a “blue-eyed Apollo,” but his spirit had the wings of a wild goose, than which there are no faster birds—for a wild goose is the biplane of the empyrean.

Now that Bob had ceased the chase for learning and was out in the wide world, he should have acquired an additional sobriquet—that of “Impecunious Bob.” It would have fitted his pecuniary condition very nicely. Once he had had great expectations, but alas!—dad had just “come a cropper.” They had sheared him on the street. The world in general didn’t know about it yet, but Bob did.

“We’re broke, Bob,” said dad that very morning.

“That’s all right, Gov.,” said Bob. “Can you get up?”

“I can’t even procure a pair of crutches to hobble with,” answered dad.

“Never mind,” observed Bob magnanimously. “You’ve done pretty well by me up to date. Don’t you worry or reproach yourself. I’m not going to heap abuse on those gray hairs.”

“Thanks, Bob.” Coolly. “I’m not worrying. You see, it’s up to you now.”

“Me?” Bob stared.

“Yes. You see I believe in the Japanese method.”

“What’s that?” Uneasily.

“Duty of a child to support his parent, when said child is grown up!”

Bob whistled. “Say, Gov., do you mean it?”

“Gospel truth, Bob.”

Bob whistled again. “Not joking?”

“’Pon honor!” Cheerfully.

“I never did like the Japanese,” from Bob, sotto voce. “Blame lot of heathens—that’s what they are!”

“I’ve got a dollar or two that I owe tucked away where no one can find it except me,” went on dad, unmindful of Bob’s little soliloquy. “That will have to last until you come to the rescue.”

“Gee! I’m glad you were thoughtful enough for that!” ejaculated the young man. “Sure you can keep it hidden?”

“Burglars couldn’t find it,” said dad confidently, “let alone my creditors—God bless them! But it won’t last long, Bob. Bear that in mind. It’ll be a mighty short respite.”

“Oh, I’ll not forget it. If—if it’s not an impertinence, may I ask what you are going to do, dad?”

“I’m contemplating a fishing trip, first of all, and after that—quien sabe? Some pleasure suitable to my retired condition will undoubtedly suggest itself. I may take up the study of philosophy. Confucius has always interested me. They say it takes forty years to read him and then forty years to digest what you have read. The occupation would, no doubt, prove adequate. But don’t concern yourself about that, dear boy. I’ll get on. You owe me a large debt of gratitude. I’m thrusting a great responsibility on you. It should be the making of you.” Bob had his secret doubts. “Get out and hustle, dear boy. It’s up to you, now!” And he spread out his hands in care-free fashion and smiled blandly. No Buddha could have appeared more complacent—only instead of a lotus flower, Bob’s dad held in his hand a long black weed, the puffing of which seemed to afford a large measure of ecstatic satisfaction. “Go!” He waved the free hand. “My blessing on your efforts.”

Bob started to go, and then he lingered. “Perhaps,” he said, “you can tell me what I am going to do?”

“Don’t know.” Cheerfully.

“What can I do?” Hopelessly.

“Couldn’t say.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Ha! ha!” Dad laughed, as if son had sprung a joke. “Well, that is a condition experience will remove. Experience and hard knocks,” he added.

Bob swore softly. His head was humming. No heroic purpose to get out and fight his way moved him. He didn’t care about shoveling earth, or chopping down trees. He had no frenzied desire to brave the sixty-below-zero temperature of the Klondike in a mad search for gold. In a word, he didn’t feel at all like the heroes in the books who conquer under almost impossible conditions in the vastnesses of the “open,” and incidentally whallop a few herculean simple-minded sons of nature, just to prove that breed is better than brawn.

“Of course, I could give you a little advice, Bob,” said the governor softly. “If you should find hustling a bit arduous for one of your luxurious nature, there’s an alternative. It is always open to a young man upon whom nature has showered her favors.”

“Don’t know what you mean by that last,” growled Bob, who disliked personalities. “But what is the alternative to hustling?”

“Get married,” said dad coolly.

Bob changed color. Dad watched him keenly.

“There’s always the matrimonial market for young men who have not learned to specialize. I’ve known many such marriages to turn out happily, too. Marrying right, my boy, is a practical, not a sentimental business.”

Bob looked disgusted.

“There’s Miss Gwendoline Gerald, for example. Millions in her own name, and—”

“Hold on, dad!” cried Bob. His face was flaming now. The blue eyes gleamed almost fiercely.

“I knew you were acquainted,” observed dad softly, still studying him. “Besides she’s a beautiful girl and—”

“Drop it, dad!” burst from Bob. “We’ve never had a quarrel, but—” Suddenly he realized his attitude was actually menacing. And toward dad—his own dad! “I beg your pardon, sir,” he muttered contritely. “I’m afraid I am forgetting myself. But please turn the talk.”

“All right,” said dad. “I forgive you. I was only trying to elucidate your position. But since it’s not to be the matrimonial market, it’ll have to be a hustle, my boy. I’m too old to make another fortune. I’ve done my bit and now I’m going to retire on my son. Sounds fair and equitable, doesn’t it, Bob?”

“I’d hate to contradict you, sir,” the other answered moodily.

Dad walked up to him and laid an arm affectionately upon son’s broad shoulders. “I’ve the utmost confidence in you, my boy,” he said, with a bland smile.

“Thank you, sir,” replied Bob. He always preserved an attitude of filial respect toward his one and only parent. But he tore himself away from dad now as soon as he could. He wanted to think. The average hero, thrust out into the world, has only a single load to carry. He has only to earn a living for himself. Bob’s load was a double one and therefore he would have to be a double hero. Mechanically he walked on and on, cogitating upon his unenviable fate. Suddenly he stopped. He found himself in front of the club. Bob went in. And there he met Dickie, Clarence, Dan the doughty “commodore” and some others.

That Impecunious Bob should have said “It could be done” to Imperial Dickie’s “It couldn’t” and have allowed himself to be drawn further into the affair was, in itself, an impertinence. For Dickie was a person of importance. He had a string of simoleons so long that a newspaper-mathematician once computed if you spread them out, touching one another, they would reach half around the world. Or was it twice around? Anyhow, Dickie didn’t have to worry about hustling, the way Bob did now. At the moment the latter was in a mood to contradict any one. He felt reckless. He was ready for almost anything—short of an imitation of that back-to-nature hero of a popular novel.

They had been going on about that “could” and “couldn’t” proposition for some time when some one staked Bob. That some one was promptly “called” by the “commodore”—as jolly a sea-dog as never trod a deck. Dan was a land-commodore, but he was very popular at the Yacht Club, where something besides waves seethed when he was around. He didn’t go often to the University Club where he complained things were too pedagogic. (No one else ever complained of that.) He liked to see the decks—or floors—wave. Then he was in his element and would issue orders with the blithe abandon of a son of Neptune. There was no delay in “clapping on sail” when the commodore was at the helm. And if he said: “Clear the decks for action,” there was action. When he did occasionally drift into the University, he brought with him the flavor of the sea. Things at once breezed up.

Well, the commodore called that some one quick.

“Five thousand he can’t do it.”

“For how long?” says Dickie.

“A week,” answered the commodore.

“Make it two.”

“Oh, very well.”

“Three, if you like!” from Bob, the stormy petrel.

They gazed at him admiringly.

“It isn’t the green garden talking, is it, Bob?” asked Clarence Van Duzen whose sole occupation was being a director in a few corporations—or, more strictly speaking, not being one. It took almost all Clarence’s time to “direct” his wife, or try to.

Bob looked at Clarence reproachfully. “No,” he said. “I’m still master of all my thoughts.” Gloomily. “I couldn’t forget if I tried.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Dickie.

Then Clarence “took” some one else who staked Bob. And Dickie did likewise. And there was some more talk. And then Bob staked himself.

“Little short of cash at the bank just now,” he observed. “But if you’ll take my note—”

“Take your word if you want,” said the commodore.

“No; here’s my note.” He gave it—a large amount—payable in thirty days. It was awful, but he did it. He hardly thought what he was doing. Having the utmost confidence he would win, he didn’t stop to realize what a large contract he was taking on. But Dan, Dickie, Clarence and the others did.

“Of course, you can’t go away and hide,” said Dickie to Bob with sudden suspicion.

“No; you can’t do that,” from Clarence. “Or get yourself arrested and locked up for three weeks! That wouldn’t be fair, old chap.”

“Bob understands he’s got to go on in the even tenor of his way,” said the commodore.

Bob nodded. “Just as if nothing had happened!” he observed. “I’ll not seek, or I’ll not shirk. I’m on honor, you understand.”

“That’s good enough for me!” said Dickie. “Bob’s honest.”

“And me!” from Clarence.

“And me!” from half a dozen other good souls, including the non-aqueous commodore.

“Gentlemen, I thank you,” said Bob, affected by this outburst of confidence. “I thank you for this display of—this display—”

“Cut it!”

“Cork it up! And speaking of corks—”

“When does it begin?” interrupted Bob.

“When you walk out of here,”

“At the front door?”

“When your foot touches the sidewalk, son.” The commodore who was about forty in years sometimes assumed the paternal.

“Never mind the ‘son.’” Bob shuddered. “One father at a time, please!” And then hastily, not to seem ungracious: “I’ve got such a jolly good, real dad, you understand—”

The commodore dropped the paternal. “Well, lads, here’s a bumper to Bob,” he said.

“We see his finish.”

“No doubt of that.”

“To Bob! Good old Bob! Ho! ho!”

“Ha! ha!” said Bob funereally.

Then he got up.

“Going?”

“Might as well.”

The commodore drew out a watch.

“Twelve minutes after three p.m. Monday, the twelfth of September, in the year of our Lord, 1813,” he said. “You are all witnesses of the time the ball was opened?”

“We are.”

“Good-by, Bob.”

“Oh, let’s go with him a way!”

“Might be interesting,” from Clarence sardonically.

“It might. Least we can do is to see him start on his way rejoicing.”

“That’s so. Come on.” Which they did.

Bob offered no objection. He didn’t much care at the time whether they did or not. What would happen would. He braced himself for the inevitable.

CHAPTER II—A TRY-OUT

To tell the truth—to blurt out nothing but the truth to every one, and on every occasion, for three whole weeks—that’s what Bob had contracted to do. From the point of view of the commodore and the others, the man who tried to fill this contract would certainly be shot, or electrocuted, or ridden out of town on a rail, or receive a coat of tar and feathers. And Bob had such a wide circle of friends, too, which would make his task the harder; the handsome dog was popular. He was asked everywhere that was anywhere and he went, too. He would certainly “get his.” The jovial commodore was delighted. He would have a whole lot of fun at Bob’s expense. Wasn’t the latter the big boob, though? And wouldn’t he be put through his paces? Really it promised to be delicious. The commodore and the others went along with Bob just for a little try-out.

At first nothing especially interesting happened. They walked without meeting any one they were acquainted with. Transients! transients! where did they all come from? Once on their progress down the avenue the hopes of Bob’s friends rose high. A car they knew got held up on a side street not far away from them. It was a gorgeous car and it had a gorgeous occupant, but a grocery wagon was between them and it. The commodore warbled blithely.

“Come on, Bob. Time for a word or two!”

But handsome Bob shook his head. “The ‘even tenor of his way,’” he quoted. “I don’t ordinarily go popping in and out between wheels like a rabbit. I’m not looking to commit suicide.”

“Oh, I only wanted to say: ‘How do you do,’” retorted the commodore rather sulkily. “Or ‘May I tango with you at tea this afternoon, Mrs. Ralston?’”

“Or observe: ‘How young she looks to-day, eh, Bob?’” murmured that young gentleman suspiciously.

“Artful! Artful!” Clarence poked the commodore in the ribs. “Sly old sea-dog!”

“Well, let’s move on,” yawned Dickie. “Nothing doing here.”

“Wait!” The commodore had an idea. “Hi, you young grocery lad, back up a little, will you?”

“Wha’ for?” said the boy, aggressive at once. Babes are born in New York with chips on their shoulders.

“As a matter of trifling accommodation, that is all,” answered the commodore sweetly. “On the other side of you is a stately car and we would hold conversation with—”

“Aw, gwan! Guess I got as much right to the street as it has.” And as a display of his “rights,” he even touched up his horse a few inches, to intervene more thoroughly.

“Perhaps now for half a dollar—” began the commodore, more insinuatingly. Then he groaned: “Too late!” The policeman had lifted the ban. The stately car turned into the avenue and was swallowed up amid a myriad of more or less imposing vehicles. They had, however, received a bow from the occupant. That was all there had been opportunity for. Incidentally, the small boy had bestowed upon them his parting compliments:

“Smart old guy! You think youse—” The rest was jumbled up or lost in the usual cacophony of the thoroughfare.

“Too bad!” murmured the commodore. “But still these three weeks are young.”

“‘Three weeks!’” observed Dickie. “Sounds like plagiarism!”

“Oh, Bob won’t have that kind of a ‘three weeks,’” snickered Clarence.

“Bob’s will be an expurgated edition,” from the commodore, recovering his spirits.

“Maybe we ought to make it four?”

“Three will do,” said Bob, who wasn’t enjoying this chaffing. Every one they approached he now eyed apprehensively.

But he was a joy-giver, if not receiver, for his tall handsome figure attracted many admiring glances. His striking head with its blond curls—they weren’t exactly curls, only his hair wasn’t straight, but clung rather wavy-like to the bold contour of his head—his careless stride, and that general effect of young masculinity—all this caused sundry humble feminine hearts to go pit-a-pat. Bob’s progress, however, was generally followed by pit-a-pats from shop-girls and bonnet-bearers. Especially at the noon hour! Then Bob seemed to these humble toilers, like dessert, after hard-boiled eggs, stale sandwiches and pickles.

But Bob was quite unaware of any approving glances cast after him. He was thinking, and thinking hard. He wasn’t so sanguine now as he had been when he had left the club. What might have happened at that street corner appealed to him with sudden poignant force. Mrs. Ralston was of the creme de la creme. She was determined to stay young. She pretended to be thirty years or so younger than she was. In fact, she was rather a ridiculous old lady who found it hard to conceal her age. Now what if the commodore had found opportunity to ask that awful question? Bob could have made only one reply and told the truth. The largeness of his contract was becoming more apparent to him. He began to see himself now from Dan’s standpoint. Incidentally, he was beginning to develop a great dislike for that genial land-mariner.

“How about the Waldorf?” They had paused at the corner of Thirty-fourth Street. “May find some one there,” suggested Clarence.

“In Peek-a-Boo Alley?” scornfully from Dickie.

“Oh, I heard there was a concert, or something upstairs,” said Clarence. “In that you’ve-got-to-be-introduced room! And some of the real people have to walk through to get to it.”

Accordingly they entered the Waldorf and the commodore hustled them up and down and around, without, however, their encountering a single “real” person. There were only people present—loads of them, not from somewhere but from everywhere. They did the circuit several times, still without catching sight of a real person.

“Whew! This is a lonesome place!” breathed the commodore at last.

“Let’s depart!” disgustedly from Clarence. “Apologize for steering you into these barren wastes!”

“What’s your hurry?” said Bob, with a little more bravado. Then suddenly he forgot about those other three. His entranced gaze became focused on one. He saw only her.

“Ha!” The commodore’s quick glance, following Bob’s, caught sight, too, of that wonderful face in the distance—the stunning, glowing young figure—that regal dream of just-budded girlhood—that superb vision in a lovely afternoon gown! She was followed by one or two others. One could only imagine her leading. There would, of course, always be several at her either side and quite a number dangling behind. Her lips were like the red rosebuds that swung negligently from her hand as she floated through the crowd. Her eyes suggested veiled dreams amid the confusion and hubbub of a topsyturvy world. She was like something rhythmical precipitated amid chaos. A far-away impression of a smile played around the corners of her proud lips.

The commodore precipitated himself in her direction. Bob put out a hand as if to grasp him by the coat tails, but the other was already beyond reach and Bob’s hand fell to his side. He stood passive. That was his part. Only he wasn’t passive inwardly. His heart was beating wildly. He could imagine himself with her and them—those others in her train—and the conversation that would ensue, for he had no doubt of the commodore’s intentions. Dan was an adept at rounding up people. Bob could see himself at a table participating in the conversation—prepared conversation, some of it! He could imagine the commodore leading little rivulets of talk into certain channels for his benefit. Dan would see to it that they would ask him (Bob) questions, embarrassing ones. That “advice” dad had given him weighed on Bob like a nightmare. Suppose—ghastly thought!—truth compelled him ever to speak of that? And to her! A shiver ran down Bob’s backbone. Nearer she drew—nearer—while Bob gazed as if fascinated, full of rapturous, paradoxical dread. Now the commodore was almost upon her when—

Ah, what was that? An open elevator?—people going in?—She, too,—those with her—Yes—click! a closed door! The radiant vision had vanished, was going upward; Bob breathed again. Think of being even paradoxically glad at witnessing her disappear! Bob ceased now to think; stood as in a trance.

“Why do people go to concerts?” said the commodore in aggrieved tones. “Some queen, that!”

“And got the rocks—or stocks!” from Dickie. “Owns about three of those railroads that are going a-begging nowadays.”

“Wake up, Bobbie!” some one now addressed that abstracted individual.

Bob shook himself.

“Old friend of yours, Miss Gwendoline Gerald, I believe?” said the commodore significantly.

“Yes; I’ve known Miss Gerald for some time,” said Bob coldly.

“‘Known for some time’—” mimicked the commodore. “Phlegmatic dog! Well, what shall we do now?”

“Hang around until the concert’s over?” suggested Dickie.

“Hang around nothing!” said the commodore. “It’s one of those classical high-jinks.” Disgustedly. “Lasts so late the sufferers haven’t time for anything after it’s over. Just enough energy left to stagger to their cars and fall over in a comatose condition.”

“Suppose we could go to the bar?”

“Naughty! Naughty!” A sprightly voice interrupted.

The commodore wheeled. “Mrs. Ralston!” he exclaimed gladly.

It was the gorgeous lady of the gorgeous car.

“Just finished my shopping and thought I’d have a look in here,” she said vivaciously.

“Concert, I suppose?” from the commodore, jubilantly.

“Yes. Dubussy. Don’t you adore Dubussy?” with schoolgirlish enthusiasm. Though almost sixty, she had the manners of a “just-come-out.”

“Nothing like it,” lied the commodore.

“Ah, then you, too, are a modern?” gushed the lady.

“I’m so advanced,” said the commodore, “I can’t keep up with myself.”

They laughed. “Ah, silly man!” said the lady’s eyes. Bob gazed at her and the commodore enviously. Oh, to be able once more to prevaricate like that! The commodore had never heard Dubussy in his life. Ragtime and merry hornpipes were his limits. And Mrs. Ralston was going to the concert, it is true, but to hear the music? Ah, no! Her box was a fashionable rendezvous, and from it she could study modernity in hats. Therein, at least, she was a modern of the moderns. She was so advanced, the styles had fairly to trot, or turkey-trot, to keep up with her.

“Well,” she said, with that approving glance women usually bestowed upon Bob, “I suppose I mustn’t detain you busy people after that remark I overheard.”

“Oh, don’t hurry,” said the commodore hastily. “Between old friends— But I say— By jove, you are looking well. Never saw you looking so young and charming. Never!” It was rather crudely done, but the commodore could say things more bluntly than other people and “get away with them.” He was rather a privileged character. Bob began to breathe hard, having a foretaste of what was to follow. And Mrs. “Willie” Ralston was Miss Gwendoline Gerald’s aunt! No doubt that young lady was up in her aunt’s box at this moment.

“Never!” repeated the commodore. “Eh, Bob? Doesn’t look a day over thirty,” with a jovial, freehearted sailor laugh. “Does she now?”

It had come. That first test! And the question had to be answered. The lady was looking at Bob. They were all waiting. A fraction of a second, or so, which seemed like a geological epoch, Bob hesitated. He had to reply and yet being a gentleman, how could he? No matter what it cost him, he would simply have to “lie like a gentleman.” He—

Suddenly an idea shot through his befuddled brain. Maybe Mrs. Ralston wouldn’t know what he said, if he—? She had been numerous times to France, of course, but she was not mentally a heavy-weight. Languages might not be her forte. Presumably she had all she could do to chatter in English. Bob didn’t know much French himself. He would take a chance on her, however. He made a bow which was Chesterfieldian and incidentally made answer, rattling it off with the swiftness of a boulevardier.

“Il me faut dire que, vraiment, Madame Ralston parait aussi agee qu’elle l’est!” (“I am obliged to say that Mrs. Ralston appears as old as she is!”)

Then he straightened as if he had just delivered a stunning compliment.

“Merci!” The lady smiled. She also beamed. “How well you speak French, Mr. Bennett!”

The commodore nearly exploded. He understood French.

Bob expanded, beginning to breathe freely once more. “Language of courtiers and diplomats!” he mumbled.

Mrs. Ralston shook an admonishing finger at him. “Flatterer!” she said, and departed.

Whereupon the commodore leaned weakly against Dickie while Clarence sank into a chair. First round for Bob!

The commodore was the first to recover. His voice was reproachful. “Was that quite fair?—that parleyvoo business? I don’t know about it’s being allowed.”

“Why not?” calmly from Bob. “Is truth confined to one tongue?”

“But what about that ‘even tenor of your way’?” fenced the commodore. “You don’t, as a usual thing, go around parleyvooing—”

“What about the even tenor of your own ways?” retorted Bob.

“Nothing said about that when we—”

“No, but—how can I go the even tenor, if you don’t go yours?”

“Hum?” said the commodore.

“Don’t you see it’s not the even tenor?” persisted Bob. “But it’s your fault if it isn’t.”

“Some logic in that,” observed Clarence.

“Maybe, we have been a bit too previous,” conceded the commodore.

“That isn’t precisely the adjective I would use,” returned Bob. He found himself thinking more clearly now. They had all, perhaps, been stepping rather lightly when they had left the club. He should have thought of this before. But Bob’s brain moved rather slowly sometimes and the others had been too bent on having a good time to consider all the ethics of the case. They showed themselves fair-minded enough now, however.

“Bob’s right,” said the commodore sorrowfully. “Suppose we’ve got to eliminate ourselves from his agreeable company for the next three weeks, unless we just naturally happen to meet. We’ll miss a lot of fun, but I guess it’s just got to be. What about that parleyvooing business though, Bob?”

“That’s got to be eliminated, too!” from Dickie. “Why, he might tell the truth in Chinese.”

“All right, fellows,” said Bob shortly. “You quit tagging and I’ll talk United States.”

“Good. I’m off,” said the commodore. And he went. The others followed. Bob was left alone. He found the solitude blessed and began to have hopes once more. Why, he might even be permitted to enjoy a real lonely three weeks, now that he had got rid of that trio. He drew out a cigar and began to tell himself he was enjoying himself when—

“Mr. Robert Bennett!” The voice of a page smote the air. It broke into his reflections like a shock.

“Mr. Bennett!” again bawled the voice.

For the moment Bob was tempted to let him slip by, but conscience wouldn’t let him. He lifted a finger.

“Message for Mr. Bennett,” said the urchin.

Bob took it. He experienced forebodings as he saw the dainty card and inscription. He read it. Then he groaned. Would Mr. Robert Bennett join Mrs. Ralston’s house-party at Tonkton? There were a few more words in that impulsive lady’s characteristic, vivacious style. And then there were two words in another handwriting that he knew. “Will you?” That “Will you?” wasn’t signed. Bob stared at it. Would he? He had to. He was in honor bound, because ordinarily he would have accepted with alacrity. But a house-party for him, under present circumstances! He would be a merry guest. Ye gods and little fishes! And then some! He gave a hollow laugh, while the urchin gazed at him sympathetically. Evidently the gentleman had received bad news.

CHAPTER III—AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING

Mrs. Ralston’s house-parties were usually satisfactory affairs. She was fond of people, especially young people, and more especially of young men of the Apollo variety, though in a strictly proper, platonic and critical sense. Indeed, her taste in the abstract, for animated Praxiteles had, for well-nigh two-score of years, been unimpeachable. At the big gatherings in her noble country mansion, there was always a liberal sprinkling of decorative and animated objects of art of this description. She liked to ornament her porches or her gardens with husky and handsome young college athletes. She had an intuitive artistic taste for stunning living-statuary, “dressed up,” of course. Bob came distinctly in that category. So behold him then, one fine morning, on the little sawed-off train that whisked common people—and sometimes a few notables when their cars were otherwise engaged—countryward. Bob had a big grip by his side, his golf sticks were in a rack and he had a newspaper in his hand. The sunshine came in on him but his mood was not sunny. An interview with dad just before leaving hadn’t improved his spirits. He had found dad at the breakfast table examining a book of artificial flies, on one hand, and a big reel on the other.

“Which shall it be, my son?” dad had greeted him cordially. “Trout or tarpon?”

“I guess that’s for you to decide,” Robert had answered grumpily. Dad, in his new role, was beginning to get on Bob’s nerves. Dad didn’t seem to be at all concerned about his future. He shifted that weighty and momentous subject just as lightly! He acted as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“Wish I could make up my mind,” he said, like a boy in some doubt how he can best put in his time when he plays hooky. “Minnows or whales? I’ll toss up.” He did. “Whales win. By the way, how’s the hustling coming on?”

“Don’t know.”

“Well, don’t put it off too long.” Cheerfully. “I guess I can worry along for about three weeks.”

“Three weeks!” said Bob gloomily. Oh, that familiar sound!

“You wouldn’t have me stint myself, would you, my son?” Half reproachfully. “You wouldn’t have dad deny himself anything?”

“No,” answered the other truthfully enough. As a matter of fact things couldn’t be much worse, so he didn’t much care. Fortunately, dad didn’t ask any questions or show any curiosity about that “hustling” business. He seemed to take it for granted Bob would arise to the occasion and be as indulgent a son as he had been an indulgent dad—for he had never denied the boy anything. Bob softened when he thought of that. But confound dad’s childlike faith in him, at this period of emergency. It made Bob nervous. He had no faith in himself that way. Dad did lift his eyebrows just a little when Bob brought down his big grip.

“Week-end?” he hazarded.

“Whole week,” replied Bob in a melancholy tone.

“Whither?”

“Tonkton.”

Dad beamed. “Mrs. Ralston?”

“Yes.”

“Aunt of Miss Gwendoline Gerald, I believe?” With a quick penetrating glance at Bob.

“Yes.”

“Sensible boy,” observed dad, still studying him.

“Oh, I’m not going for the reason you think,” said Bob quite savagely. He was most unlike himself.

“Of course not.” Dad was conciliatory.

“I’m not. Think what you like.”

“Too much work to think,” yawned dad.

“But you are thinking.” Resentfully.

“Have it your own way.”

Bob squared his shoulders. “You want to know really why I’m going to Tonkton?”

“Have I ever tried to force your confidences, my son?”

“I’m going because I’ve got to. I can’t help myself.”

“Of course,” said dad. “Ta! ta! Enjoy yourself. See you in three weeks.”

“Three—!” But Bob didn’t finish. What was the use? Dad thought he was going to Tonkton because Miss Gerald might be there.

As a matter of fact Bob’s one great wish now was that she wouldn’t be there. He wanted, and yet didn’t want, to see her. What had he to hope now? Why, he didn’t have a son, or not enough of them to count. He was to all practical intents and purposes a pauper. Dad’s “going broke” had changed his whole life. He had been reared in the lap of luxury, a pampered son. He had never dreamed of being otherwise. And considering himself a favored child of fortune, he had even dared entertain the delirious hope of winning her—her, the goddess of his dreams.

But hope now was gone. Regrets were useless. He could no longer conceive himself in the role of suitor. Why, there were few girls in the whole land so overburdened with “rocks”—as Dickie called them! If only she didn’t have those rocks—or stocks! “Impecunious Gwendoline!” How well that would go with “Impecunious Bob!” If only her trustees would hit the toboggan, the way dad did! But trustees don’t go tobogganing. They eschew the smooth and slippery. They speculate in government bonds and things that fluctuate about a point or so a century. No chance for quick action there! On the contrary, the trustees were probably making those millions grow. Bob heaved a sigh. Then he took something white from his pocket and gazed at two words, ardently yet dubiously.

That “Will you?” of hers on Mrs. Ralston’s card exhilarated and at the same time depressed him. It implied she, herself, did expect to be at her aunt’s country place. He attached no other especial importance to the “Will you?” An imperious young person in her exalted position could command as she pleased. She could say “Will you?” or “You will” to dozens of more or less callow youths, or young grown-ups, with impunity, and none of said dozens would attach any undue flattering meaning to her words. Miss Gerald found safety in numbers. She was as yet heart-free.

“Can you—aw!—tell me how far it is to Tonkton?” a voice behind here interrupted his ruminations.

Bob hastily returned the card to his pocket, and glancing back, saw a monocle. “Matter of ten miles or so,” he responded curtly. He didn’t like monocles.

“Aw!” said the man.

Bob picked up his newspaper that he had laid down, and frowningly began to glance over the head-lines. The man behind him glanced over them, too.

“Another society robbery, I see,” the latter remarked. “No function complete without them nowadays, I understand. Wonderful country, America! Guests here always expect—aw!—to be robbed, I’ve been told.”

“Have the paper,” said Bob with cutting accents.

“Thanks awfully.” The man with the monocle took the paper as a matter of course, seeming totally unaware of the sarcasm in Bob’s tone. At first, Bob felt like kicking himself; the rustle of the paper in those alien hands caused him to shuffle his feet with mild irritation. Then he forgot all about the paper and the monocle man. His thoughts began once more to go over and over the same old ground, until—

“T’nk’n!” The stentorian abbreviation of the conductor made Bob get up with a start. Grabbing his grip—hardly any weight at all for his muscular arm—in one hand, and his implements of the game in the other, he swung down the aisle and on to the platform. A good many people got off, for a small town nestled beneath the high rolling lands of the country estates of the affluent. There were vehicles of all kinds at the station, among them a number of cars, and in one of the latter Bob recognized Mrs. Ralston’s chauffeur.

A moment he hesitated. He supposed he ought to step forward and get in, for that was what he naturally would do. But he wanted to think; he didn’t want to get to the house in a hurry. Still he had to do what he naturally would do and he started to do it when some other people Bob didn’t know—prospective guests, presumably, among them the man with the monocle—got into the car and fairly filled it. That let Bob out nicely and naturally. It gave him another breathing spell. He had got so he was looking forward to these little breathing spells.

“Hack, sir?” said a voice.

“Not for me,” replied Bob. “But you can tote this up the hill,” indicating the grip. “Ralston house.”

“Dollar and a half, sir,” said the man. “Same price if you go along, too.”

“What?” It just occurred to Bob he hadn’t many dollars left, and of course, tips would be expected up there, at the big house. It behooved him, therefore, to be frugal. But to argue about a dollar and a half!—he, a guest at the several million dollar house! On the other hand, that dollar looked large to Bob at this moment. Imagine if he had to earn a dollar and a half! He couldn’t at the moment tell how he would do it.

“Hold on.” Bob took the grip away from the man. “Why, it’s outrageous, such a tariff! Same price, with or without me, indeed! I tell you—” Suddenly he stopped. He had an awful realization that he was acting a part. That forced indignation of his was not the truth; that aloof kind of an attitude wasn’t the truth, either.

“To tell you the truth,” said Bob, “I can’t afford it.”

“Can’t afford. Ha! ha!” That was a joke. One of Mrs. Ralston’s guests, not afford—!

“No,” said Bob. “I’ve only got about fifteen dollars and a half to my name. I guess you’re worth more than that yourself, aren’t you?” With sudden respect in his tone.

“I guess I am,” said the man, grinning.

“Then, logically, I should be carrying your valise,” retorted Bob.

“Ha! ha! That’s good.” The fellow had been transporting the overflow of Mrs. Ralston’s guests for years, but he had never met quite such an eccentric one as this. He chuckled now as if it were the best joke. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll take it for nothing, and leave it to you what you give me!” Maybe, for a joke, he’d get a fifty—dollars, not cents. These young millionaire men did perpetrate little funnyisms like that. Why, one of them had once “beat him down” a quarter on his fare and then given him ten dollars for a tip. “Ha! ha!” repeated the fellow, surveying Bob’s elegant and faultless attire, “I’ll do it for nothing, and you—”

Bob walked away carrying his grip. Here he was telling the truth and he wasn’t believed. The man took him for one of those irresponsible merry fellows. That was odd. Was it auspicious? Should he derive encouragement therefrom? Maybe the others would only say “Ha! ha!” when he told the truth. But though he tried to feel the fellow’s attitude was a good omen, he didn’t succeed very well.

No use trying to deceive himself! Might as well get accustomed to that truth-telling habit even in his own thoughts! That diabolical trio of friends had seen plainer than he. They had realized the dazzling difficulties of the task confronting him. How they were laughing in their sleeves now at “darn fool Bob!” Bob, a young Don Quixote, sallying forth to attempt the impossible! The preposterous part of the whole business was that his role was preposterous. Why, he really and truly, in his transformed condition, ought to be just like every one else. That he was a unique exception—a figure alone in his glory, or ingloriously alone—was a fine commentary on this old world, anyhow.

What an old humbug of a world it was, he thought, when, passing before the one and only book-store the little village boasted of, he ran plump into, or almost into, Miss Gwendoline Gerald.

She, at that moment, had just emerged from the shop with a supply of popular magazines in her arms. A gracious expression immediately softened the young lady’s lovely patrician features and she extended a hand. As in a dream Bob looked at it, for the fraction of a second. It was a beautiful, shapely and capable hand. It was also sunburned. It looked like the hand of a young woman who would grasp what she wanted and wave aside peremptorily what she didn’t want. It was a strong hand, but it was also an adorable hand. It went with the proud but lovely face. It supplemented the steady, direct violet eyes. The pink nails gleamed like sea-shells. Bob set down the grip and took the hand. His heart was going fast.

“Glad to see you,” said Miss Gwendoline.

Bob remained silent. He was glad and he wasn’t glad. That is to say, he was deliriously glad and he knew he ought not to be. He found it difficult to conceal the effect she had upon him. He dreaded, too, the outcome of that meeting. So, how should he answer and yet tell the truth? It was considerable of a “poser,” he concluded, as he strove to collect his perturbed thoughts.

“Well, why don’t you say something?” she asked.

“Lovely clay,” observed Bob.

The violet eyes drilled into him slightly. Shades of Hebe! but she had a fine figure! She looked great next to Bob. Maybe she knew it. Perhaps that was why she was just a shade more friendly and gracious to him than to some of the others. They two appeared so well together. He certainly did set her off.

“Is that all you have to say?” asked Miss Gwendoline after a moment.

“Let me put those magazines in the trap for you?” said Bob, making a desperate recovery and indicating the smart rig at the curb as he spoke.

“Thanks,” she answered. “Make yourself useful.” And gave them to him. But there was now a slight reserve on her part. His manner had slightly puzzled her. There was a constraint, or hold-offishness about him that seemed to her rather a new symptom in him. What did it mean? Had he misinterpreted her “Will you?” The violet eyes flashed slightly, then she laughed. How ridiculous!

“There! You did it very well,” she commended him mockingly.

“Thanks,” said Bob awkwardly, and shifted. It would be better if she let him go. Those awful things he might say?—that she might make him say? But she showed no disposition to permit him to depart at once. She lingered. People didn’t usually seek to terminate talks with her. As a rule they just stuck and stuck around and it was hard to get rid of them. Did she divine his uneasiness? Bob showed he certainly wasn’t enjoying himself. The violet eyes grew more and more puzzled.

“What a brilliant conversationalist you are to-day, Mr. Bennett!” she remarked with a trace of irony in her tones.

“Yes; I don’t feel very strong on the talk to-day,” answered Bob truthfully.

Miss Gwendoline pondered a moment on this. She had seen young men embarrassed before—especially when she was alone with them. Sometimes her decidedly pronounced beauty had a disquieting effect on certain sensitive young souls. Bob’s manner recalled the manner of one or two of those others just before they indulged, or tried to indulge, in unusual sentiments, or too close personalities. Miss Gerald’s long sweeping lashes lowered ominously. Then they slowly lifted. She didn’t feel to-day any inordinate endeavor or desire on Bob’s part to break down the nice barriers of convention and to establish that more intimate and magnetic atmosphere of a new relationship. Well, that was the way it should be. It must be he was only stupid at the moment. That’s why he acted strange and unlike himself.

Perhaps he had been up late the night before. Maybe he had a headache. His handsome face was certainly very sober. There was a silent appeal to her in that blond head, a little over half-a-head above hers. Miss Gwendoline’s red lips softened. What a great, big, nice-looking boy he was, after all! She let the lights of her eyes play on him more kindly. She had always thought Bob a good sort. He was an excellent partner in tennis and when it came to horses—they had certainly had some great spurts together. She had tried to follow Bob but it had sometimes been hard. His “jumps” were famous. What he couldn’t put a horse over, no one else could. For the sake of these and a few kindred recollections, she softened.

“I suppose men sometimes do feel that way the next day,” she observed with tentative sympathy. One just had to forgive Bob. She knew a lot of cleverer men who weren’t half so interesting on certain occasions. Intellectual conversation isn’t everything. Even that soul-to-soul talk of the higher faddists sometimes palled. “I suppose that’s why you’re walking.”

“Why?” he repeated, puzzled.

“To dissipate that ‘tired feeling,’ I believe you call it?”

“But I’m not tired,” said Bob.

“Headachey, then?”

“No.” He wasn’t quite following the subtleties of her remarks.

“Then why are you walking?” she persisted. “And with that?” Touching his grip with the tip of her toe.

“Save hack fare,” answered Bob.

She smiled.

“Man wanted a dollar and a half,” he went on.

“And you objected?” Lightly.

“I did.”

Again she smiled. Bob saw she, too, thought it was a joke. And he remembered how she knew of one or two occasions when he had just thrown money to the winds—shoved it out of the window, as it were—orchids, by the dozens, tips, two or three times too large, etc. Bob, with those reckless eyes, object to a dollar and a half—or a hundred and fifty, for that matter? Not he! If ever there had been a spendthrift!—

“Well, I’ll lend a hand to a poor, poverty-stricken wretch,” said Miss Gerald, indulgently entering into the humor of the situation.

“What do you mean?” With new misgivings.

“Put them”—indicating the grip and the sticks—“in the trap,” she commanded.

Bob did. He couldn’t do anything else. And then he assisted her in.

“Thanks for timely help!” he said more blithely, as he saw her slip on her gloves and begin to gather up the reins with those firm capable fingers. “And now—?” He started as if to go.

“Oh, you can get in, too.” Why shouldn’t he? There was room for two. She spoke in a matter-of-fact manner.

“I—?” Bob hesitated. A long, long drive—unbounded opportunity for chats, confidences!—and all at the beginning of his sojourn here? Dad’s words—that horrid advice—burned on his brain like fire. He tried to think of some excuse for not getting in. He might say he had to stop at a drug store, or call up a man in New York on business by telephone, or— But no! he couldn’t say any of those things. He was denied the blissful privilege of other men.

“Well, why don’t you get in?” Miss Gerald spoke more sharply. “Don’t you want to?”

The words came like a thunder-clap, though Miss Gwendoline’s voice was honey sweet. Bob raised a tragic head. That monster, Truth!

“No,” he said.

An instant Miss Gwendoline looked at him, the violet eyes incredulous, amused. Then a slight line appeared on her beautiful forehead and her red lips parted a little as if she were going to say something, but didn’t. Instead, they closed tight, the way rosebuds shut when the night is unusually frosty. Her eyes became hard like diamonds.

“How charmingly frank!” she said. Then she drew up the reins and trailed the tip of the whip caressingly along the back of her spirited cob. It sprang forward. “Look out for the sun, Mr. Bennett,” she called back as they dashed away. “It’s rather hot to-day.”

Bob stood and stared after her. What did she mean about the sun? Did she think he had a touch of sunstroke, or brain-fever? It was an inauspicious beginning, indeed. If he had only known what next was coming!

CHAPTER IV—A CHAT ON THE LINKS

At the top of the hill, instead of following the winding road, Bob started leisurely across the rolling green toward the big house whose roof could be discerned in the distance above the trees. The day was charming, but he was distinctly out of tune. There was a frown on his brow. Fate had gone too far. He half-clenched his fists, for he was in a fighting mood and wanted to retaliate—but how? At the edge of some bushes he came upon a lady—no less a personage than the better-half of the commodore, himself.

She was fair, fat and forty, or a little more. She was fooling with a white ball, or rather it was fooling with her, for she didn’t seem to like the place where it lay. She surveyed it from this side and then from that. To the casual observer it looked just the same from whichever point you viewed it. Once or twice the lady, evidently no expert, raised her arm and then lowered it. But apparently, at last, she made up her mind. She was just about to hit the little ball, though whether to top or slice it will never be known, when Bob stepped up from behind the bushes.

“Oh, Mr. Bennett!” He had obviously startled her.

“The same,” said Bob gloomily.

“That’s too bad of you,” she chided him, stepping back.

“What?”

“Why, I’d just got it all figured out in my mind how to do it.”

“Sorry,” said Bob. “I didn’t know you were behind the bushes or I wouldn’t have come out on you like that. But maybe you’ll do even better than you were going to. Hope so! Go ahead with your drive. Don’t mind me.” His tone was depressed, if not sepulchral.

But the lady, being at that sociable age, showed now a perverse disposition not to “go ahead.”

“Just get here?” she asked.

“Yes. Anything doing?”

“Not much. It’s been, in fact, rather slow. Mrs. Ralston says so herself. So I am at liberty to make the same remark. Of course we’ve done the usual things, but somehow there seems to be something lacking,” rattled on the lady. “Maybe we need a few more convivial souls to stir things up. Perhaps we’re waiting for some one, real good and lively, to appear upon the scene. Does the description chance to fit you, Mr. Bennett?” Archly.

“I think not,” said gloomy Bob.

“Well, that isn’t what Mrs. Ralston says about you, anyway,” observed the commodore’s spouse.

“What does she say?”

“‘When Bob Bennett’s around, things begin to hum.’ So you see you have a reputation to live up to.”

“I dare say. No doubt I’ll live up to it, all right.”

“It’s really up to you to stir things up.”

“I’ve begun.” Ominously.

“Have you? How lovely!”

This didn’t require an answer, for it wasn’t really a question. A white ball went by them, a very pretty snoop, and pretty soon another lady and a caddy loomed on their range of vision. The lady was thin and spirituelle and she walked by with a stride. You would have said she had taken lessons of a man. She looked neither to the right nor the left. At the moment, she, at any rate, was not sociably inclined. That walk meant business. She wasn’t one of those fussy beginners like the lady Bob was talking with.

“Isn’t that Mrs. Clarence Van Duzen?” asked Bob.

“Yes. She, too, poor dear, has had to desert hubby. Exactions of business! Clarence simply couldn’t get away. You see he’s director of so many things. And poor, dear old Dan! So busy! Every day at the office! So pressed with business.”

“Quite so,” said Bob absently. “I mean—” He stopped. He knew Dan wasn’t pressed for business and Bob couldn’t utter even the suspicion of an untruth now. “Didn’t exactly mean that!” he mumbled.

The lady regarded him quickly. His manner was just in the least strange. But in a moment she thought no more about it.

“You didn’t happen to see Dan?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“At his office, I suppose?” Dan had written he hadn’t even had time for his club; that it had been just work—work all the time.

“No.”

“Where, then?”

“At the club and some other places.” Reluctantly.

“Other places?” Lightly. Of course she hadn’t really believed quite all Dan had written about that office confinement. “How dreadfully ambiguous!” With a laugh. “What other places?”

Bob began to get uneasy. “Well, we went to a cabaret or two.” No especial harm about that answer.

“Of course,” said the lady. “Why not?”

Bob felt relieved. He didn’t want to make trouble. He was too miserable himself. He trusted that would end the talk and now regarded the neglected ball suggestively.

“And then you went to still some other places?” went on the lady in that same light, unoffended tone.

“Ye-es,” Bob had to admit.

“One of those roof gardens, perhaps, where they have entertainments?” she suggested brightly.

Bob acknowledged they had gone to a roof garden. And again, and more suggestively, he eyed the little white ball. But Mrs. Dan seemed to have forgotten all about it.

“Roof gardens,” she said. “I adore roof gardens. They are such a boon to the people. I told dear Dan to be sure not to miss them. So nice to think of him enjoying himself instead of moping away in a stuffy old office.”

Bob gazed at her suspiciously. But she had such an open face! One of those faces one can’t help trusting. Mrs. Dan was just the homely, plain old-fashioned type. At least, so she seemed. Anyhow, it didn’t much matter so far as Bob was concerned. He had to tell the truth. He hadn’t sought this conversation. It was forced on him. He was only going the “even tenor of his way.” He was, however, rather pleased that Mrs. Dan did seem in some respects different from others of her sex. Bob didn’t, of course, really know much about the sex.

“So you went to the roof garden—just you and Dan,” purred Mrs. Dan.

Bob didn’t answer. He hoped she hadn’t really put that as a question.

“Or were you and Dan alone?” She made it a question now.

“No-a.”

“Who else were along?”

“Dickie—”

“And—?”

“Clarence.”

She gazed toward Mrs. Clarence, while a shade of anxiety appeared on Bob’s face. In the distance Mrs. Clarence had paused to contemplate the result of an unusually satisfactory display of skill. Mrs. Dan next glanced sidewise at her caddy, but that young man seemed to have relapsed into a condition of innocuous vacancy. He looked capable of falling asleep standing. Certainly he wasn’t trying to overhear.

“Just you four men!” Mrs. Dan resumed her purring. “Or were you all alone? No ladies along?”

While expecting, of course, the negative direct, she was studying Bob and gleaning what she could, surreptitiously, or by inference. He had an eloquent face which might tell her something his lips refused to reveal. His answer almost took her breath away.

“Ye-es.”

He was sorry, but he had to say it. No way out of it! Mrs. Dan’s jaw fell. What she might have said can only be conjectured, for at this moment, luckily for Bob, there came an interruption.

“Tête-à-têting, instead of teeing!” broke in a jocular voice. The speaker wore ecclesiastical garments; his imposing calves were encased in episcopal gaiters. Mrs. Ralston always liked to dignify her house-parties with a religious touch, and this particular bishop was very popular with her. Bob inwardly blessed the good man for his opportune appearance. He was a ponderous wag.

“Forgive interruption,” he went on, just as if Mrs. Dan who was non-amatory had been engaged in a furious flirtation. “I’ll be hurrying on.”

“Do,” said Mrs. Dan, matching his tone, and concealing any inward exasperation that she might have felt.

“It’s I who will be hurrying on,” interposed Bob quickly. “You see, I’m expected to arrive at the house,” he laughed.

“Looked as if you were having an interesting conversation,” persisted the bishop waggishly.

“And so we were,” assented Mrs. Dan. She could have stamped with vexation, but instead, she forced a smile. The dear tiresome bishop had to be borne.

“Confess you find me de trop?” he went on, shaking a finger at Bob.

“On the contrary,” said Bob.

“Has to say that,” laughed the good man. He did love to poke fun (or what he conceived “fun”) at “fair, fat and forty.” “I suppose you were positively dee-lighted to be interrupted?”

“I was,” returned Bob truthfully.

“Ha! ha!” laughed the bishop.

Bob looked at him. The bishop thought he was joking, just as the hackman had. Of course, no one could say such a thing as that seriously and in the presence of the lady herself. People always didn’t believe truth when they heard it. They thought telling the truth a form of crude humor, and a spark of hope-a very small one—shot through Bob’s brain. Perhaps they would continue to look upon him in the light of a joker. He would be the little joker in the pack of cards and he might yet pull off that “three weeks” without pulling down the house. Only—would Miss Gerald look upon him as a joker? Intuition promptly told him she would not. His thoughts reverted to that last meeting. Think of having told her he didn’t want—His offense grew more awful unto himself every moment. He ceased to remember Mrs. Dan, and saying something, he hardly knew what, Bob walked on.

Miss Gwendoline Gerald was on the big veranda when he reached the house. He would have thanked her humbly and with immense contrition for having transferred his bag and clubs hither, but as he went by, that gracious, stately young lady seemed not to see him. It was as if he had suddenly become invisible. Her face didn’t even change; the proud contour expressed neither contempt nor disdain; the perfectly formed lips didn’t take a more pronounced curve or grow hard.

Bob felt himself shrink. He was like that man in the story book who becomes invisible at times. The fiction man, however, attained this convenient consummation through his own volition. Bob didn’t. She was the magician and he wasn’t even a joker.

He managed to reach the front door without stumbling. A wild desire to attract her attention by asking her if his luggage had arrived safely, he dismissed quickly. It wouldn’t do at all. It might imply a fear she had dumped it out, en route. And if she hadn’t, such an inquiry would only emphasize the fact that she had acted as expressman—or woman—and for him!

He would go to his room at once, he told the footman. He didn’t mind a few moments’ solitude. If so much could happen before his house-party had begun—before he even got into the house—what might he not expect later? In one of the upper halls he encountered the man with the monocle.

“I say!” said this person. “What a jolly coincidence!”

“Think so?” said Bob. He didn’t find anything “jolly” about it. On another occasion, he might have noticed that the eye behind the “window-pane” was rather twinkling, but his perceptions were not particularly keen at the present time.

In the room to which he had been assigned, Bob cast off a few garments. Then he stopped with his shirt partly off. He wondered how Miss Gerald would look the next time he saw her? Like a frozen Hebe, perhaps! Bob removed the shirt and cast it viciously somewhere. Then he selected another shirt—the first that came along, for why should he exercise care to select? It matters little what an invisible man wears. She wouldn’t see the extra stripe or the bigger dot. Stripes couldn’t rescue him from insubstantiability. Colors, too, would make no difference. Pea-green, yellow, or lavender—it was all one. Any old shirt would do. And any old tie!

When he had finished dressing, he didn’t find any further excuse for remaining in his room. He couldn’t consult his desires as to that. He wasn’t asked there to be a hermit. He couldn’t imitate Timon of Athens, Diogenes or any other of those wise old fellows who did the glorious solitude act. Diogenes told the truth, mostly, but he could live in a tub. He didn’t have to participate in house-parties. Whoever invented house-parties, anyhow? They were such uncomfortable “social functions” they must have been invented by the English. Why do people want to get together? Bob could sympathize with Diogenes. Also, he could envy Timon his howling wilderness! But personally he couldn’t even be a Robinson Crusoe. Would there were no other company than clawless crabs and a goat and a parrot! He would not be afraid to tell them the truth.

He had to go down and he did. Nemesis lurked for him below. Had Bob realized what was going to happen he would have skipped back to his room. But, as it was, he assumed a bold front. He even said to himself, “Cheer up; the worst is yet to come.” It was.

CHAPTER V—TRIVIALITIES

Luncheon came and went, but nothing actually tragic happened at it. Bob didn’t make more than a dozen remarks that failed to add to his popularity. He tried to be agreeable, because that was his nature. That “even-tenor-of-his-way” condition made it incumbent on him—yes, made it his sacred duty to be bright and amiable. So it was “Hence, loathed Melancholy!” and a brave endeavor to be as jocund as the poet’s lines! Only those little unfortunate moments—airy preludes to larger misfortunes—had to occur, and just when he would flatter himself he was not doing so badly.

For example, when Mrs. Augustus Ossenreich Vanderpool said: “Don’t you adore dogs, Mr. Bennett?”

“No. I like them.” It became necessary to qualify that. “That is—not the little kind.”

The lady stiffened. Her beribboned and perfumed five-thousand-dollar toy-dogs were the idolized darlings of her heart. The children might be relegated to the nursery but the canines had the run of the boudoir. They rode with her when she went out in state while the French bonne took the children for an airing. “And why are the ‘little kind’ excluded from the realm of your approbation?” observed Mrs. Vanderpool coldly.

It was quite a contract to answer that. Bob wanted to be truthful; not to say too much or too little; only just as much as he was in honor bound to say. “I think people make too much fuss over them,” he answered at last. That reply seemed quite adequate and he trusted the lady would change the subject. But people had a way of not doing what he wanted them to, lately.

“What do you call ‘too much fuss’?” pursued the lady persistently.

Bob explained as best he could. It was rather a thankless task and he floundered a good deal as he went about it. He wasn’t going to be a bit more disagreeable than he could help, only he couldn’t help being as disagreeable as he had to be. The fact that Miss Gwendoline Gerald’s starry eyes were on him with cold curiosity did not improve the lucidity of his explanation. In the midst of it, she to whom he was talking, seemed somehow to detach herself from him, gradually, not pointedly, for he hardly knew just when or how she got away. She seemed just to float off and to attach herself somewhere else—to the bishop or to a certain judge Mrs. Ralston always asked to her house-parties that they might have a judicial as well as an ecclesiastical touch—and Bob’s explanation died on the thin air. He let it die. He didn’t have to speak truth to vacancy.

Then he tangoed, but not with Miss Gwendoline Gerald. He positively dared not approach that young lady. He didn’t tango because he wanted to, but because some one set a big music-box going and he knew he was expected to tango. He did it beautifully and the young lady was charmed. She was a little dark thing, of the clinging variety, and Dickie had gone with her some. Her father owned properties that would go well with Dickie’s—there’d been some talk of consolidation, but it had never come off. Papa was inclined to be stand-offish. Then Dickie began to get attentive to the little dark thing, though nothing had yet come of that either. Bob didn’t own any properties but the little dark thing didn’t mind that. At tangoing, he was a dream. Properties can’t tango.

“You do it so well,” said the little dark thing breathlessly.

“Do I?” murmured Bob, thinking of a stately young goddess, now tangoing with another fellow.

“Don’t you adore it?” went on the little dark thing, nestling as close as was conventional and proper.

“I might,” observed Bob. That was almost as bad as the dog question. He trusted the matter would end there.

She giggled happily. “Maybe you disapprove of modern dancing, Mr. Bennett?”

“That depends,” said Bob gloomily. He meant it depended upon who was “doing the modern” with the object of your fondest affections. If you yourself were engaged in the arduous pastime with said object, you would, naturally harbor no particular objections against said modern tendencies, but if you weren’t?—

Bob tangoed more swiftly. His thoughts were so bitter he wanted to run away from them. The irony of gliding rhythmically and poetically in seeming joyous abandon of movement when his heart weighed a ton! If that heaviness of heart were communicated to his legs, they would in reality be as heavy as those of a deep-sea diver, weighted down for a ten-fathom plunge.

And in thus trying to run away from his thoughts Bob whirled the little dark thing quite madly. He couldn’t dance ungracefully if he tried and the little dark thing had a soul for rhythm. It was as if he were trying to run away with her. He fairly took away her breath. She was a panting little dark thing on his broad breast now, but she didn’t ask him to stop. The music-box ceased to be musical and that brought them to a stop. The eyes of the little dark thing—her name was Dolly—sparkled, and she gazed up at Bob with the respect one of her tender and impressionable years has for a masculine whirlwind.

“You quite sweep one off one’s feet, Mr. Bennett,” she managed to ejaculate.

At that moment Miss Gwendoline passed, a divine bud glowing on either proud cheek. She caught the remark and looked at the maker of it. She noted the sparkle in the eyes. The little dark thing was a wonder with the men. She seemed to possess the knack—only second to Miss Gwendoline, in that line—of converting them into “trailers.” Miss Gwendoline, though, never tried to attain this result. Men became her trailers without any effort on her part, while the little dark thing had to exert herself, but it was agreeable work. She made Bob a trailer now, temporarily. Miss Gwendoline turned her head slightly, with a gleam of surprise to watch him trail. She had noticed that Bob had danced with irresistible and almost pagan abandon. That argued enjoyment.

The little dark thing would “come in” ultimately for hundreds of belching chimneys and glowing furnaces and noisy factories—quite a snug if cacophonous legacy!—and Miss Gwendoline had only that day heard rumors that Bob’s governor had fallen down and hurt himself on the “street.” She, Miss Gwendoline, had not attached much importance to those rumors. People were always having little mishaps in the “street,” and then bobbing up richer than ever.

But now that rumor recurred to her more vividly in the light of Bob’s trailing performance and the mad abandon of his tangoing. Of course, all men are gamblers, or fortune-hunters, or something equally reprehensible, at heart! Tendency of a cynical, selfish and money-grabbing age! Miss Gwendoline was no moralist but she had lived in a wise set, where people keep their eyes open and weigh things for just what they are. Naturally a young man whose governor has gone on the rocks (though only temporarily, perhaps), might think that belching chimneys, though somewhat splotchy on the horizon and unpicturesque to the eye, might be acceptable, in a first-aid-to-the-injured sense. But Bob as a plain, ordinary fortune-hunter?— Somehow the role did not fit him.

Besides, a fortune-hunter would not bruskly and unceremoniously have refused her invitation to ride in the trap. And at the recollection of that affront, Miss Gwendoline’s violet eyes again gleamed, until for sparkles they out-matched those of the little dark thing. However, she held herself too high to be really resentful. It was impossible she should resent anything so incomprehensible, she told herself. That would lend dignity to the offense. Therefore she could only be mildly amused by it. This was, no doubt, a properly lofty attitude, but was it a genuine one? Was she not actually at heart, deeply resentful and dreadfully offended? Pride being one of her marked characteristics, she demanded a great deal and would not accept a little.

The sparkles died from the hard violet eyes. A more tentative expression replaced that other look as her glance now passed meditatively over the dark little thing. The latter had certainly a piquant bizarre attraction. She looked as if she could be very intense, though she was of that clinging-vine variety of young woman. She wore one of those tango gowns which was odd, outre and a bit daring. It went with her personality. At the same time her innocent expression seemed a mute, almost pathetic little appeal to you not to think it too daring.

As Miss Gerald studied the young lady, albeit without seeming to do so and holding her own in a sprightly tango kind of talk, another thought flashed into her mind. Bob might be genuinely and sentimentally smitten. Why not? Men frequently fell in love with the little dark thing, and afterward some of them said she had a “good deal of temperament.” Bob might be on a temperament-investigating quest. At any rate, it was all one to Miss Gerald. Life was a comedy. N’est-ce-pas? What was it Balzac called it? La Comedie Humaine.

Meanwhile, other eyes than Miss Gerald’s were bent upon luckless Bob. Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence looked as if they would like to have a word with him. Mrs. Dan even maneuvered in his direction at the conclusion of the dance while Bob watched her with ill-concealed apprehension. He detected, also, an uncanny interest in Mrs. Clarence’s eyes as that masterful lady eyed him and Mrs. Dan from a distance. Mrs. Dan almost got him when—the saints be praised!—Mrs. Ralston, herself, tripped blithely up and annexed him. For the moment he was safe, but only for the moment.

A reckless desire to end it all surged through Bob’s inmost being. If only his hostess would say something demanding an answer that would incur such disapprobation on her part, he would feel impelled, in the natural order of events, to hasten his departure. Maybe then (and he thrilled at the thought), she might even intimate in her chilliest manner that his immediate departure would be the logical sequence of some truthful spasm she, herself, had forced from him? He couldn’t talk French to Mrs. Ralston now; he was in honor bound not to. He would have to speak right up in the King’s English—or Uncle Sam’s American.

Of course, such a consummation—Bob’s being practically forced to take his departure—was extremely unpleasant and awful to contemplate, yet worse things could happen than that—a whole string of them, one right after another!

However, he had no such luck as to be ordered forthwith off the premises. He didn’t offend Mrs. Ralston at all. That lady was very nice to him (or otherwise, from Bob’s present view-point) and did most of the talking herself. Perhaps she considered that compliment (?) Bob had bestowed upon her at the Waldorf sufficient to excuse him for a while from further undue efforts at flattery. At any rate, she didn’t seem to take it amiss that Bob didn’t say a lot more of equally nice things in that Chesterfieldian manner and with such a perfect French accent.

But he “got in bad” that afternoon with divers and sundry other guests of Mrs. Ralston. Mrs. Augustus O. Vanderpool and Miss Gerald weren’t the only ones who threw cold glances his way, for the faux pas he made—that he had to make—were something dreadful. For example, when some one asked him what he thought of Miss Schermerhorn’s voice, he had to say huskily what was in his mind:

“It is rather too strident, isn’t it?” No sugar-coating the truth! If he had said anything else he would have been compromising with veracity; he would not have spoken the thought born in his brain at the question. Of course, some one repeated what he said to Miss Schermerhorn, who came from one of the oldest families, was tall and angular, and cherished fond illusions, or delusions, that she was an amateur nightingale. The some one who repeated, had to repeat, because Miss Schermerhorn was her dearest friend and confidante. Then Miss Schermerhorn came right up to Bob and asked him if he had said it and he was obliged to answer that he had. What she said, or thought, need not be repeated. She left poor Bob feeling about as big as a caterpillar.

“How very tactful of Mr. Bennett!” was all Miss Gerald said, when Miss Dolly related to her the little incident.

“That’s just what I adore in him!” gushed the temperamental little thing. “He doesn’t seem to be afraid of saying anything to anybody. He’s so delightfully frank!”

“Frank, certainly!” answered Miss Gerald icily.

“Anyhow, he’s a regular tango-king!” murmured Miss Dolly dreamily.

“I’m so glad you approve of him, dear!” said Miss Gerald with an enigmatic smile. Perhaps she implied the temperamental little thing found herself in a class, all by herself, in this regard.

The latter flew over to Bob. If he was so “frank” and ingenuous about Miss Schermerhorn, perhaps he would be equally so with other persons. Miss Dolly asked him if he didn’t think the bishop’s sermons “just too dear?” Bob did not. “Why not?” she persisted. Bob had just been reading The Outside of the Pot. “Why not?” repeated Miss Dolly.

“Antediluvian!” groaned Bob, then turned a fiery red. The bishop, standing on the other side of the doorway, had overheard. Maybe Miss Dolly had known he stood there for she now giggled and fled. Bob wanted to sink through the floor, but he couldn’t.

“So, sir, you think my sermons antediluvian?” said the bishop, with a twinkle of the eye. He never got mad, he was the best old man that way that ever happened.

“Yes, sir,” replied Bob, by rote.

“Thank you,” said the bishop, and rubbed his nose. Then he eyed Bob curiously. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. That made Bob feel awful, but he couldn’t retract. The truth as he saw it!—He felt as if he were chained to the wheel of fate—the truth as he saw it, though the heavens fell!

“Of course, that’s only my poor insignificant opinion,” he murmured miserably.

“Every man’s opinion is entitled to respect,” said the bishop.

“Yes, sir,” replied Bob, more miserably still.

The bishop continued to study him. “You interest me, Mr. Bennett.”

“Do I?” said Bob. “I’m rather interesting to myself just now.”

“You evidently agree with the author of The Outside of the Pot?”

“That’s it.” Weakly.

“Well, cheer up,” said the bishop, and walked away.

Later in the day the judge might have been heard to say to the bishop that “that young Bennett cub is a good-for-nothing jackanapes”—from which it might be inferred Bob had somehow managed to rub the judge’s ermine the wrong way.

“Ha! ha!” laughed the bishop. “Did some one ask him what he thought of judges?”

But the judge did not laugh. His frown was awful.

“Or was it about the ‘recall’? Or the relation of judges and corporations?”

The judge looked stern as Jove. “Ass!” he muttered.

“Maybe he’s a progressive,” returned the bishop. “The world seems to be changing. Ought we to change with it, I wonder?”

“I don’t,” snapped the judge. “If the world to-day is producing such fatuous blockheads, give me the world as it was.”

“The trouble is,” said the bishop, again rubbing his nose, “can we get it back? Hasn’t it left us behind and are we ever going to catch up?”

“Fudge!” said the judge. He and the bishop were such old friends, he could take that liberty.

Another of the sterner sex—one of Mrs. Ralston’s guests—looked as if he, too, could have said: “Fudge!” His lips fairly curled when he regarded Bob. He specialized as a vivisectionist, and he was a great authority. Now Bob loved the “under-dog” and was naturally kind and sympathetic. He had been blessed—or cursed—with a very tender heart for such a compact, well-put-up, six foot or so compound of hard-headed masculinity. Miss Dolly—imp of mischief—again rather forced the talk. It must be wonderful to cut things up and juggle with hind legs and kidneys and brains and mix them all up with different animals, until a poor little cat didn’t know if it had a dog’s brain or its own? And was it true that sometimes the dogs me-owed, and when a cat started to purr did it wag its tail instead? This was all right from Miss Dolly, but when the conversation expanded and Bob was appealed to, it was different. “Wouldn’t you just love to mix up the different ‘parts’?” asked Miss Dolly, and put a rabbit’s leg on a pussy, just to watch its expression of surprise when it started to run and found itself only able to jump, or half-jump? That got honest Bob—who couldn’t have carved up a poor dumb beast, to save his life—fairly involved, and before he had staggered from that conversational morass, he had offended Authority about two dozen times. Indeed, Authority openly turned its back on him. Authority found Bob impossible.

These are fair samples of a few of his experiences. And all the while he had an uneasy presentiment that Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence were waiting to get him and have their innings. Now, Mrs. Dan would bestow upon him a too sweet smile between games of tennis; then Mrs. Clarence would drift casually in his direction, but something would happen that would prevent a heart-to-heart duologue, and she would as casually drift away again. These hit-and-miss tactics, however, gradually got on Bob’s nerves, and in consequence, he who was usually a star and a cracker jack at the game, played abominable tennis that afternoon—thus enhancing his unpopularity with divers partners who simply couldn’t understand why he had fallen off so. Indeed, about every one he came in contact with was profoundly dissatisfied or disgusted with Bob. Miss Gerald, who usually played with him, now firmly but unostentatiously, avoided him, and though Bob couldn’t blame her, of course, still the fact did not tend to mitigate his melancholy.

How different in the past!—that glorious, never-to-be-forgotten past! Then he had inwardly reveled and rejoiced in her lithe movements—for with all her stateliness and proud carriage, she was like a young panther for grace. Now as luckless Bob played with some one else, a tantalizing college ditty floated through his brain: “I wonder who’s kissing her now?”

Of course, no one was. She wasn’t that kind. Though some one, some day, would! It was in the natural order of things bound to occur, and Bob, in fancy, saw those disdainful red lips, with some one hovering over, as he swung at a white ball and sent it—well, not where he should have.

“You are playing very badly, partner,” a reproving voice reminded him.

Bob muttered something. Confound that frivolous haunting song! He would dismiss the dire and absurd possibility. Some one else was with her, though, and that was sufficiently poignant. There were several of the fellows tremendously smitten in that quarter. Fine, husky athletic chaps, too! Some of them quite expert at wooing, no doubt, for devotees of house-parties become educated and acquire finesse. They don’t have to tell the truth all the time, but on the contrary, are privileged to prevaricate in the most artistic manner. They can gaze into beautiful eyes and swear that they have “never before,” and so on. They can perform prodigies of prevarication and “get away” with them. Bob played now even worse than before.

The sun got low at last, however, and wearily he retired to his room, to change his garments for dinner. Incidentally, he surveyed himself in the mirror with haunting earnestness of gaze. Had he grown perceptibly older? He thought he could detect a few lines of care on his erstwhile unsullied brow, and with a sigh, he turned away to array himself in the customary black—or “glad rags”—which seemed now, however, but the habiliments of woe. Then he descended to receive a new shock; he found out that Mrs. Ralston had assigned Mrs. Dan to him, to take in to dinner. Drearily Bob wondered if it were mere chance that he had drawn Mrs. Dan for a dinner prize, or if Mrs. Dan herself had somehow brought about that, to her, desired consummation. As he gave Mrs. Dan his arm he saw Mrs. Clarence exchange glances with the commodore’s good lady. Mrs. Ralston went in with the monocle man.

CHAPTER VI—DINNER

Mrs. Dan dallied with Bob, displaying all the artifices of an old campaigner. Of course, she had no idea how easy it might be for her to learn all she wanted to. She could not know he was like a barrel or puncheon of information and that all she had to do was to pull the plug and let information flow out. She regarded Bob more in the light of a safety vault; the bishop’s interruption had put him on his guard and she would have to get through those massive outer-doors of his reserve, before she could force the many smaller doors to various boxes full of startling facts.

It was a fine tableful of people, of which they were a part. Wealth, beauty, brains and brawn were all there. An orchestra played somewhere. Being paid performers you didn’t see them and as distance lends enchantment to music, on most occasions, the result was admirable. Delicate orchids everywhere charmed with their hues without exuding that too obtrusive perfume of commoner flowers. Mrs. Ralston was an orchid enthusiast and down on the Amazon she kept an orchid-hunter who, whenever he found a new variety, sent her a cable.

So Mrs. Dan started on orchids with Bob. She hadn’t the slightest interest in orchids, but she displayed a simulated interest that sounded almost like real interest. Mrs. Dan hadn’t practised on society, or had society practise on her, all these years for nothing. She could get that simulated-interested tone going without any effort. But Bob’s attention wandered, and he gazed toward Miss Gerald who occupied a place quite a distance from him.

Mrs. Dan, failing to interest Bob on orchids, now took another tack. She sailed a conversational course on caviar. Men usually like things to eat, and to talk about them, especially such caviar as this. But Bob eyed the almost priceless Malasol as if it were composed of plain, ordinary fish-eggs. He didn’t even enthuse when he took a sip of Moselle that matched the Malasol and had more “bouquet” than the flowers. So Mrs. Dan, again altering her conversational course, sailed merrily before the wind amid the breeze of general topics and gay light persiflage. She was at her best now. There wasn’t anything she didn’t know something about. She talked plays, operas and amusements which gradually led her up to roof gardens. She took her time, though, before laying the bowsprit of her desires straight in the real direction she wished to go. She knew she could proceed cautiously and circumspectly, that there was no need for hurry; the meal would be fairly prolonged. Mrs. Ralston’s dinners were elaborate affairs; there might even be a few professional entertainment features between courses.

“And speaking about roof gardens,” went on Mrs. Dan, looking any way save at Bob, “I believe you were telling me, only this afternoon, how you and dear Dan were finally driven to them as a last resort. Poor Dan! So glad to hear he could get a breath of fresh air in that stuffy old town! Just hated to think of him confined to some stuffy old office. Men work too hard in our strenuous, bustling country, don’t you think so? And then they break down prematurely. I’ve always told Dan,” she rattled on, “to enjoy himself—innocently, of course.” She paused to take breath. “Don’t you think men work too hard in America, Mr. Bennett?” she repeated.

“Sometimes,” said Bob.

She gave him a quick look. Perhaps she was proceeding rather fast, though Bob didn’t look on his guard. “As I told you, I adore roof gardens. But you were telling me you men were not alone. What harm!” she gurgled. “Some people,” talking fast, “are so prudish. I’m sure we’re not put in the world to be that. Don’t you agree?”

“Of course,” said Bob absently. He didn’t like the way that fellow down on the other side of the table was gazing into Miss Gwendoline’s eyes. “I beg your pardon. I—I don’t think I caught that.”

“We were saying there were some wom—ladies with you,” said Mrs. Dan quickly. Too quickly! She strove to curb her precipitancy. “You remember? You told me?” Her voice trailed off, as if it were a matter of little interest.

“Did I?” Bob caught himself up with a jerk. He felt now as if he were a big fish being angled for, and gazed at her with sudden apprehension. The lady’s, mien however, was reassuring.

“Of course,” she laughed. “Don’t you remember?”

“I believe I did say something of the kind.” Slowly. He had had to.

“Surely you don’t deny now?” she continued playfully.

“No.” He had not spared himself. He couldn’t spare Dan. The lady’s manner seemed to say: “I don’t care a little bit.” Anyhow, the evening in question had passed innocently, if frivolously, enough. No harm would come to Dan in consequence. And again Bob’s interest floated elsewhere.

He noticed Miss Gwendoline did not seem exactly averse to letting that fellow by her side gaze into her eyes. Confound the fellow! He had one of those open honest faces. A likable chap, too! One of the Olympian-game brand! A weight-putter, or hammer-thrower, or something of the kind. Bob could have heaved considerable of a sledge himself at that moment.

“Of course, boys will be boys,” prattled Mrs. Dan at his side, just in the least stridently. “I suppose you sat down and they just happened along and sat down, too! You couldn’t very well refuse to let them, could you? That wouldn’t have been very polite?” She hardly knew what she was saying herself now. Though a conversational general, on most occasions, her inward emotion was now running apace. It was almost beating her judgment in the race. She tried to pull herself together. “Why, in Paris, doing the sights at the Jardin or the Moulin Rouge, or the Casino de Paris, every one takes it or them—these chance acquaintances—as a matter of course. Pour passer le temps! And why not?” With a shrug and in her sprightliest manner. “So the ladies in this instance, as you were saying, came right up, too, and—?”

She paused. That was crude—clumsy—even though she rattled it off as if without thinking. She was losing all her finesse. But again, to her surprise, the fish took the bait. She did not know Bob’s predicament—that he couldn’t finesse.

“Yes, they came up,” said Bob reluctantly, though pleased that Mrs. Dan appeared such a good kind of fellow.

“Show-girls?” asked the lady quickly.

“Well—ah!—two of them were.”

“Two? And what were the others?”

Bob again regarded the lady apprehensively, but her expression was eminently reassuring. It went with the music, the bright flowers and the rest of the gay scene. Mrs. Dan’s smile was one of unadulterated enjoyment; she didn’t seem displeased at all. Must be she wasn’t displeased! Perhaps she was like some of those model French wives who aren’t averse at all to having other ladies attentive to their husbands? Mrs. Dan had lived in Paris and might have acquired with a real accent an accompanying broad-mindedness of character. That might be what made the dear old commodore act so happy most of the time, and so juvenile, too! Mrs. Dan looked broad-minded. She had a broad face and her figure was broad—very! At the moment she seemed fairly to radiate broad-mindedness and again Bob felt glad—on the commodore’s account. He had nothing to feel glad about, himself, with that confounded hammer-thrower—

“Who were the others, did you say?” repeated Mrs. Dan, in her most broad-minded tone.

She seemed only talking to make conversation and looked away unconcernedly as she spoke. Lucky for Dan she was broad-minded—that they had once been expatriates together! Even if she hadn’t been, however, Bob would have had to tell the truth.

“Who were the others?” he repeated absently, one eye on Miss Gerald. “Oh, they were ‘ponies.’”

“‘Ponies,’” said the lady giving a slight start and then recovering. “I beg your pardon, but—ah—do you happen to be referring to the horse-show?”

“Not at all,” answered Bob. “The ponies I refer to,” wearily, “are not equine.” These technical explanations were tiresome. At that moment he was more concerned with the hammer-thrower, who had evidently just hurled a witticism at Miss Gerald, for both were laughing. Would that Bob could have caught the silvery sound of her voice! Would he had been near enough! Across the table, the little dark thing threw him a few consolatory glances. He had almost forgotten about her. Miss Dolly’s temperamental eyes seemed to say “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” and Bob responded recklessly to the invitation. The little dark thing seemed the only one on earth who was good to him. He drank to her with his eyes—without becoming intoxicated. Then she held a glass to her lips and gazed at him over it. He held one to his and did likewise. He should have become doubly intoxicated, but he didn’t. He set down his glass mournfully. Miss Gerald noticed this sentimental little byplay, but what Bob did was, of course, of no moment to her.

“Ponies, Mr. Bennett? And not equine?” Mrs. Dan with difficulty succeeded in again riveting Bob’s wandering attention. “Ah, of course!” Her accents rising frivolously. “How stupid of me!” Gaily. “You mean the kind that do the dancing in the musical shows.” And Mrs. Dan glanced a little furtively at her right.

But on that side the good bishop was still expounding earnestly to the lady he had brought in. He was not in the least interested in what Mrs. Dan and Bob were saying. He was too much concerned in what he was saying himself. At Bob’s left sat the young lady who had been his partner at tennis in the afternoon but she, obviously, took absolutely no interest in Bob now. He had a vague recollection of having been forced to say something in her hearing, earlier in the day, that had sounded almost as bad as his tennis-playing had been. Truth, according to the philosophers, is beautiful. Only it doesn’t seem to be! This young lady had turned as much of the back of a bare “cold shoulder” on Bob at the table as she could. In fact, she made it quite clear Mrs. Dan could have the young man entirely to herself. So Mrs. Dan and Bob were really as alone, for confidential conversational purposes, as if they had been secluded in some retired cozy-corner.

“Two show-girls and two ponies!” Mrs. Dan went on blithely. “That made one apiece.” With a laugh. “Who got the ponies?”

“Clarence got one.”

“And Dan?”

Bob nodded. He had to, it was in the contract. The lady laughed again right gaily.

“Dan always did like the turf,” she breathed softly. “So fond of the track, or anything equine.”

For the moment Bob became again almost suspicious of her, she was such a “good fellow”! And Bob wasn’t revengeful; because he had suffered himself he didn’t wish the commodore any harm. Of course it would be rather a ghastly joke on the commodore if Mrs. Dan wasn’t such a “good fellow” as she seemed. But Bob dismissed that contingency. He was helpless, anyway. He was no more than a chip in a stream. The current of Mrs. Dan’s questions carried him along.

“And what did the pony Dan got, look like?”

“I think she had reddish hair.”

“How lurid! I suppose you all had a few ponies with the ponies?” Jocularly.

“Yes,” said the answering-machine.

“I suppose the ponies had names? They usually do,” she rattled on.

“Yes. They had names, of course.”

“What was Dan’s called?”

The orchestra was playing a little louder now—one of those wild pieces—a rhapsody!

“Don’t know her real name.”

“Her stage name, then?”

“Not sure of that!” Doubtfully.

“But Dan must have called her something?” With a gay little laugh.

“Yes.” Bob hesitated. In spite of that funereal feeling, he couldn’t suppress a grin. “He called her Gee-gee.”

“Gee-gee!” almost shrieked the lady. Then she laughed harder than ever. She was certainly a good actress. At that moment she caught Mrs. Clarence Van Duzen’s eye; it was coldly questioning.

“And what did the pony Clarence got, look like?” Mrs. Dan had passed the stage of analyzing or reasoning clearly. She didn’t even ask herself why Bob wasn’t more evasive. She didn’t want to know whether it was that “good-fellow” manner on her part that had really deceived him into unbosoming the truth to her, or whether—well, he had been drinking too much? He held himself soberly enough, it is true, but there are strong men who look sober and can walk a chalk line, when they aren’t sober at all. Bob might belong to that class. She thought she had detected something on his breath when he passed on the links and he might have been “hitting it up” pretty hard since, on the side, with some of the men. In “vino veritas”! But whether “vino,” or denseness on his part, she was sure of the “veritas.” Instinct told her she had heard the truth.

“And Clarence’s pony—did she have red hair, too?” She put the question in a different way, for Bob was hesitating again.

“No.”

“What was its hue?”

“Peroxide, I guess.” Gloomily.

“Is that all you remember?” Mrs. Dan now was plying questions recklessly, regardlessly, as if Bob were on the witness-stand and she were state prosecutor.

“About all. Oh!—her nose turned up and she had a freckle.”

“How interesting!” Mrs. Dan’s laugh was rather forced, and she and Mrs. Clarence again exchanged glances, but Bob didn’t notice. “And what was she called?” Breathing a little hard.

“Gid-up,” said Bob gravely.

“‘Gid-up’!” Again the lady almost had a paroxysm, but whether or not of mirth, who shall say. “Gee-gee and Gid-up!” Her broad bosom rose and fell.

“Telegram, sir!” At that moment Bob heard another voice at his elbow. Across the table the man with the monocle was gazing at him curiously.

CHAPTER VII—VARYING VICISSITUDES

A footman had brought the message, which Bob now took and opened mechanically. It was from the commodore.

“For heaven’s sake,” it ran, “return at once to New York Will explain.”

Bob eyed it gloomily. The commodore must have been considerably rattled when he had sent that.

“Any answer, sir?” said the footman.

Bob shook his head. What could he answer? He couldn’t run away now; the commodore ought to know that. Of all fool telegrams!—

“A business message, I suppose?” purred the lady at his side. “I trust it is nothing very important, to call you away?”

“No, I shouldn’t call it important,” said Bob. “Quite unnecessary, I should call it.”

He crumpled up the message and thrust it into his pocket. At that moment one of Mrs. Ralston’s paid performers—a high-class monologist—began to earn his fee. He was quite funny and soon had every one laughing. Bob strove to forget his troubles and laugh too. Mrs. Dan couldn’t very well talk to him now, and relieved from that lady’s pertinent prattle, he gradually let that “dull-care grip” slip from his resistless fingers. Welcoming the mocking goddess of the cap and bells, he yielded to the infectious humor and before long forgot the telegram and everything save that crop of near-new stories.

But when the dinner was finally over, he found himself, again wrapped in deep gloom, wandering alone on the broad balcony. He didn’t just know how he came to be out there all alone—whether he drifted away from people or whether they drifted away from him. Anyhow he wasn’t burdened with any one’s company. He entertained a vague recollection that several people had turned their backs on him. So if he was forced to lead a hermit’s life it wasn’t his fault. Probably old Diogenes hadn’t wanted to live in that tub; people had made him. They wouldn’t stand him in a house. There wasn’t room for him and any one else in the biggest house ever built. So the only place where truth could find that real, cozy, homey feeling was alone in a tub. And things weren’t any better to-day. Nice commentary on our boasted “advanced civilization!”

Bob felt as if he were the most-alone man in the world! Why, he was so lonesome, he wasn’t even acquainted with himself. This was only his “double” walking here. He knew now what that German poet was driving at in those Der Doppleganger verses. His “double” was alone. Where was he?—the real he—the original ego? Hanged if he knew! He looked up at the moon, but it couldn’t tell him. At the same time, in spite of that new impersonal relationship he had established toward himself, he felt he ought to be immensely relieved in one respect. There would be no “cozy-cornering” for him that evening. He had the whole wide world to himself. He could be a wandering Jew as well as a Doppleganger, if he wanted to.

He made out now two shadows, or figures, in the moonlight. Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence were walking and talking together, but somehow he wasn’t at all curious about them. His mental faculties seemed numbed, as if his brain were way off somewhere—between the earth and the moon, perhaps. Then he heard the purring of a car, which seemed way off, too. He saw Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence get into the car and heard Mrs. Dan murmur something about the village and the telegraph office, and the car slid downward. Bob watched its rear light receding this way and that, like a will-o’-the-wisp, or a lonesome firefly, until it disappeared on the winding road. A cool breeze touched him without cooling his brow. Bob threw away a cigar. What’s the use of smoking when you don’t taste the weed?

He wondered what he should do now? Go to bed, or—? It was too early for bed. He wouldn’t go to bed at that hour, if he kept to that even-tenor-of-his-way condition. He hadn’t violated any condition, so far. Those fellows who had inveigled him into this wild and woolly moving-picture kind of an impossible freak performance would have to concede that. There could be no ground for complaint that he wasn’t living up to the letter and spirit of his agreement, even at the sacrifice of his most sacred feelings. Yes, by yonder gracious lady of the glorious moon! He wondered where his gracious lady was now and what she was doing? Of course, the hammer-thrower was with her.

“Are you meditating on your loneliness, Mr. Bennett?” said a well-remembered voice. The tones were even and composed. They were also distantly cold. Bob wheeled. Stars of a starry night! It was she.

She came right up and spoke to him—the pariah—the abhorred of many! His heart gave a thump and he could feel its hammering as his glowing eyes met the beautiful icy ones.

“How did you get rid of him?” he breathed hoarsely.

“Him?” said Miss Gwendoline Gerald, in a tone whose stillness should have warned Bob.

“That sledge-hammer man? That weight-putter? That Olympian village blacksmith, I mean? The fellow with the open honest face?”

“I don’t believe I understand,” observed the young lady, straight and proud as a wonderful princess in the moonlight. Bob gazed at her in rapture. Talk about the shoulders of that girl who had given him the cold shoulder at the dinner-table!—Miss Gwendoline’s shoulders were a thousand times superior; they would cause any sculptor to rave. Their plastic beauty was that of the purest marble in that pure light. And that pure, perfect face, likewise bathed in the celestial flood of light—until now, never had he quite realized what he had lost, in losing her.

“But never mind about explaining,” went on the vision, apropos of Bob’s Olympian, village-blacksmith remark. “I didn’t come to discuss generalities.”

“Of course not,” assented Bob eagerly.

The music from the house now sounded suspiciously like a trot. Miss Gerald saw, though indistinctly, a face look out of the door. It might have been the little dark thing peering around for Bob, for she was quite capable of doing that. Bob didn’t notice her—if it were she. He had eyes for but one. He was worshiping in that distant, eager, hungry, lost-soul kind of a way. Miss Gerald’s glance returned to Bob.

“Will you be so good as to take a turn or two about the garden with me?” she said in a calm, if hard and matter-of-fact tone. A number of people were now approaching from the other end of the broad, partially-enclosed space and Miss Gerald had observed them.

“Will I?” Bob’s accents expressed more eloquently than words how he felt about complying with that request. Would a man dying of thirst drink a goblet of cool, sparkling spring-water? Would a miser refuse gold? Or a canine a bone? “Will I?” repeated Bob, ecstatically, and threw back his shoulders. Thus men go forth to conquer. He did not realize how unique he was at the moment, for he was quite swept away. The girl cast on him a quick enigmatic glance, then led the way.

Sometimes his eyes turned to the stars and sometimes toward her as they moved along. In the latter instance, they were almost proprietary, as if he knew she ought to belong to him, though she never would. The stars seemed to say she was made for him, the breeze to whisper it. Of course, he hadn’t really any right to act “proprietary”; it was taking a certain poetic license with the situation. Once Miss Gerald caught that proprietary look and into the still depths of her own gaze sprang an expression of wonder. But it didn’t linger; her eyes became once more coldly, proudly assured.

Bob didn’t ask whither she was leading him, or what fate had in store for him. Sufficient unto the present moment was the happiness thereof! A fool’s paradise is better than no paradise at all. He didn’t stop now to consider that he might be playing with verity when he hugged to his breast an illusory joy.

She didn’t talk at first, but he didn’t find anything to complain of in that. It was blissful enough just to swing along silently at her side. He didn’t have to bother about the truth-proposition when she didn’t say anything. He could yield to a quiet unadulterated joy in the stillness. If denied, temporarily, the music of her voice, he was, at least, privileged to visualize her, as she walked along the narrow path with the freedom and grace of a young goddess, or one of Diana’s lithe forest attendants. The vision, at length, stopped at the verge of a terrace where stood an Italian-looking little summer-house, or shelter. No one was in it, and she entered. They wouldn’t be disturbed here.

She leaned on a marble balustrade and for a moment looked down upon the shadowy tree-tops. The moonlight glinted a rounded white arm. Bob breathed deep. It was a spot for lovers. But there was still no love-light in Miss Gerald’s eyes. They met the gaze of Bob, who hadn’t yet come out of that paradoxical trance, with cold contemplation.

“Do you know what people are beginning to say about you, Mr. Bennett?” began the vision, with considerable decision in her tones.

“No,” said Bob.

“Some of them are wondering—well, if you are mentally quite all right.”

“Are they?” It was more the silvery sound of her voice than what people were saying that interested Bob.

“The judge and Mrs. Vanderpool have agreed that you aren’t. People are a little divided in the matter.”

“Indeed?” observed Bob. Of course if people were “divided,” that would make it more interesting for them. Give them something to talk about!

“The doctor agrees with the judge and Mrs. Vanderpool, but the bishop seems inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt,” went on Miss Gerald, her silvery tones as tranquil and cold as moonlight on the still surface of an inland sea. “He said something about inherited eccentricities, probably just beginning to crop out. Or suggested it might be—well, a pose.”

“Very nice of the bishop!” muttered Bob. “Benefit of the doubt? Quite so! Fine old chap!”

“Is that all you have to say?” said Miss Gerald, a faint note of scorn in her voice now. As she spoke she leaned slightly toward him. The moonlight touched the golden hair.

“Maybe he felt he had to differ,” remarked Bob, intent on the golden hair (it wasn’t golden out here, of course) and the stars beyond. “He might not really differ at heart, but he had to seem broad and charitable. Ecclesiastical obligation, or habit, don’t you see!”

“I don’t quite see,” said the girl, though her bright eyes looked capable of seeing a great deal.

“No?” murmured Bob. Some of that paradoxical happiness seemed to be fading from him. He couldn’t hold it; it seemed as elusive as moonshine. If only she would stand there silently and let him continue to worship her, like that devout lover in the song—in “distant reverence.” It wasn’t surely quite consistent for a goddess to be so practical and matter-of-fact.

“There are others who agree with the doctor and the judge and Mrs. Vanderpool,” continued the girl.

“You mean about my having a screw loose?”

“Exactly.” Crisply. “And some of them have consulted me.”

“And what did you say?” Quickly.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t enlighten them. I believe I suggested that sun theory—although it really wasn’t blistering hot to-day, and you,” with inimitable irony, “look capable of standing a little sunshine.”

“Yes, I feel as if I could stand a whole lot,” said Bob gloomily.

“Also I said,” unmindful of this last remark, “there is sometimes a method in eccentricity, or madness. Lord Stanfield agreed with me. He said he found you an ‘interesting young man.’”

“Did he? Confound his impudence!” That monocle-man certainly did ruffle Bob.

“You forget he’s an old friend of my aunt’s.” Severely. “As I was saying, Lord Stanfield found you ‘interesting,’ and we agreed there might be a method,” studying him closely, “but when we came to search for one, we couldn’t find it.”

She didn’t ask a question, so he didn’t have to reply.

“Mr. Bennett, why did you answer me like that down in the village?”

Bob hung his head. He felt worse than a boy detected stealing apples. “Had to,” he muttered desperately.

“Why?” There was no mercy in that still pitiless voice.

Bob took another long breath. “Please don’t ask me,” he pleaded after an ominous pause. That wasn’t not telling the truth; it was only temporizing.

The violet eyes gleamed dangerously. “I’m just a little bit curious,” said the girl in the same annihilating tone. “In the light of subsequent proceedings, you will understand! And as Mrs. Ralston’s niece! Aunt doesn’t quite realize things yet. The others have spared her feelings. I haven’t, of course, gone to her. Aunt and I never ‘talk over’ our guests.” Proudly.

That made Bob wince. He looked at her with quite helpless eyes. “Maybe she will order me off the premises before long,” he said eagerly. “I have already been considering the possibility of it. Believe me,” earnestly, “it would be the best way. Can’t you see I’m—dangerous—positively dangerous? I’m worse than a socialist—an anarchist! Why, a Russian nihilist couldn’t make half the trouble in the world that I can. I’m a regular walking disturber. Disaster follows in my path.” Bitterly. “Some people look upon me as worse than the black plague. Now if your aunt would only turn me out? You see I can’t go unless she does. Got to think of that even-tenor-of-my-way! But if she would only quietly intimate—or set the dog on me—”

The girl gazed at him more steadily. “I wonder if the judge and the doctor and Mrs. Vanderpool aren’t right, after all?” she observed slowly. “Let me look in your eyes, Mr. Bennett.” Bob did. Miss Gerald had heard that one could always tell crazy people by their eyes. She intended to sift this matter to the bottom and therefore proceeded with characteristic directness. Folk that were—well, “off,” she had been told, invariably showed that they were that, by a peculiar glitter.

Miss Gerald gazed a few moments critically, steadily and with unswerving intention. Bob withstood that look with mingled wretchedness and rapture. He began to forget that they were just the eyes of a would-be expert on a mental matter, and his own eyes, looking deeper and deeper in those wonderful violet depths (he stood so she got the benefit of the moonlight) began to gleam with that old, old gleam Miss Gerald could remember in the past. Bob had never talked love in those blissful days of yore, but he had looked it.

“I don’t see any signs of insanity,” said the girl at length with cold assurance. That gleam wasn’t a glitter. Nothing crazy about it! She had seen it too often in other men’s eyes, as well as in Bob’s—not perhaps to such a marked degree in other men’s eyes,-but sufficiently so that she was fairly familiar with it. “You look normal enough to me.”

“Thank you,” said Bob gratefully.

“And that’s just why”—a slight frown on the smooth fine brow—“I don’t understand. Of course, a man not normal, might have answered as you did me (I’m not thinking of it as a personal matter, you will understand).”

“Oh, I understand that,” returned Bob. “I’m just a problem, not a person.” She made him quite realize that. She made it perfectly and unmistakably apparent that he was, unto her, as some example in trigonometry, or geometry, or algebra, and she wanted to find the “solution.” He was an “X”—the unknown quantity. The expression on her patrician features was entirely scholastic and calculating. Bob now felt the ardor of his gaze becoming cold as moonlight. This wasn’t a lovers’ bower; it was only a palestra, or an observatory.

“You haven’t answered me yet,” she said.

No diverting her from her purpose! She was certainly persistent.

“You insist I shall tell you why I didn’t want to see you?”

She looked at him quickly. “That isn’t what I asked, Mr. Bennett. I asked you to explain that remark in the village.”

“Same thing!” he murmured. “And it’s rather hard to explain, but if I’ve got to—?” He looked at her. On her face was the look of proud unyielding insistence. “Of course, I’ve got to tell you the truth,” said Bob, and his tone now was dead and dull. “In the first place, dad’s busted, clean down and out, and—well, I thought I wouldn’t see you any more.”

“I fail to see the connection.” Her tones were as metallic as a voice like hers could make them.

“It’s like this!” said Bob, ruffling his hair. Here was a fine romantic way to make an avowal. “You see I was in love with you,” he observed, looking the other way and addressing one of the furthermost stars of the heaven. “And—and—when a fellow’s in love—and he can’t—ah!—well, you know—ask the girl—you understand?”

“Very vaguely,” said Miss Gerald. Bob’s explanation, so far, was one of those explanations that didn’t explain. If he had so heroically made up his mind not to see her, he could have stayed away, of course, from the Ralston house. He couldn’t explain how he was bound to accept the invitation to come, on account of being in “honor bound” to that confounded commodore, et al., to do so. There were bound to be loose ends to his explanation. Besides, those other awfully unpleasant things that had happened? He had to tell the truth, but he couldn’t tell why he was telling the truth. That had been the understanding.

Miss Gerald, at this point, began to display some of those alert and analytical qualities of mind that had made her father one of the great railroad men of his day. For an instant she had turned her head slightly at Bob’s avowal—who shall say why? It may be she had felt the blood rush swiftly to her face, but if so a moment later she looked at him with that same icy calm. One hand had tightened on the cold balustrade, but Bob hadn’t noticed that. She plied him now with a number of questions. She kept him on the gridiron and while he wriggled and twisted she stirred up the coals, displaying all the ability of an expert stoker. He was supersensitive about seeing her and yet as a free agent (she thought him that) he had seen her. From her point of view, his mental processes were hopelessly illogical—worse than that. Yet she knew he was possessed of a tolerable mentality and a good-enough judgment for one who had in his composition a slight touch of recklessness.

“I give it up,” she said at length wearily.

“Do you? Oh, thank you!” exclaimed Bob gratefully. “And if your aunt orders me from the place—”

“But why can’t you just go, if you want to? I’m sure no one will detain you.” Haughtily.

“Can’t explain, only it’s impossible. Like Prometheus bound to the rock for vultures to peck at, unless—”

“How intelligible! And what a happy simile—under the circumstances!” with far-reaching scorn. “What if I should tell my aunt that her guest compared himself to—?”

“That’s the idea!” returned Bob enthusiastically. “Tell her that! Then, by jove, she would—Promise me! Please!”

“Of course,” said the girl slowly, “my diagnosis must be wrong.” Or perhaps she meant that she had lost faith in that glitter-theory.

“If you only could understand!” burst from Bob explosively. It was nature calling out, protesting against such a weight of anguish.

But Miss Gerald did not respond. A statue could not have appeared more unaffected and unsympathetic. She had half turned as if to go; then she changed her mind and lingered. It annoyed her to feel she had been baffled, for she was a young woman who liked to drive right to the heart of things. Her father had been called a “czar” in his world, and she had inherited, with other of his traits, certain imperious qualities. So for a moment or two she stood thinking.

An automobile from the village went by them and proceeded to the house. It contained Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence returning from the telegraph office, but Bob hardly saw it, or was aware who were its occupants. Miss Gerald absorbed him to the exclusion of all else now. He had no mind for other storms that might be gathering. Suddenly the girl turned on him with abrupt swiftness.

CHAPTER VIII—NEW COMPLICATIONS

“Is your father’s embarrassment serious?” she asked.

Bob looked startled. He didn’t like the way she had shifted the conversation. “Pretty bad,” he answered.

“I believe, though, it’s customary for men on the ‘street’ not to stay ‘downed,’ as they say?”

“Don’t know as it’s an invariable rule,” returned Bob evasively. Then realizing it wouldn’t do to be evasive: “As a matter of fact, I don’t believe I’m very well posted as to that,” he added.

“What does your father say?” she asked abruptly.

Bob would much rather not have talked about that with her. But—“Dad says there is no hope,” he had to say.

Miss Gerald was silent for a moment. As a child she remembered a very gloomy period in her own father’s career—when the “street” had him “cornered.” She remembered the funereal atmosphere of the big old house—the depression on nearly every one’s face—how everything had seemed permeated with impending tragedy. She remembered how her father looked at her, a great gloomy ghost of himself with somber burning eyes. She remembered how seared and seamed his strong and massive face had become in but a few days. But that was long ago and he had long since left her for good. The vivid impression, however, of that gloomy period during her childhood remained with her. It had always haunted her, though her father had not been “downed” in the end. He had emerged from the storm stronger than ever.

The girl shot a sidewise look at Bob, standing now with his arms folded like Hamlet. Perhaps he had come from such a funereal house as she, herself, so well remembered? Had dad’s trouble, or tragedy, weighed on him unduly? Had it made him—for the moment—just slightly irresponsible? Miss Gerald, as has been intimated, had frankly liked Bob as an outdoor companion, or an indoor one, too, sometimes, for that matter. He was one of the few men, for example, she would “trot” with. He could “trot” in an eminently respectful manner, being possessed of an innate refinement, or chivalry, which certainly seemed good to her, after some of those other wild Terpsichorean performances of myriad masculine manikins in the mad world of Milliondom.

“I suppose your father has taken his trouble much to heart?” Miss Gerald now observed.

“Not a bit.”

“No?” In surprise.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Said he looked to me to keep him in affluence the rest of his days.”

“To you?”

“That’s right.”

“But how?—What are you going to do?”

“Hustle.”

“At what?”

“Don’t know. Got to find out.”

“What did you plan doing, when at college?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it”—Miss Gerald got back to where she had been before—“the sense of awful responsibility,” with slight sarcasm, “that has turned your brain?”

“I’m not crazy.”

“No?” She remembered that most people in asylums say that.

“Though I may be in a matter of three weeks,” Bob added, more to himself than to her.

“Why three weeks?”

“Well, if I don’t—just shouldn’t happen to go crazy during that time, I’ll be all right, after that.”

“Why do you allow a specified period for your mental deterioration?”

“I didn’t allow it.”

“Who did?”

“Can’t tell you.”

Miss Gerald pondered on this answer. It would seem as if Bob had “hallucinations,” if nothing worse. He was possessed of the idea, no doubt, that he would go crazy within three weeks. He didn’t realize that the “deterioration,” she referred to, might have already begun. He looked normal enough, though, had the most normal-looking eyes. Could it be that he was acting? And if he was acting, why was he? That seemed incomprehensible. Anyhow, it couldn’t be a sense of responsibility that had “upset” Bob. She became sure of that now. He played a losing game with too much dash and brilliancy! Hadn’t she seen him at polo—hadn’t she held her breath and thrilled when he had “sailed in” and with irresistible vim snatched victory out of defeat? No; Bob wasn’t a “quitter.”

“So your father looks to you to support him?”

“So he said. The governor’s a bit of a joker though, you know. He may be only putting up a bluff to try me out.”

“What did he advise you to do?”

Bob shivered. “Matrimonial market.”

“You mean—?”

“Heiress.” Succinctly.

“Any particular one?”

“Dad did mention a name.”

“Not—?” She looked at him.

“Yes.”

An awful pause.

“Now you know why I didn’t want to see you,” said Bob, in that even fatalistic voice. “First place, I wouldn’t ask you to marry me, if you were the last girl in the world! Second place, I was afraid if I saw you, some of these things dad said to try me, would be bound to pop out. You mustn’t think badly of dad, Miss Gerald. As I’ve said, he didn’t mean a word of it. He was only sizing me up. Don’t I know that twinkle in his eye? Just wanted to see if I’m as lazy and good-for-nothing as some chaps brought up with the silver spoon. Why, he’d—honestly, dad would just kick me, if I took his advice. Why, if I went back home to-morrow,” went on Bob, warming to the subject, “and told him we were engaged”—the girl moved slightly—“and were going to be married right off”—the girl moved again—“why—why, old as I am, dad would take off his coat and give me a good trouncing. That’s the kind of a man dad is. I see it all now.”

He really believed he did—and for the first time. He felt he had solved the mystery of dad’s manner and conduct. It had been a mystery, but the solution had come to him like an inspiration. Dad wanted to see whether he would arise to the occasion. He had told him he didn’t believe he was worth his salt just to see his backbone stiffen. He had alluded to that other way of repairing the “busted family credit” just to observe the effect on Bob. And how dad must have chuckled inwardly at Bob’s response! Why, they’d almost had a scene, he and good old dad. Bob could smile at it now—if he could smile at anything. He certainly had been a numskull. Dad, pulling in fish somewhere, was probably still chuckling to himself, and wondering how Bob would work out the problem.

“Dad was always just like that when I was a boy,” he confided to Miss Gerald, now standing more than ever like a marble lady in the moonlight. “He would propose the contrariest things! Always trying and testing me. Guess that’s why he acted so happy when he went broke. Thought it would make a man of me! By jove, that’s it! Why, he was as care-free as a boy with a new top!”

“Was he, indeed?” said Miss Gerald, studying Mr. Robert Bennett with eyes that looked very deep now, beneath the imperious brows. “How nice!” Oh, that tone was distant. It might have been wafted from one who stood on an iceberg.

“Isn’t it?” Bob heaved a sigh. “I’m not afraid of you any more,” he said, “now that I’ve got that off my chest.”

Again Miss Gerald shivered slightly, but whether at the slang or not, was not apparent.

“You can’t frighten me any more,” said Bob.

“But why,” said Miss Gerald, “did you tell me, at all, of dad’s—as you call him—charming suggestion?”

“Had to. Didn’t you ask me?” In faint surprise. Then he remembered she didn’t know he had to tell the truth. That made him look rather foolish—or “imbecile,” in the light of all those other proceedings. Miss Gerald’s brow contracted once more. Again she might be asking herself if Master Robert was acting? Was this but gigantic, bombastic, Quixotic “posing” after all? It was too extraordinary to speak of such things as he had spoken of, to her! Did he only want to appear different? Did he seek to combine Apollo with Bernard Shaw in his attitude toward society? Or had he been reading Chesterton and was he but striving to present in his own personality a futurist’s effect of upside-downness? Miss Gerald felt now the way she had at the modernists’ exhibition, when she had gazed and gazed at what was apparently a load of wood falling down-stairs, and some one had told her to find the lady. It was about as difficult to-night to find the real Mr. Bennett—the happy-go-lucky Bob Bennett of last month or last week—as it had been to find that lady where appeared only chaotic kindling wood.

Miss Gerald let the cool air fan her brow for a few moments. This young man was, at least, exhilarating. She felt a little dizzy. Meanwhile Bob looked at her with that sad silly smile.

“You can’t ask me any questions that will disconcert me now,” he boasted.

Miss Gerald looked at him squarely. “Will you marry me?” she said.

It was a coup. Her father had been capable of just such coups as that. He would hit the enemy in the most unexpected manner in the most unexpected quarter, and thus overwhelm his foes. Miss Gerald might not mean it; she, most likely, only said it. Under the circumstances, to get at the truth herself, she was justified in saying almost anything. If he were but posing, she would prick the bubble of his pretense. If those grandiloquent, and, to her, totally unnecessary protestations didn’t mean anything, she wished to know it. He would never, never marry her,—wouldn’t he? Or, possibly, her question was but part of a plan, or general campaign, on her part, to test his sanity? Six persons—real competents, too!—had affirmed that he wasn’t “just right.” Be that as it may, Miss Gerald dropped this bomb in Master Bob’s camp and waited the effect with mien serene.

Her query worked the expected havoc, all right. Bob’s jaw fell. Then his eyes began to flash with a new fierce love-light. He couldn’t help it. Marry her?—Great Scott!—She, asking him, if he would? He felt his pulses beating faster and the blood pumping in his veins. His arms went out—very eager, strong, primitive arms they looked—that cave-man kind! Arms that seize resistless maidens and enfold them, willy-nilly! Miss Gerald really should have felt much alarmed, especially as there was so much doubt as to Bob’s sanity. It’s bad enough to be alone with an ordinary crazy man, but a crazy man who is in love with one? That is calculated to be a rather unusual and thrilling experience.

However, though Miss Gerald may have entertained a few secret fears and possible regrets for her own somewhat mad precipitancy, she managed to maintain a fair semblance of composure. She had the courage to “stand by” the coup. She was like a tall lily that seems to hold itself unafraid before the breaking of the tempest. She did not even draw back, though she threw her head back slightly. And in her eyes was a challenge. Not a love challenge, though Bob could not discern that! His own gaze was too blurred.

Miss Gerald suddenly drew in her breath quickly, as one who felt she would need her courage now. Almost had Bob, in that moment of forgetfulness, drawn her into his arms and so completed the paradoxical picture of himself, when the impulse was abruptly arrested. He seemed suddenly to awaken to a saner comprehension of the requirements of the moment. His arms fell to his side.

“That’s a joke, of course,” he said hoarsely.

“And if it wasn’t?” she challenged him. There was mockery now in her eyes, and her figure had relaxed.

“You affirm it isn’t?”

“I said if it wasn’t?”

“I guess you win,” said Bob wearily. These extremes of emotion were wearing on the system.

“You mean you wouldn’t, even if I had really, actually—?”

“I mean you certainly do know how to ‘even up’ with a chap. When he doesn’t dare dream of heaven, you suddenly pretend to fling open the golden gates and invite him to enter.”

“Like St. Peter,” said the girl.

“Ah, you are laughing,” said Bob bitterly, and dropped his head. Her assurance was regal. “As if it wasn’t hard enough, anyway, to get you out of my darn-fool head,” he murmured reproachfully.

“Then you reject me?” said the girl, moving toward the entrance. “Good! I mean, bad! So humiliating to have been rejected! Good night, Mr. Bennett. No—it isn’t necessary for you to accompany me to the house. I really couldn’t think of troubling you after your unkind refusal to—”

Bob groaned. “I say, there is always your aunt, you know, who can ask me to vacate the—” he called out.

“I’ll think about it,” said the lady. A faint perfume was wafted past him and the vision vanished. Bob sank down on the cold marble seat.

He remained thus for some time, oblivious to the world, when another car, en route from the village to the house, purred past him, spitting viciously, however, between purrs. Bob didn’t even look around. Spit!—spit!—purr!—purr!—Its two lights were like the eyes of some monster pussy-cat, on the war-path for trouble. Spit!—it seemed in a horribly vicious mood. More “spits” than “purrs,” now! Then the car stopped, though it was some distance from the house.

“Curse this old rattletrap!” said a man’s voice.

“Oh, I guess no one’ll pay any attention to it,” spoke another occupant. “Besides, it was the only one to be had at the station, and we had to get here quick.”

“You bet! The quicker, the better,” observed a third man.

They all got out, not far from where Bob sat in the dark gazing into a void, but he did not notice. Cars might come, and cars might go, for all of him. He was dimly aware of the sound of voices but he had no interest in guests, newly-arrived or otherwise. One of the trio paid the driver of the car and it purred back, somewhat less viciously, from whence it came.

“Better separate when we get near the house and approach it carefully,” said the first speaker in low tense tones. “We’ve got to get hold of him without anybody knowing it.”

“That’s right. Wouldn’t do to let them”—with significant accent—“know what we’ve come for,” said the second man. The trio were quite out of ear-shot of Bob, by now.

“Hope it’ll turn out all right,” spoke the third anxiously. “Why, in heaven’s name, didn’t we think of this in the first place?”

“Can’t think of every contingency!” answered the first speaker viciously. “Our plan now is to get hold of one of the servants. A nice fat tip, and then—Come on! No time to waste!”

As they made their way up the driveway to the house Bob looked drearily around. His eyes noted and mechanically followed the trio of dark forms. He saw them stop near the house; then he observed one approach a side window and peer in. A moment later another approached another window and peered in.

“That’s funny!” thought Bob, without any particular emotion. At the same time, he recalled that a band of burglars had been going about, looting country-houses. Perhaps these fellows were after a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewels? There might be half a million dollars’ worth of jewelry sprinkled about among Mrs. Ralston’s guests. But what did it matter? The presence of these intruders seemed too trifling a matter to think about now, and Bob sank into another reverie.

How long he remained thus, he did not know. The laughter and talk of a number of guests, coming out the front way (end of a “trot,” probably) aroused him and Bob got up.

As he did so, he fancied he saw again the three men he had noticed, then forgotten, slip around toward the back of the house. Throughout the gardens, the moonlight made clear spots on the ground where the bright rays sifted through the foliage or shone down between the trees, and they had to skip across one of these bright places to get around somewhere behind the big mansion. Undoubtedly, the appearance from the house of the guests who wanted to cool off had startled the intruders and inspired a desire to make themselves less conspicuous for the time being. Bob entertained a vague impression that the conduct of the trio was rather crude and amateurish, though that didn’t worry him. He didn’t care whether they were full-fledged yeggmen of the smoothest class, or only bungling artists, a discredit to their profession. He dismissed consideration of them as quickly again as he had done before.

A yawn escaped his lips, and it rather surprised him that a broken-hearted man could yawn. He looked at his watch, holding it in the moonlight, and saw that it was late enough now so that he could retire if he wished, without violating, to any great degree, that even-tenor-of-his-way clause. Accordingly Bob got up and walked toward the house. A side door was open and he went in that way and up to his room. He was glad he didn’t encounter any one—that is, any one he had to speak to. The monocle-man drifted by him somewhere, but Bob didn’t have to pay much attention to him. He could imagine the superior way in which the Britisher had informed Miss Gerald that he found him (Bob) an “interesting young man.” The monocle-man and the bishop seemed to agree on that point.

Undressing hastily, Bob flung himself into bed. He had gone through so much he was tired and scarcely had he touched the sheets when the welcoming arms of Morpheus claimed him. His sleep was sound—very sound! In fact, it was so sound that something occurred and he didn’t know it. It occurred again—several times—and still he did not know it. Another interval!—a long one! Bob yet slept the sleep of the overwrought. His fagged brain was trying to readjust itself. He could have slept right through to the dawn, but this was not to be. Long before the glowing god made its appearance in the east, Bob was rudely yanked from the arms of Morpheus.

CHAPTER IX—ANOTHER SURPRISE

Three men were in his room and Bob found himself sitting up in bed and blinking at them. The lights they had turned on seemed rather bright.

“Hello!” said Bob.

“Hello yourself!” said the commodore in a low but nasty manner. “And not so loud!”

“Some sleeper, you are!” spoke Dickie in a savage whisper.

“Believe he heard, all right!” came Clarence’s hushed, unamiable tones. “Perverse beast, and pretended not to!”

Bob hugged his knees with his arms. “You’ve torn your pants,” he observed to the commodore.

“Never you mind that” as guardedly, though no more pleasantly than before.

“Oh, all right,” said Bob meekly. He didn’t ask any questions, nor did he exhibit any curiosity. There couldn’t anything happen now that would make matters much worse. But in that, he was “reckoning without his host.”

“Got in the window, of course,” he observed in a low unconcerned tone, as if their coming and being there after midnight was the most natural occurrence in the world. “Not so hard to get in, with that balcony out there. All you had to do was to ‘shin up’ and then there’s that trellis to help. Good strong trellis, too. Regular Jacob’s ladder! Easiest thing for burglars! Thought you were burglars,” he added contemplatively.

“You mean you saw us?” snapped the commodore, almost forgetting his caution. His expression matched his tone. He was no longer the jovial sailorman; he wore now a regular Dick Deadeye look. To Bob’s comprehensive glance he appeared like a fragment in a revival of Pinafore.

“Oh, I didn’t know it was you,” said Bob.

“Where were you?”

“Summer-house.”

“Think of that,” murmured the commodore, disgustedly. “Bird at hand, and we didn’t know it. Fool of a bird had to hop away and make us all this trouble!”

“I told you I thought you were burglars,” observed Bob patiently. He didn’t care how they abused him or what names they called him.

That disagreeable look on Dan’s face was replaced by a startled one. “Good gracious, man”—only that wasn’t the expression he used—“I hope you haven’t told any one you saw burglars prowling around? Nice for us if you did!” As he spoke he gazed anxiously toward the window, before which they had taken the precaution to draw a heavy drape after entering.

“No, I didn’t tell a soul.”

“But—I don’t understand why you didn’t when you thought—?”

“I ought to have spoken, I suppose,” said Bob with a melancholy smile. “But it didn’t seem very important and—I guess I forgot. These little jewel robberies are getting to be such commonplace occurrences!”

The commodore stared at him. Then he touched his forehead. “A lot of trouble you’ve made for us,” he said, speaking in that low tense voice, while Clarence and Dickie looked on in mad and reproachful fashion. “Bribed a servant to tell you to slip out! Told him to whisper that we were waiting in the garden and simply had to see you at once! Didn’t you hear him rap on your door?”

“No,” answered Bob sorrowfully.

“Heavens, man! believe you’d sleep through an earthquake and cyclone combined! Servant came back and told us he’d tapped on your door as loudly as he dared. Was afraid he’d arouse the whole house if he knocked louder. When you leave a ‘call’ at the hotels, how do they manage? Break down the door with an ax?”

Bob overlooked the sarcasm. The commodore might have thumped him with an ax, at the moment, and he wouldn’t have protested very hard. He murmured a contrite apology.

“Get my telegram?” said the commodore.

“Yes. What could you have been thinking about when you sent it? How could I leave when I had to stay? Thought you must have been sailing pretty close in the wind at the yacht club, when you dashed it off! Could just feel your main-sail fluttering.”

The commodore swore softly but effectively. Clarence and Dickie murmured something, too. Bob hugged his knees closer. Being so unhappy himself, he couldn’t but feel a dull sympathy when he saw any one else put out.

“See here,” said the commodore, “what’s the situation? We never dreamed, of course, that you would come here. Have you been talking with Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence? Dickie’s been conjuring all kinds of awful things you might have told them, if they cornered you and you got that truth-telling stunt going. Dickie’s got an imagination. Too confounded much imagination!” Here the commodore wiped his brow. That was quite a bad tear in his pants but he appeared oblivious to it. “Maybe you would have thought it a capital way to turn the tables on us poor chaps?” he went on, stabbing Bob with a baleful look. “Perhaps you came here on purpose?”

“No,” said Bob, “I couldn’t have done that, of course, owing to the conditions.” And he related what had happened to bring him there.

Dan groaned. “Why, it was we, ourselves, who steered him right up against her at the Waldorf. It was we who got him asked down here. I suppose you’ve been chuckling ever since you came?” Turning on Bob, with a correct imitation of Mr. Deadeye, at his grouchiest moment.

“No,” said Bob, speaking to immeasurable distance, “I haven’t done any chuckling since I came here. Nary a chuckle!”

“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” interrupted Dickie, “and learn if our worst apprehensions are realized. There’s a girl down here I think a lot of and I’d like to know if, by any chance, any conversation you may have had with her turned on me. I allude to Miss Dolly—”

“Hold on,” said the commodore. “That’s not very important. Suppose she should have found out a few things about you? You aren’t married. It’s different in the case of married men, like Clarence and me here. We’ll dismiss Miss Dolly, if you please, for the present—”

“I really haven’t said anything to Miss Dolly about you,” said Bob to Dickie. “Your name hasn’t been mentioned between us.” He was glad he could reassure one of them, at least. He wouldn’t have had Dickie so sorrowful as himself for the world.

That young man looked immensely relieved. It may be he experienced new hope of leading the temperamental young thing to the altar, and incidentally consummating a consolidation of competing chimneys, conveniently contiguous. “Thanks, old chap,” he said, and shook Bob’s hand heartily.

“But what about us?” whispered the commodore sibilantly. “Have you talked with Mrs. Clarence or Mrs. Dan to any great extent?”

“I haven’t had hardly a word with Mrs. Clarence,” answered Bob, whereupon Clarence began to “throw out his chest,” the way Dickie had done.

The commodore shifted uneasily, seeming to find difficulty in continuing the conversation. He moved back and forth once or twice, but realizing he was making a slight noise, stood still again, and looked down at Bob.

“Talk much with Mrs. Dan?” he at length asked nervously.

“I did have a little conversation with Mrs. Dan,” Bob was forced to reply. “Or, I should say, to be strictly truthful, rather a long conversation. You see, I took her in to dinner.”

The commodore showed signs of weakness. He seemed to have very indecisive legs all of a sudden. “Talk about me?” he managed to ejaculate.

“Some. I’m not certain just how much.”

“What—what was said?”

“I can’t remember all. It’s very confused. I’ve had a lot of conversations, you see, and most of them awfully unpleasant. I remember, though, that Mrs. Dan impressed me as a very broad-minded lady. Said she had lived in Paris, and was not a bit jealous.”

“What!” Dan was breathing hard.

“Said she always wanted you to have the best kind of a time.”

“Did she say that?” asked the commodore. “And you believed it? Go on.” In a choked voice. “Did you tell her about that cabaret evening?”

“I believe it was mentioned, incidentally.”

“Say I was there?” put in Clarence quickly. He was losing that “chestiness.”

“I rather think I did. I—what is that?” Bob looked toward the window. There was a sound below at the foot of the balcony. Some one turned out the light in the room and Bob strode to the window and looked out. “It’s a dog,” he said. “He’s snuffing around at the foot.”

“He’s doing more than snuffing,” observed the commodore apprehensively, as at that moment a bark smote the air. They stood motionless and silent. The dog stopped barking, but went on snuffing. Maybe it would go away after a moment, and they waited. Dickie and the commodore had thrashed out that question of dogs. With so many guests around, they had figured that, of course, they would be dog-safe. Didn’t they look like guests? How could a dog tell the difference between them and a guest? It is true, they hadn’t been expecting so much trouble as they had been put to, to find Bob. They had, in that little balcony-climbing feat, rather exceeded what they had expected to be called on to do. In their impatience, they had acted somewhat impetuously, but it had looked just as easy, after the servant had pointed out the room and told them Bob was in, as certain sounds from his bed indubitably indicated.

They couldn’t very well enter the house as self-invited guests, though they, of course, would have been made welcome. They couldn’t very well say they had all changed their minds about those original invitations which had naturally included husbands as well as wives. After all three had declined to come on account of business, it would certainly look like collusion, if all three found they hadn’t had urgent business, at all, in town. If anything untoward or disastrous had happened in the conversational line, with Bob as the Demon God, Truth, their sudden entrance upon the stage of festivities, would seem to partake of inner perturbation; it might even appear to be a united and concentrated case of triple guilty conscience. This, obviously, must be avoided at any cost. How they had heard Bob was here at the Ralston house, matters not. Naturally they had kept tab on his movements, where he went and what he did being of some moment to them.

The dog barked again. Thereupon, a window opened and they knew that some one had been aroused.

“He’s looking out. It’s the monocle-chap,” whispered Bob.

“Who’s he?”

“One of Mrs. Ralston’s importations. Belonged to that Anglo-English colony when she did that little emigration act in dear old London.”

“Hang it, we’ve got to get out,” whispered the commodore nervously. No matter what had been said; no matter what the Demon God of Truth had done, it was incumbent on them not to remain longer, with that dog looking up toward Bob’s window and making that spasmodic racket. Some one might get up and go out and see footprints, or a disturbed trellis. The commodore forgot a certain desperate business proposition, apropos of that confounded wager, he had come to put to Bob. That infernal dog got on his nerves and put that other matter, which would settle this truth-telling stunt at once, right out of his mind.

It was all very well, however, to say they “had to get out,” but it was another matter to tell how they were going to do it. They couldn’t descend the way they had come, and meet doggie. Bob arose to the occasion.

“I can let you into the hall and show you downstairs, to that side door on the other side of the house. You can take one of my golf sticks, just as a safeguard, but I think you’ll be able to circumvent the jolly little barker without being obliged to use it.”

“What kind of a dog is it?” whispered the commodore who had a pronounced aversion to canines.

“Looked like a smallish dog. Might be a bull.”

“Better give us each a club,” suggested Clarence in a weak voice.

Which Bob did. The dog renewed the vocal performance, and— “Hurry,” whispered the commodore. “Find means to communicate with you to-morrow, Mr. Bennett.” Bob didn’t resent the formality of this designation, which implied to what depths he had fallen in good old Dan’s estimation. “Can we get down-stairs without any one hearing us?”

Bob thought they could. Anyhow, they would have to try, so he opened the door softly and led the way. Fortunately, the house was solidly built and not creaky. They attained down-stairs safely, and at last reached the side door without causing any disturbance. Bob unfastened the door, the key turned noiselessly and they looked out. There was no sign of any living thing on lawn or garden on this side of the house.

“Out you go quickly,” murmured Bob, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder. His position was not a particularly agreeable one. Suppose one of the servants, on an investigating tour as to the cause of doggie’s perturbation, should chance upon him (Bob) showing three men out of the house in that secret manner at this time of night?

But before disappearing into the night, the commodore took time to whisper: “Was Gee-gee’s name mentioned?”

“I fear so,” said Bob sadly.

The commodore wasted another second or two to tell Bob fiercely what he thought of him and how they would “fix” him on the morrow, after which he sprang out and darted away like a rabbit.

Bob wanted to call out that they were welcome to “fix” him, but he was afraid that others beside Dan might hear him, so he closed and locked the door carefully and stood there alone in the great hall, in his dressing-gown. Then he sat down in a dark corner and listened. Better wait until all was quiet, he told himself, before retracing his steps to his room. The dog seemed to have stopped barking altogether now and soon any persons it might have awakened would be asleep again. His trio of visitors must be well on their way to the village by this time, he thought. He was sorry the commodore seemed to feel so bad. And Clarence?—poor Clarence! That last look of his haunted Bob. Anyhow, he was pleased Dickie had, so far, escaped his (Bob’s) devastating touch.

How long he sat there he did not know. Probably only a few moments. A big clock ticked near by, which was the only sound now to be heard. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had better return to his room, and wearily he arose. Up-stairs it seemed darker than it had been when he had left his room. He had the dim lights in the great hall below to guide him then. Now it was a little more difficult. However, after traversing without mishap a few gloomy corridors—he realized what a big house it really was—he reached, at last, his room near the end of one of the upper halls and entered.

He had a vague idea he had left his door partly ajar, but he wasn’t sure; probably he hadn’t, for it was now closed; or maybe a draft of air had closed it. Groping his way in the dark for his bed, he ran against a chair. This ruffled his temper somewhat as the sharp edge had come in contact with that sensitive part of the anatomy, known as the shin-bone. He felt for his bed, but it wasn’t there where it ought to be. He must have got turned around coming in. His fingers ran over a dresser. Some of the articles on it seemed strange to him. He thought he heard a rustle and stood still, with senses alert, experiencing a regular burglar-feeling at the moment. He hadn’t become so ossified to emotion as he had supposed. But everything was now as silent as the grave. Again his hand swept out, to learn where he was, and again his fingers swept over the dresser. What were all those confounded things? He didn’t know he had left so much loose junk lying around. And where was that confounded switch-button?

At that moment some one else found it, for the room became suddenly flooded with light. Bob started back, and as he did so, something fell from the dresser to the floor. He stared toward the bed in amazement and horror. Some one, with the clothes drawn up about her, was sitting up. Bob wasn’t the only one who had a surprise that night. The temperamental, little dark thing was treated to one, too. Above the white counterpane, she stared at Bob.

CHAPTER X—INTO BONDAGE

She continued to stare for some moments, while he stood frozen to the spot. Then the young lady’s face changed. Fear, startled wonder, gave way to an expression of growing comprehension and into her eyes came such an excited look.

“You!” said Miss Dolly in a thrilling whisper. And then—“Pick it up, please.”

Instead of picking anything up—he didn’t know what—Bob was about to rush for the door, when— “Stop! Or I’ll scream,” exclaimed Miss Dolly. “I’ll scream so loud I’ll wake every one in the house.”

Bob stopped. In his eyes was an agony of contrition and shame. Miss Dolly, however, seemed quite self-possessed. She might have been frightened at first, but she was no longer that. Her temperamental, somewhat childish face wore a thrill of pleasurable anticipation. “Now pick it up,” she repeated.

“What?” stammered Bob in a shrinking voice.

“The brooch, to be sure. Didn’t you drop it?”

“I?” said Bob, drawing his dressing-gown closer about him. They were speaking in stage whispers.

“Of course. Wasn’t it what you came for?”

“Came for? Great heavens!—Do you think?—”

“Think?” said Miss Dolly. “I know.”

Bob looked at her. Her face appeared elf-like, uncannily wise. But for all her outward calm, her eyes were great big, excited eyes. His horrified glance turned quickly from them to regard a gleaming diamond and pearl brooch on the rug. “Jumping Je-hoshaphat! You don’t think I’m—”

“One of those thrilling society-highwaymen, or social buccaneers?” said Miss Dolly. “Of course, and I’m so glad it happened like this. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Really, I’ve always wanted to meet one of those popular heroes. And now to think my dream has come true! It’s just like a play, isn’t it?”

“It is not,” replied Bob savagely. This was too much. It was just about the last straw. “I—” Then he stopped. Suppose any one should hear him? Miss Dolly’s temperamental and comprehensive eyes read his thought.

“I don’t think there’s any danger,” she purred soothingly. “You see there’s a bathroom on one side of the room and a brick wall on the other. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the rooms are separated by brick partitions,” she confided to him. “Mrs. Ralston likes everything perfect—sound-proof, fire-proof, and all that.”

“See here,” said Bob. “I was just wandering around—couldn’t sleep—and—and I came in here, quite by mistake. Thought it was my own room!” With some vehemence.

Miss Dolly shook her head reprovingly, and her temperamental hair flowed all about her over the white counterpane. She knew it must look very becoming, it was such wonderful hair—that is, for dark hair. Bob preferred light. Not that he was thinking of hair, now! “Can’t you do better than that?” asked the temperamental young thing.

“Better than what?” queried Bob ill-naturedly. He was beginning to feel real snappy.

“Invent a better whopper, I mean?”

“It isn’t a whopper, and—and I positively refuse to stay here any longer. Positively!”

“Oh, no; not positively,” said Miss Dolly, nodding a wise young head. “You’re going to stay, unless—you know the alternative. Since I’m destined to be a heroine, I want a regular play-scene. I don’t want my part cut down to nothing. Don’t you love thief-plays, Mr. Bennett? It’s such fun to see people running around, not knowing who is the thief. I’m sure I feel quite privileged, in this instance.”

Bob growled beneath his breath. He was handsome enough certainly for a matinee hero. He was tall and lithe and had such clean-cut features. The temperamental young thing regarded him with thrilling approval. He entirely realized her ideal of a social burglar. It seemed almost too good to be true.

“I knew you were different from other men,” she said. “Something told me from the very first; perhaps it was the way you tangoed. I expected you would ask me to trot, but you didn’t.” Reprovingly. “Suppose you were otherwise engaged?” Glancing toward the brooch.

“Not the way you think!” said Bob gloomily, looking more striking than ever in that melancholy pose. It seemed to harmonize with a crime-stained career.

“Of course,” murmured Dolly, “it was you who got Mrs. Templeton Blenfield’s wonderful emeralds?”

“It was not,” answered Bob curtly.

“You were at that costume ball where she lost them?”

“Suppose I was?” he snapped. Yes, snapped! There is a limit to human endurance.

“And you were at Mrs. Benton Briscoe’s when a tiara mysteriously disappeared?”

“Well, I’m hanged!” said Bob, staring at her.

“Oh, I hope not—that is, I hope you won’t be, some day,” answered Dolly. “Are you going to ‘fess up?’ You’d better. Maybe I won’t betray you—yet. Maybe I won’t at all, if you’re real nice.”

“Oh!” said Bob. Whereupon she smiled at him sweetly, just as if to say it was nice and exciting to have a great, big, bold (and wildly handsome) society-highwayman in her power. Why, she could send him to jail, if she wanted to. She had but to lift a little finger and he would have to jump. The consciousness of guilty knowledge and power she possessed made her glow all over. She didn’t really know though, yet, whether she would be kind or severe.

“Do you operate alone, or with accomplices?” she asked, after a few moments’ pleasurable anticipations.

“I beg pardon?” Bob was again gazing uneasily toward the door.

“Got any pals?” She tried to talk the way they do in the thief-books.

“No, I haven’t,” snapped Bob. That truth pact made it necessary to answer the most silly questions.

“Well, I didn’t know but you had,” murmured the temperamental young thing. “I heard a dog barking and that made me think you might have them. You’re sure you didn’t let anybody into the house?”

“I didn’t.”

Miss Dolly snuggled herself together more cozily. She seemed about to ask some more questions. Perhaps she would want to know if he had let anybody out, and then he would have to tell her—

“Look here,” said Bob desperately. “Maybe it hasn’t occurred to you, but—this—this isn’t exactly proper. Me here, like this, and you—”

“Oh, I’m not afraid,” answered Miss Dolly with wonderful assurance. “I can quite take care of myself.”

“But—but—” more desperately—“if I should be discovered?—Can’t you see, for your own sake—?”

“My own sake?” The big innocent eyes opened wider. “In that case, of course, I’d tell them the truth.”

“The truth!” How he hated the word! “You mean that I—?” Glancing toward the brooch.

“Of course!” Tranquilly.

Bob tried to consider. He could see what would happen to him, if they were interrupted. It certainly was a most preposterous conversation, anyhow. Besides, it wasn’t the place or the time for a conversation of any kind. He had just about made up his mind that he would go, whether she screamed or not, and take the consequences, however disagreeable they might be, when—

“Well, trot along,” said Miss Dolly graciously. “I suppose you’ve got a lot of work to do to-night and it’s rather unkind to detain you. Only pick up the brooch before you go.” He obeyed. “Now put it on the dresser and leave it there. Hard to do that, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t.” Savagely.

“Well, you can go now. By the way, Mrs. Vanderpool has a big bronze-colored diamond surrounded by wonderful pink pearls. It’s an antique and—would adorn a connoisseur’s collection.”

“But I tell you I am not—”

“My! How stupid, to keep on saying that! But, of course, you must really be very clever. Society-highwaymen always are. Good night. So glad I was thinking of something else and forgot to lock the door!”

Bob went to the door and she considerately waited until he had reached it; then she put out a hand and pushed a convenient button which shut off the light. Bob opened the door but closed it quickly again. He fancied he saw some one out there in the hall, a shadowy form in the distance, but was not absolutely sure.

“Aren’t you gone?” said the temperamental young thing.

“S-sh!” said Bob.

For some moments there was silence, thrilling enough, even for her. Then Bob gently opened the door once more, though very slightly, and peered out of the tiniest crack, but he failed to see any one now, so concluded he must have been mistaken. The shadows were most deceptive. Anyhow, there was more danger in staying than in going, so he slid out and closed the door. At the same moment he heard a very faint click. It seemed to come from the other side of the hall. He didn’t like that, he told himself, and waited to make sure no one was about. The ensuing silence reassured him somewhat; and the “click,” he argued, might have come from the door he himself had closed.

The temperamental young thing, holding her breath, heard him now move softly but swiftly away. She listened, nothing happened. Then she stretched her young form luxuriously and pondered on the delirious secret that was all hers. A secret that made Bob her slave! Abjectly her slave! Like the servant of the lamp! She could compel him to turn somersaults if she wanted to.

Bob awoke with a slight headache, which, however, didn’t surprise him any. He only wondered his head didn’t ache more. People came down to breakfast almost any time, and sometimes they didn’t come down at all but sipped coffee in their rooms, continental-fashion. It was late when Bob got up, so a goodly number of the guests—the exceptions including Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence—were down by the time he sauntered into the big sun-room, where breakfast was served to all with American appetites.

The temperamental little thing managed accidentally (?) to encounter him at the doorway before he got into the room with the others. He shivered slightly when he saw her, though she looked most attractive in her rather bizarre way. Bob gazed beyond her, however, to a vision in the window. “Vision!” That just described what Miss Gwendoline looked like, with the sunlight on her and making an aureole of her glorious fair hair. Of course one could put an adjective or two, before the “vision”—such as “beautiful,” or something even stronger—without being accused of extravagance.

The little dark thing, uttering some platitude, followed Bob’s look, but she didn’t appear jealous. She hadn’t quite decided how much latitude to give Bob. That young gentleman noticed that the hammer-thrower, looking like one of those stalwart, masculine tea-passers in an English novel, was not far from Miss Gwendoline. His big fingers could apparently handle delicate china as well as mighty iron balls or sledges. He comported himself as if his college education had included a course at Tuller’s in Oxford Street, in London, where six-foot guardsmen are taught to maneuver among spindle-legged tables and to perform almost impossible feats without damage to crockery.

Miss Dolly now maneuvered so as to draw Bob aside in the hall to have a word or two before he got to bacon and eggs. What she said didn’t improve his appetite.

“I’m so disappointed in you,” she began in a low voice.

He asked why, though not because he really cared to know.

“After that hint of mine!” she explained reproachfully. “About Mrs. Vanderpool’s bronze diamond, I mean!”

“I fear I do not understand you,” said Bob coldly.

She bent nearer. “Of course I thought it would disappear,” she murmured. “I expected you to execute one of those clever coups, and so I went purposely to Mrs. Vanderpool’s room on some pretext this morning to learn if it was gone. But it wasn’t. I cleverly led the conversation up to it and she showed it to me.”

“Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “Did you think she wouldn’t have it to show you? That it had found its way to my pockets?”

“Of course,” she answered. “And you are quite sure you haven’t it, after all?” she asked suspiciously.

“How could I, when you saw—”

“Oh, you might have substituted a counterfeit brooch just like it for—”

Bob groaned. “You certainly have absorbed those plays,” he remarked.

“I expected a whole lot of things would be gone,” she went on, “and, apparently,” with disappointment, “no one has missed anything. It’s quite tame. Did you get discouraged because you failed to land the ‘loot’—is that the word?—in my case? And did you then just go prosaically to bed?”

“I certainly went to bed, though there was nothing prosaic about the procedure.”

“And yet what a dull night it must have been for you!”

“I shouldn’t call it that.”

“No?” She shifted the conversation. “Who do you suppose has come? Dickie Donnelly. Said he had arrived in town on some business and took advantage of the opportunity to make a little call on me. Incidentally, he seems interested in you. Said he would make it a point to see you after you got down. He’s out on the veranda smoking now, I guess. He wanted to talk to me but I made an excuse to shoo him away. He isn’t half so exciting as you are, you know. I’m quite positive now I couldn’t marry him and annex his old chimneys to ours, for all the world. Chimneys are such commonplace means to a livelihood, Mr. Bennett, don’t you think? They are so ugly and dependable. Not at all romantic and precarious! They just smoke and you get richer. There isn’t a single thrill in a whole forest of chimneys. But I mustn’t really keep you from your breakfast any longer,” she added with sudden sedulousness. “I’ve quite planned what we’re going to do to-day.”

“You have?” With a slight accent on the first word.

“Yes,” she assured him quietly. “So run along now.”

The slave, glad to get away, started to obey, when—“One moment!” said Miss Dolly as if seized with an afterthought. “Dickie asked about you so particularly that it occurred to me that— Well, do you think he harbors any suspicions?”

“Suspicions?”

“Yes; do you imagine he, too, by any chance, may have guessed—you know?” And Dolly again drew closer, her eyes beaming with new excitement.

Bob looked disagreeable, but he had to reply. “I’m sure he doesn’t think what you do,” he answered ill-humoredly.

Dolly looked relieved, but still slightly dubious. She didn’t appear to notice that lack of appreciation in Bob’s manner for her interest in his welfare. “Well, you’d better see him,” she said in the tone of one who had already established herself to the post of secret adviser. “He’s bent on an interview with you. Says it’s business. And speaking about business, what business could he possibly have in that dinky little town? Unless he wanted to buy the whole village! His conduct is, to say the least, slightly mysterious. Dickie may prove a factor to be reckoned with.”

“That’s true enough,” assented Bob, and went in to breakfast.

The temperamental little thing gazed after him approvingly; she quite gloried in her big burglar. It was so nice to know something no one else knew, to be a little wiser than all the rest of the world, including the police and the detective force! Bob must be terribly resourceful and subtle, to have deceived them all so thoroughly. He only seemed a little dense at times, just to keep up the deception. It was a part of the role. He wouldn’t even let her, who knew his secret, see under the surface and she liked him all the better for his reticence. It lent piquancy to the situation and added zest to the game. Dickie’s manner had certainly seemed to her unduly sober. He appeared to have something on his mind, though of course he was awfully eager and joyous about seeing her.

At the breakfast-table Bob only dallied with his hot rolls and took but a few gulps of coffee. The monocle-man who sat near by noticed that want of appetite.

“Don’t seem very keen for your feed this morning,” he observed jocularly.

“No, not over-peckish,” answered Bob.

“Why not? You look—aw—fit enough!” Reaching for one of those racks for unbuttered toast which Mrs. Ralston had brought home with her from London.

“Headache, for one thing,” returned Bob. It was the truth, or part of the truth. No one looked sympathetic, however. In fact, with the exception of the monocle-man (Mrs. Ralston hadn’t yet come down), every one in there made it apparent he or she desired as little as possible of Mr. Bennett’s society. Bob soon got up, casting a last bitter glance at Miss Gerald who seemed quite contented with her stalwart, honest-looking hammer-thrower. And why not? His character, Bob reflected, was unimpeachable. He looked so good and honest and so utterly wholesome that Bob, who himself was tainted with suspicion, wanted to get out of his presence. So Bob went out to the porch, to hunt up Dickie and ascertain what was the matter with him?

It didn’t take Bob long to learn what was worrying Dickie. He was carrying the weight of a new and tremendous responsibility. He had now become an emissary, a friend in need, to Clarence and the commodore, who certainly needed one at this moment. It seemed that Mrs. Clarence and Mrs. Dan had set detectives searching for Gee-gee and Gid-up and they had succeeded in locating one of the pair, partly by a freckle and a turned-up nose. The detectives must have worked fast. They were assisted by the fact that foolish Clarence had kept up an innocent and Platonic friendship with “Gee-gee’s” chum, after that momentous evening when Bob had been along. Now when a young man begins to hang around the vicinity of a stage door in a big car, he is apt to make himself a subject for remark and to become known, especially to the door-keeper who takes a fatherly interest in his Shetland herd. As Gid-up and Gee-gee were inseparable, it was but a step to place one by the other.

Detectives, Dickie informed Bob, had already interviewed the ladies. They may have offered them money in exchange for information. Mrs. Dan was very rich in her own name. She could outbid the commodore. Gid-up might hesitate or refuse to supply or manufacture information for filthy lucre, but Gee-gee was known to be ambitious. She longed to soar. And here was a means to that end. Quite a legitimate and customary one!

“Why, that girl would do anything to get herself talked about,” said Dickie sadly, thinking of Dan, and incidentally, too, of Clarence. “She’d manufacture information by the car-load. Out of a little, teeny-weeny remnant of truth, she’d build a magnificent divorce case. Think of the glorious publicity! Why, Gee-gee and one of the manager-chaps would sit up nights to see how many columns they could fill each day in the press. They’d make poor old Dan out worse than Nero. They’d picture him as a monster. They’d give him claws. And Clarence would come crawling after him like a slimy snake. Incidentally, they’d throw in a few weeps for Gee-gee. And then some more for Gid-up! Why, man, when I think of the mischief you’ve done—”

“Me?” said Bob miserably, almost overwhelmed by this pathetic picture Dickie had drawn. “But it wasn’t! It was Truth.” Dickie snorted. “What do you want me to do? Commit suicide? Annihilate truth? That would be one way of doing it. I’m sure I shouldn’t much mind. Shall I poison Truth or blow its brains out? Or shall I take it down to the lake and jump in with it? Do you think it has made me very happy? What am I? What have I become? Where is my good name?” He was thinking of what the temperamental little thing considered him. “Say, do I look like a criminal?” he demanded, confronting Dickie. The latter stared, then shrugged. Of course, if Bob wanted to rave—? “Or a crazy man? Do I look crazy?” he continued almost fiercely. “Well, there are people in there,” indicating the house, “who think I am.” Dickie started slightly and looked thoughtful. “You ask the judge, or the doctor, or—a lot of others. Ask Miss Gwendoline Gerald,” he concluded bitterly.

Dickie shifted a leg. “It might not be a bad idea,” he said in a peculiar tone, whose accent Bob didn’t notice, however. For some moments the two young men sat moodily and silently side by side.

“Where are Dan and Clarence now?” asked Bob in a dull tone, after a while.

“Gone to New York. Hustled there early this morning after some hurry-up messages gave an inkling of what was going on. I’m to do my best at this end. Keep my eyes on Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence, and incidentally, learn and do what I can.”

As he spoke Dickie tapped his leg with his cane; at the same time he bestowed another of those peculiar looks on Bob. Just then a young lady stepped from the house and came toward them. She was in the trimmest attire—for shooting or fishing—and looked extraordinarily trim, herself. A footman followed with two light rods and a basket.

“Come on,” she said lightly to Bob. “Might as well get started. It’s almost noon.”

“Started?” he stammered, staring at her.

“Yes, on that fishing excursion we planned.”

“We?” he repeated in the same tone. And then— “All right!” he said. It occurred to him, if he went off somewhere alone, with the temperamental young thing, he wouldn’t, at any rate, have to bob against a score or so of other people throughout the day. Better one than a crowd! “I’m ready,” he added, taking the rods and small basket.

“But, I say—” Dickie had arisen. There was a new look in his eyes—of disappointment, surprise—perhaps apprehension, too! “I say—” he repeated, looking darkly toward Bob.

The temperamental young thing threw him a smile. “Sorry, Dickie, but a previous engagement.—You know how it is!”

“I can imagine,” thought Dickie ominously, watching them disappear. Then his glance shifted viciously toward the house, and there was a look of stern determination in his eyes. As he mingled with others of the guests a few moments later, however, his expression had become one of studied amiability. Dickie was deep. His grievance now was as great as Dan’s or Clarence’s.

CHAPTER XI—FISHING

They had an afternoon of it, Bob and Dolly. Bob made himself useful, if not agreeable. He was a willing though not altogether cheerful slave. But the girl did not appear to mind that. She had spirits enough for both of them and ordered Bob around royally. She was nice to him, but she wanted him to know that he was her property, as much hers as if she had bought him at one of those old human auction sales. Only hers was a white slave!

She had the grandest time. She made him help her across the stream on a number of unnecessary occasions, holding the slave’s hand, so that she wouldn’t slip on the slippery stones. And once she had him carry her across. She had to, because there weren’t any stones, slippery or otherwise, she could avail herself of, at that particular spot. It is true she might have gone on a little farther and found some slippery stones that would have served her purpose, but she pretended not to know about them. Besides, what is the use of being a despot and having a private slave, all to yourself, if you don’t use him and make him work? Mr. Bennett wasn’t only a slave either, he was a romantic hero, as well, and in the books, heroes always carry the heroines across streams. Miss Dolly experienced a real bookish feeling when Bob carried her. He fully realized the popular ideal, he had such strong arms. True, he didn’t breathe on her neck, or in her ear, and he grasped her rather gingerly, but she found no fault over that. Her great big hero was a modest hero. But he was very manly and masculine, too.

He had plunged right in the stream, shoes and all, in spite of her suggestion that he had better take them off. But what cared he for wet feet? Might cause pneumonia, of course; but pneumonia had no terrors for Bob! She smiled at his precipitancy, while secretly approving of it. The act partook of a large gallantry. It reminded her of Sir Walter Raleigh and that cloak episode. Miss Dolly nestled very cozily, en route, with a warm young arm flung carelessly over a broad masculine shoulder and her eyes were dreamy, the way heroines’ eyes are in the books. She was not thinking of chimneys.

On the other side, she sat down, and imperiously—mistresses of slaves are always imperious—bade him take off her shoes. It was doubly exciting to vary the role of heroine with that of capricious slave-mistress. Of course, she might just as well have taken off her shoes on the other side and walked over but she never dreamed of doing that. After the slave had taken off her shoes, she herself removed her stockings, while the slave (seemingly cold and impassive as Angelo’s marble Greek slave) looked away. Then she dabbled her tiny white feet in the cold stream. She was thinking of that Undine heroine. Dabbling her feet, also made her feel bookish. Only in the books the heroes (or slaves) gaze adoringly at said feet. Hers were worth gazing at, but Bob didn’t seem to have eyes. Never mind! She told herself she liked that cold Anglo-Saxon phlegm (what an ugly word!) in a man. She saw in it a foil to her own temperamental disposition.

Having dabbled briefly, she held out a tiny foot and the slave dried it with his handkerchief, looking very handsome as he knelt before her. Then she put out the other and he repeated the operation. Then she put on her shoes and stockings. Then she remembered they had come ostensibly to fish and began whipping the stream spasmodically, while he did the same mechanically. They caught one or two speckled beauties, or Bob did. She couldn’t land hers. They always got tangled in something which she thought very cute of them. She didn’t feel annoyed at all when they got away, but just laughed as if it were the best kind of a joke, while Bob looked at her amazed. She called that“sport.”

Then she made him build a “cunning little fire” on a rock and clean the fish and cook them and set them before her. She graciously let him sit by her side and partake of a few overdone titbits and a sandwich or two they had brought in the basket. But she also made him jump up every once in a while to do something, finding plenty of pretexts to keep him busy. In fact, she had never been more waited upon in her life, which was just what she wanted. Bob, however, didn’t complain, for the minutes and hours went by and she asked no embarrassing questions. She didn’t make herself disagreeable in that respect, and as long as she didn’t, he didn’t mind helping her over rocks, or toting her. At least, this was a respite. His headache wasn’t quite so bad; the fresh air seemed to have helped it.

As for her thinking him one of those high-class society-burglars, or social buccaneers, it didn’t so much matter to him, after all. He was getting rather accustomed to the idea. Of course, she would be terribly disappointed if she ever found out he wasn’t one, but there didn’t seem much chance of his ever clearing himself, in her mind, of that unjust suspicion. At least, he reflected moodily, he was capable of making one person in the world not positively miserable. Last night when he had parted from Dickie, he had found a small grain of the same kind of comfort, in the fact the he (or truth) had not harmed Dickie. But to-day Dickie had appeared saddened by Dan’s and Clarence’s troubles. Then, too, Bob had been obliged to walk off, right in front of Dickie’s eyes with the temperamental young thing whom Dickie wanted to marry the worst way. And here he (Bob) was helping her over stones, “toting” frizzling trout for her, and performing a hundred other little services which should, by right, have been Dickie’s pleasure and privilege to perform.

Bob murmured a few idle regrets about Dickie, but Miss Dolly dismissed them—and Dickie—peremptorily. She was sitting now, leaning against a tree and the slave, by command, was lying at her feet.

“Did you know,” she said dreamily, “I am a new woman?”

He didn’t know it. He never would have dreamed it, and he told her so.

“Yes,” she observed, “I marched in the parade to Washington. That is, I started, went a mile or two, and then got tired. But I marched there, in principle, don’t you see? I think women should throw off their shackles. Don’t you?” Bob might have replied he didn’t know that Miss Dolly ever had had any shackles to throw off, but she didn’t give him time to reply. “I read a book the other day wherein the women do the proposing,” she went on. “It’s on an island and the women are ‘superwomen.’ All women are ‘super’ nowadays.” She regarded him tentatively. Her glance was appraising. “Do you know of any reason why women should not do the proposing, Mr. Bennett?”

“Can’t say that I do,” answered Bob gloomily, feeling as if some one had suddenly laid a cold hand on his breast, right over where the heart is. Her words had caused his thoughts to fly back to another. She might not be proposing to the hammer-thrower at that moment in that “super” fashion, but the chances were that the hammer-thrower was proposing to her. He didn’t look like a chap that would delay matters. He would strike while the iron was hot.

The temperamental young thing eyed Bob and then she eyed a dreamy-looking cloud. She let the fingers of one hand stray idly in Bob’s hair as he lay with his head in the grass.

“It tries hard to curl, doesn’t it?” she remarked irrelevantly.

“What?” said Bob absently, his mind about two miles and a half away.

“Your hair. You’ve got lovely hair.” Bob looked disgusted. “It started to curl and then changed its mind, didn’t it?” she giggled.

Bob muttered disagreeably.

“I suppose you were one of those curly-headed little boys?” went on the temperamental young thing.

“I don’t know whether I was or not,” he snapped. He was getting back into that snappy mood. Then it struck him this might not be quite the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for he added sulkily; “Maybe I was.”

“I can just see you,” said the temperamental young thing in a far-off voice. “Nursie must have thought you a darling.”

The slave again muttered ominously. He wished the temperamental little thing would take her fingers away. They trailed now idly over an ear.

“You’re tickling,” said Bob ill-naturedly.

She stopped trailing and patted instead—very gently and carelessly—as if she were patting a big Newfoundland dog which she owned all by herself. That pat expressed a sense of ownership.

“I’m wondering,” she said, “whether it would make things nicer, if I did propose and we became engaged?”

“Oh,” said Bob satirically, “you’re wondering that, are you?”

“Yes.” More tentative pats.

“And what do you suppose I’d say?” he demanded. He was feeling more and more grouchy all the time. He didn’t want any of that “superwoman” business. He had already had one proposal. What mockery! A proposal! He heard again that other “Will you marry me?” and looked once more, in fancy, into the starry, enigmatical violet eyes. He experienced anew that surging sensation in his veins. And he awoke again to the hollow jest of those words! He felt, indeed, a moderately vivid duplication of all his emotions of the night before. The temperamental young thing’s voice recalled him from the poignant recollections of the painful past into the dreary and monotonous present.

“Why, you actually blushed, just now,” she said accusingly.

“Did I?” growled Bob, looking grudgingly into dark eyes where a moment before, in imagination, there had been starry violet ones.

“Yes, you did. And”—her voice taking a tenderer accent—“it was becoming, too.”

“Rush of blood to the head,” he retorted shortly. “Comes from lying like this.”

“What would you say if I did?” she demanded, reverting to that other topic. “Propose, I mean? Would you accept? Would you take me—I mean, shyly suffer me,” with a giggle, “to take you into my arms?”

“Quit joshing!” growled Bob.

“Answer. Would you?”

“No.”

“No?” Bending over him more closely. For a “super,” she was certainly wonderfully attractive in her slim young way at that moment. Not many of the inferior sex would have acted quite so stonily as Bob acted. He didn’t show any more emotion when she bent over than one of those prostrate stone Pharaohs, or Rameses, which lie around with immovable features on the sands of Egypt. “You see you couldn’t help it,” the super-temperamental young thing assured him, confidentially.

“Ouch!” said Bob, for she was tickling again. He wished she would keep those trailing fingers in her lap. They felt like a fly perambulating his brow or walking around his ear.

“You’d just have to accept me,” she added.

“Oh, you mean on account of that silly burglar business?”

“Of course. You left two or three thumb-prints in the room.”

“I did?” That was incriminating. No getting around thumb-prints! He felt as if the temperamental little thing was weaving a mesh around him. In addition to being a “super,” she was a Lady of Shalott.

Dolly thrilled with a sense of her power. She could play with poor Bob as a cat with a mouse; she could let him go so far and then put out her claws and draw him back.

“Besides, I found out you didn’t quite tell me the truth about those accomplices of yours,” she went on triumphantly. “You said there weren’t any, and when I went out and looked around where the dog barked, I found footprints. They led to the trellis, right up into your room. The trellis, too, showed some person, or persons, had climbed up, for some of the boughs were broken. Deny now, if you can, you had visitors last night,” she challenged him.

Bob didn’t deny; he lay there helpless.

“Of course,” she said with another giggle, “I might let you say you’ll think it over. I might not press you too hard at once for an answer. I don’t want you to reply: ‘This is so sudden,’ or anything like that.” She got up suddenly with a little delirious laugh. “But I simply can’t wait. You look so handsome when you’re cross. Besides, it will be so exciting to be engaged to a—a—”

“Society-burglar—” grimly.

“That’s it. I’ve never been engaged to a burglar before!”

“But you have been engaged?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of times. But not like this. This feels as if it might lead—”

“To the altar?” Satirically.

“Yes.”

“But suppose I got caught?—that is, if I really enjoyed the distinction of being a burglar which I am not?”

“Then, of course, I never knew—you deceived me—poor innocent!—as well as the rest of the world. And there would be columns and columns in the papers. And some people would pity me, but most people would envy me. And I’d visit you in jail with a handkerchief to my eyes and be snap-shotted that way. And I’d sit in a dark corner in the court, looking pale and interesting. And the lady reporters would interview me and they’d publish my picture with yours—‘Handsome Bob, the swell society yeggman. Member of one of the oldest families, etc.’ And—and—”

“Great Scott!” cried Bob. She had that publicity-bee worse than Gee-gee. In another moment she’d be setting the day. “Shall we—ah!—retrace our steps?”

It was getting late. The hours had gone by somehow and as she offered no objections, they “retraced.” For some time now she was silent. Perhaps she was imagining herself too happy for words. Once or twice she cast a sidelong glance shyly at Bob. It was the look of a capricious slave-owner metamorphosed, through the power of love, into a yielding and dependent young maiden. Bob was supposed to be the brutal conqueror. Meanwhile that young man strode along unheedingly. He didn’t mind any little branches or bushes that happened to stand in his way and plowed right through them. It would have been the same, if he had met that historic bramble bush. A thousand scratches, more or less, wouldn’t count.

“You can put your arm around me now,” she observed, with another musical but detestable giggle, as they passed through a grove, not very far from the house. “It is quite customary here, you know.”

He didn’t know, but he obeyed. What else could he do?

“Now say something.” Her voice had once more that ownership accent.

“What do you want me to say?” None too graciously.

“The usual thing! Those three words that make the world go around.”

“But I don’t.” Even a worm will turn.

“You will.” Softly.

“I won’t.”

“Oh, yes, you will.” More softly. Then with a sigh: “This is the place. Under this oak, carved all over with hearts and things. Do it.”

“What?” He looked down on lips red as cherries.

“Are you going to?”

“And if I don’t?” he challenged her.

“Finger-prints!” she said. “Footmarks!”

“Oh, well! Confound it.” And he did—the way a bird pecks at a cherry.

She straightened with another giggle. “Our first!” she said.

“Hope you’re satisfied,” he remarked grudgingly.

“It will do for a beginning. Oh, dear! some one saw us!” He looked around with a start, his unresponsive arm slipping from about a pliant waist.

“I don’t see any one.”

“He’s dodged behind a tree. I think it was Dickie. And—yes, there are one or two other men. They—they seem to be dodging, too.” Bob saw them now. One, he was sure, was the commodore.

“Funny performance, isn’t it?” he said, with a sickly smile.

“Perhaps—?” She looked at him with genuine awe in the temperamental eyes. He read her thought; she thought—believed they had “come for him.” She appeared positively startled, and—yes, sedulous! Maybe, she was discovering in herself a little bit of that “really, truly” feeling.

“Oh!” she said. “They mustn’t—”

“Don’t you worry,” he reassured her. “I think I can safely promise you they won’t do what you expect them to.”

“You mean,” joyously, “you have a way to circumvent them?” She was sure now he had; the aristocratic burglars always have. He would probably have a long and varied career before him yet.

“I mean just what I say. But I think they want to talk with me? Indeed, I’m quite sure they do. They are coming up now. Perhaps you’d better leave me to deal with them.”

“You—you are sure they have no evidence to—?”

“Land me in jail? Positively. I assure you, on my honor, you are the only living person who, by any stretch of the imagination, could offer damaging testimony against me, along that line.”

He spoke so confidently she felt it was the truth. “I believe you,” she said. She wanted to say more, befitting the thrill of the moment, but she had no time. Dickie and two others were approaching. It might be best if he met them alone. So she slipped away and walked toward the house. It would be quite exciting enough afterward, she told herself, to find out what happened. It wasn’t until she got almost to the house, that she remembered she ought to have asked Bob for a ring. Of course, he would have a goodly supply of them. Would it make her particeps criminis though, if she wore one of his rings? Then she concluded it wouldn’t, because she was innocent of intention. She didn’t know. She wondered, also, if she should announce her “engagement” right off, or wait a day or two. She decided to wait a day or two. But she told Miss Gwendoline Gerald what a lovely time she and Mr. Bennett had had together, fishing. And Miss Gerald smiled a cryptic smile.

Meanwhile Bob had met Dan and Dickie and Clarence.

CHAPTER XII—JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

It was far from a pleasant meeting. Dickie looked about as amiable as a wind or thunder demon, in front of a Japanese temple. That oscillatory performance beneath the “kissing-oak,” as the noble tree was called, had been almost too much for Dickie. He seemed to have trouble in articulating.

“You’re a nice one, aren’t you?” he managed at length to say, and his tones were like the splutter of a defective motor. “You ought to be given a leather medal.”

“Could I help it?” said Bob wearily. And then because he was too much of a gentleman to vouchsafe information incriminating a lady: “Usual place! Customary thing! Blame it on the oak! Ha! ha!” This wasn’t evading the truth; it was simply facetiousness. Might as well meet this trio of dodging brigands with a smiling face! Dickie’s vocal motor failed to explode, even spasmodically; that reply seemed to have extinguished him. But the commodore awoke to vivacity.

“Let us try to meet this situation calmly,” he said, red as a turkey-cock. “But let us walk as we talk,” taking Bob’s arm and leading that young man unresistingly down a path to the driveway to the village. “I shouldn’t by any chance want to encounter Mrs. Dan just yet,” he explained. “So if you don’t mind, we’ll get away from here, while I explain.”

Bob didn’t mind. He saw no guile in the commodore’s manner or words. Nor did he observe how Clarence looked at Dickie. The twilight shadows were beginning to fall.

“Briefly,” went on the commodore, as he steered them out of the woods, “our worst fears have been realized. Negotiations with Gee-gee are in progress. Divorce papers will probably follow.” Clarence on the other side of Dickie made a sound. “All this is your work.” The commodore seemed about to become savage, but he restrained himself. “No use speaking about that. Also, it is too late for us to call the wager off and pay up. Mischief’s done now.”

“Why not make a clean breast of everything?” suggested Bob. “Say it was a wager, and—”

“A truth-telling stunt? That would help a lot.” Contemptuously.

Dickie muttered: “Bonehead!”

“I mean, you can say there wasn’t any harm,” said Bob desperately. “That it was all open and innocent!”

“Much good my saying that would do!” snorted Dan. “You don’t know Mrs. Dan.”

“Or Mrs. Clarence,” said Clarence weakly.

Bob hung his head.

“We’ve thought of one little expedient that may help,” observed Dan, still speaking with difficulty. “While such influences as we could summon are at work on the New York end, we’ve got to square matters here. We’ve got to account for your—your—” here the commodore nearly choked—“extraordinary revelations.”

“But how,” said Bob patiently, “can you ‘account’ for them? I suppose you mean to make me out a liar?”

“Exactly,” from the commodore coolly.

“I don’t mind,” returned Bob wearily, “as long as it will help you out and I’m not one. Only I can’t say those things aren’t true.”

“You don’t have to,” said Dan succinctly. “There’s an easier way than that. No one would believe you, anyway, now.”

“That’s true.” Gloomily.

“All we need,” went on Dan, brightening a bit, “is your cooperation.”

“What can I do?”

“You don’t do anything. We do what is to be done. You just come along.”

“We take you into custody,” interposed Clarence.

“Lock you up!” exploded Dickie once more. “And a good job.”

“Lock me up?” Bob gazed at them, bewildered. Had the temperamental little thing “peached,” after all? Impossible! And yet if she hadn’t, how could Dan and Dickie and Clarence know he was a burglar—or rather, that a combination of unlucky circumstances made him seem one? Perhaps that kiss was a signal for them to step forward and take him. History was full of such kisses. And yet he would have sworn she was not that kind.

“You’re to come along without making a fuss,” said the commodore significantly.

“But I don’t want to come along. This is going too far,” remonstrated Bob. “I’ve a decided objection to being locked up as a burglar.”

“Burglar!” exclaimed Dan.

“Don’t know how you found out! Appearances may be against me, but,” stopping in the road, “if you want me to go along, you’ve got to make me.”

The trio looked at one another. “Maybe, he really is—” suggested Dickie, touching his forehead.

“Too much truth!” said Clarence with a sneer. “Feel half that way, myself!”

“Would be all the better for us, if it were really so,” observed Dan. And to Bob: “You think that we think you’re a burglar?”

“Don’t you? Didn’t you say something about locking me up?”

“But not in a jail.”

Bob stared. “What then?”

“A sanatorium.”

“Sanatorium?”

“For the insane.”

“You mean—?”

“You’re crazy,” said Dan. “That’s the ticket. Dickie found out, up at Mrs. Ralston’s.”

“Oh, Dickie did?” said Bob, looking at that young gentleman with lowering brows.

Nothing But the Truth

CHAPTER I—THE TEMERITY OF BOB

CHAPTER II—A TRY-OUT

CHAPTER III—AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING

CHAPTER IV—A CHAT ON THE LINKS

CHAPTER V—TRIVIALITIES

CHAPTER VI—DINNER

CHAPTER VII—VARYING VICISSITUDES

CHAPTER VIII—NEW COMPLICATIONS

CHAPTER IX—ANOTHER SURPRISE

CHAPTER X—INTO BONDAGE

CHAPTER XI—FISHING

CHAPTER XII—JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER