Infatuation

INFATUATION

LLOYD OSBOURNE

AUTHOR OF
The Motomaniacs, The Adventurer, Etc.

With Illustrations by
KARL ANDERSON

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

MARCH

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

INFATUATION

CHAPTER I

Phyllis Ladd lost her mother at twelve; and this bereavement, especially terrible to an only child, brought with it two consequences that had a far-reaching effect on her character. An ardent, high-strung nature, acquainted so early with a poignant sorrow, gets an outlook on the world that is so just and true as to constitute a misfortune in itself. A child ought not to think; ought not to suffer; ought not to understand. Individuality, sympathy, sensibility awaken--qualities that go to make a charming human being--but which have to be paid for in the incessant balance of our complex existence. Phyllis' school-fellows were no longer the same to her; she felt herself a person apart; though she played as gaily as any of them, and chattered her head off, and tripped blithely along Chestnut Avenue entwined in the arms of her companions, she was aware, down in her secret heart, that she was "different."

At twelve, then, her path diverged from the commonplace, in which, as we all have to admit, however reluctantly, the chances for a happy life are best.

The second consequence of her mother's death was to bring her into contact with a scarcely known individual--her father. This grave, handsome man, who sat behind a newspaper at breakfast, and who was not seen again till dinner time; who drove away every morning behind a liveried coachman and a pair of shining bays to a region called "the office"; whose smile and voice were always a shy delight to her--this demigod, admired, unknown, from whom there emanated a delicious sense of security and strength, now suddenly drew her to his heart, and became her world, her all.

Robert T. R. Ladd was the president of the K. B. and O. Railway. Rich himself, and the son of a rich man, his interests in Carthage were varied and many, engaging his activities far beyond the great road that was associated with his name. Carthage was an old-fashioned city; and the boys who had grown up together and succeeded their fathers were clannish to a degree little known in the newer parts of this country. Joe, who was prominent in electricity and gas, might want to consolidate a number of scattered plants, and to that end would seek the assistance of Tom and Harry and Bob. George, perhaps, in forecasting the growth of Carthage a little too generously, was in temporary straits with his land-scheme--well, he would ask Tom and Bob to tide him over, making a company of himself, and taking them in. Frank and his brother, in converting their private bank into the Fifth National--induced as much as anything by the vanity of seeing their own names on their own greenbacks--would feel the need of a strong local man on the new directorate. Would Bob oblige them? "Why, with pleasure, though if somebody else would do as well--" "Oh, we must have you, old fellow."

Such was Carthage--at least the Carthage of Chestnut Avenue, of the long lines of stately and beautiful mansions on what was called the West Side, the Carthage that supported the Symphony Orchestra, owned the parterre boxes at the opera, dined, drove, danced, and did business together--as compact and jealous a little aristocracy as any in Hungary or Silesia. Of course there was another Carthage--several other Carthages--one a teeming riverside quarter where English was an unknown tongue, a place black with factory chimneys, full of noise and refuse, dirt and ugliness, where forty thousand nondescript foreigners pigged together, and contributed forty thousand pairs of very grimy and unwilling hands to the material advancement of the city and state. There was a business Carthage, with banks and sky-scrapers, and vast webs of wires that darkened the sky. There was a pleasure Carthage that awoke only at night, blazing out with a myriad lights, and a myriad enticements. There was a middle-class residence Carthage; a second-class residence Carthage; an immense, poor, semi-disreputable, altogether dreary Carthage that was popularly alluded to as "South of the slot," the name dating from the time of the first cable-car line, now long since discarded.

But to return to Phyllis Ladd.

In losing her mother, it might be said she had discovered her father. At first perhaps it was pity, loneliness, almost terror that caused Mr. Ladd to take this little creature in his arms, and hold her as he might a shield. He had idolized his wife; he hardly knew how to go on living without her; one day, in his office, as his old friend Latham was leaving him, he had pulled open a drawer, and taken a loaded revolver from it. "Latham," he said, with a very slight tremor in his voice, "would you mind putting this damned thing in your pocket--I--I--find it tempts me."

Yes, his little daughter was a shield; he held her slim body between himself and despair; he told her this again and again, as he sat with bowed head and suffusing eyes in the shadow of an irrevocable happiness. And she in whom there stirred, mysteriously, dimly, the tenderness of the sublime love that had called her into being--she, even while she mingled her tears with his, felt within herself the welling of an exquisite joy. To love, to solace, to protect, here again instincts were prematurely awakened; here again her little feet departed from the commonplace to carry her far afield.

In time, as weeks and months rolled on, the blow, so unendurable at first, so crushing and terrible, softened, as such things will, and a busy world again engrossed a busy man. But the intimacy between father and daughter remained, and continued unimpaired. Indeed, it grew even closer, for now laughter came into it, and gay bubbling little confidences, and a delightful hour before bedtime, full of eagerness and zest. Mr. Ladd, cigar in mouth, and his keen handsome face as deferential as any courtier's, listened to the interminable doings of Satty and Nelly and Jessie, with an enjoyment that never seemed to tire.

He, too, had his budget of the day, which, often begun whimsically, not seldom ended in a serious exposition of his difficulties and problems. It amused him to state such complexities in simple language; to bring them down, by some homely metaphor, to the comprehension of this adorable little coquette, who tried with so many childish arts to dazzle and ensnare him. Even at thirteen she was learning the value of drawing out a man about himself; she was quite willing to understand the Interstate Commerce Law, and become pink and indignant over a new classification of "Coal at the pit's mouth"--if it meant her father would hold her a little tighter, and give her one of those sudden glances of approval.

Such intercourse with a shrewd, strong, brilliant mind--to a child naturally precocious and adaptive--could not fail to have far-reaching consequences on her development. She caught something of her father's independence; of his lofty and yet indulgent outlook on a universe made up so largely of fools and knaves; learned the greatest and rarest of all imaginative processes--to put oneself in the other fellow's shoes. When Joe Howard turned traitor at the state legislature, and sold out the K. B. and O. on the new mileage bill, her wrath at his duplicity rose to fever. "Well, there's his side to it," said Mr. Ladd, with unexpected serenity. "He hasn't a cent; he's mortgaged up to the ears; and has a sick daughter dying of consumption. He's a well-meaning man, and I suppose would be honest if he could. But if I were in his place, and your life was at stake, and the doctor ordered you to some ten-dollar-a-minute place in Colorado or somewhere, I guess I'd sell out the K. B. and O. too!"

And for that he got a hug that nearly choked him.

"Money and love, my lamb," he said to her once, "those are the wheels the old wagon runs on. Miss Simpkins will fluff you up with a whole lot of fancy fixings--but I tell you, it boils right down to that."

"Papa," she asked him on another occasion, with round wondering eyes, "if it's all like that, why are you honorable and noble and splendid?"

"I don't know," he answered, smiling. "I guess it's pride more than anything else. Theoretically the man with the fewest scruples gets farthest in the race; but thank the Lord, most of us are handicapped with some good qualities that stick to us like poor relations."

"But Miss Simpkins says that anybody who is bad gets punished for it sooner or later. She says that was why her brother-in-law's house burned down; because he was so uncharitable."

"It may be so with the people Miss Simpkins is acquainted with," said Mr. Ladd, "but it doesn't hold in the railroad business, nor anywhere else that I have seen, and I can't help thinking she's a trifle more hopeful than the traffic can bear!"

This philosophy, so picturesquely expressed, so genial, so amiably cynical, was not perhaps the best training for an unusually impressionable mind. Miss Simpkins learned to dread Phyllis' preface: "But Papa says--" What Papa said was often a bombshell that blew shams to pieces; tore down the pretty pink scenery of conventional illusions; and drove cobble-stones through the gauze that separated Miss Simpkins and her kind from the real world beyond. It was a harsh process, and bad for gauze.

At first, not knowing how else to maintain a fairly large establishment, Mr. Ladd had sought the services of a "managing housekeeper." But the trouble with her--or rather with them, for he had a succession--was that the "managing" was considerably overdone. They were discharged, the one after the other, without having "managed" to achieve their one consuming ambition, which was to capture the rich widower, and lead him to the altar. After a while, growing weary of being hunted, and altogether at his wits' end, he invited his unmarried sister, Henrietta Ladd, to take the foot of his table, and a place at his hearth.

She was a thin, plain, elderly woman, with a very low voice and a deceptive appearance of meekness. The casual guest at Mr. Ladd's board might have taken her for a silent saint, who, unwillingly sojourning in this vale of tears, was waiting with ladylike impatience for a heavenly crown. In some ways this description would have fitted Aunt Henrietta well enough, though it took no account of a perverse and interfering nature that was more than trying to live with. The silent saint attempted to rule her brother and her niece with a rod of iron, and so far succeeded that her two years "tenure of the gubernatorial chair" (as Mr. Ladd bitterly called it), was fraught with quarrels and unhappiness. Her tyranny, like all tyrannies, ended in a revolution. Mr. Ladd brought his "unmarried misery"--also his own phrase--to a sharp conclusion, and Henrietta departed with a large check and a still larger ill-will.

"Phyllis," he said, "I guess we'll just have to rustle along by our poor little selves. The people who take charge of us seem to take charge too hard. They mean well, but why should they stamp on us?--Yes, let's try it ourselves."

And Phyllis, not quite fifteen years old, became the acknowledged mistress of the big house.

In her demure head she knew that to fail would be to incur a danger that was almost too terrible to contemplate. Her father might be persuaded into marrying again, and the thought of such a catastrophe sobered and restrained her. She was on her mettle, and was determined to succeed. She had her check-book, her desk, her receipted bills. She had her morning interviews with the cook; sent curtains to the cleaners; rang up various tradespeople on the telephone; gently criticized Mary's window-cleaning, and George's nails, and busied herself with these, and innumerable other little cares, while Miss Simpkins waited in the study, restlessly drumming her long, lean fingers on a French grammar.

Of course, she did several foolish, impulsive things, but no more than some little bride might have done in the first novelty of controlling a large household. She gave a tramp one of her father's best suits of clothes; she was prevailed upon by the servants to buy many things that neither they nor anybody else could possibly need--including an electrically driven knife-cleaner, and a cook's table, so compact and ingenious, that it would have been priceless on an airship, though in her own spacious kitchen it was decidedly out of place; and it took her several months to discover that James was apparently feeding five elephants instead of five horses.

But she was quick to learn better; and with the innate capacity she inherited from her father, she soon had everything running on oiled wheels. And all this, if you please, at fifteen, with quite a bit of stocking between her dress and her trimly-shod feet.

It was seldom that her father ever ventured into the realm of criticism; but once or twice, in his smiling, easy-going way, he gently pulled her up.

"I don't know much about these things," he remarked once, "but don't there seem to be a lot of new dresses in this family?"

"One can't go naked, Papa."

"Admitting that, my dear, which with people of our position would certainly give rise to comment--couldn't we compromise on--well--going half-naked, and perhaps show a more Spartan spirit, besides, in regard to our hats?"

Phyllis' eyes filled with tears; and flushing with shame, she pressed her hot cheek against the back of the chair she was sitting in, and felt herself the most miserable, disgraced, unworthy little creature in the whole world.

Mr. Ladd's voice deepened, as it always did when he was moved.

"My darling," he said, "don't feel badly about it, because it is only a trifle. But it is not kind to your companions to dress better than they do, and I am sure you do not wish them to feel envious or resentful. I just ask you to bear it in mind, that's all, and be somewhat on your guard."

"I will, Papa."

"Now come and kiss your daddy, and tell him you're not cross with him for being such an old fuss-cat."

"Y-y-ou are n-not an old fu-u-uss-cat, but the dearest, darlingest, bestest--"

"Do you think it's right to bite a railroad president's ear?"

"Yes, if you love him!"

"Or muss up the only hair he has, which isn't very much?"

"Yes, if it helps you to think."

"What's that--thinking?"

"Yes, Papa."

"It worries me, dearest, to have you doing anything as serious as that."

"Papa, it is serious. Listen!"

"I'm listening,"

"I've a wonderful idea--I'm going to give a party!"

"Splendid--hope you'll ask me!"

"And I'm going to invite Satty Morrison, and Julia Grant, and Hetty Van Buren, and Maisie Smith, and the two Patterson girls, and perhaps Alicia Stewart--and we are going to have ice-cream, and lady's-fingers, and chocolate-cake, and Christmas crackers, if I can buy them this time of year--and, Papa, it's going to be a hat-party."

"Oh, a hat-party, goodness me, what's that?"

"To give away all the silly, extravagant hats I've bought--though I'll have to get two new ones to make them go round--but you won't mind that, will you?"

"No, indeed--not for a hat-party."

And next day the invitations were out.

This scandalous way of bringing up an only daughter caused many people to shake their heads.

"It'll end in a peck of trouble for Mr. Ladd some day," said the old cats, with which Carthage was as liberally stocked as any other great and flourishing American city. "Mark my words, my dear, no good can come of bringing up a girl like a wild Indian, and he'll have nobody to blame but himself if she goes headlong to the bad."

CHAPTER II

At twenty, Phyllis Ladd was one of the prettiest girls in Carthage. A little above medium height, slim, dark, and glowing like a rose, she moved with that charming consciousness of beauty that is in itself almost a distinction. The French and Spanish in her mother's southern blood showed itself in her slender feet and hands, in her grace, her voice, her gentle, gracious, and engaging manners. One could not long talk to her without realizing that behind those sparkling eyes there was a fine and highly-sensitive nature, whimsical, original and intrepid; and to know her well was to perceive that she was one of those women who would love with rare intensity; and whose future, for good or evil, for happiness or disaster, was irretrievably dependent on the heart.

In a dim sort of way she had the consciousness of this herself; her flirtations went no further than to dance with the same partner three or four times in the course of the same evening; and Carthage, which gave its young people a great deal of innocent liberty--and which its young people took with the greediness of children--in time got to consider her, in spite of deceptive appearances, as being cold, proud, and "exclusive." Certainly her exclusiveness drew the line at being kissed by boisterous young men, and though their company pleased and amused her, she refused to single out one of them for any special favor.

"They are all such idiots, Papa," she said plaintively. "Aren't there any real men anywhere--real men that a girl could love?"

"I'm sure I don't know," returned Mr. Ladd. "I haven't come across one I'd trust a yellow dog to, let alone my daughter. But, frankly, I'm prejudiced on the young-man question--anybody would be who has to run a railroad with them!"

"Papa," she cried, throwing her arms around his neck, and her mood changing to one of her gayest phantasies, "let's go away together, you and I, and see if we can't find him. The Quest of the Golden Young Man! There must be one somewhere, and we'll look for him in every hidy-hole in the world--in street-cars and banks, and ice-cream places, and cellars, and factories, and mountains, and ships--just you and me, with a little steamer-trunk--and we'll run across him in the unlikeliest spot--and he may be a bandit in a cave, or a wild, roystering cow-boy shooting up one of those awful little western towns--but we'll know right off that he's our Golden Young Man--and we'll take him, and put him in a crate, and bring him home in the baggage-car, and poke him with a long sharp stick till he's willing to marry me!"

The Quest of the Golden Young Man! It began sooner than Phyllis could ever have believed possible, and with a companion she would have been the last to dream of. Mr. Ladd had a married sister in Washington, the wife of a highly-placed treasury official. Mrs. Sam Fensham was a very fashionable, energetic, pushing woman, wholly absorbed in the task of pulling competitors off the social ladder, and planting her own faultless French shoes on the empty rung. Brother and sister had about as much in common as you could spread on a dime; but Robert Ladd had all the American's admiration of ability, no matter in what direction it was exercised; and Sally Fensham dearly loved her fraternal relationship to the K. B. and O.

This social strategist had volunteered one of her rare visits to Carthage under the stress of bad financial weather. Brother Bob, who regularly brightened her Christmas with a check in four figures, had some peculiarities of purse and heart that Mrs. Fensham was well acquainted with. You might dash him off a letter, slashed with underlining, and piteous in the extremity of its cri de coeur, and get nothing in reply but two pages of humorous typewriting, wanting to know why two people, without children, could not manage to scrape along in Washington on sixteen thousand dollars a year?

But Brother Bob, face to face, was a very different person. If you sat on the arm of his chair, and talked of pa and ma and the old days, and perhaps cried a little, not altogether insincerely, over faces and things long since vanished--if, indeed, under the spell of that grave, kindly brother, you somehow shed your cares into an infinite tenderness, and forgot everything save that you loved him best of any one on earth--if--but it always happened--you did not need to give another thought, to what, after all, was the real object of your visit.

In a day or two, Brother Bob would say; "Sally, just how many dollars would make you feel eighteen again, and as though you were waiting for Elmer Boyd to take you out sleighing?"

You could answer thirty-seven hundred, and get it as readily as a postage stamp; and with it a look of such honest affection, such a glisten in those fine eyes, that your words of thanks stammered a little on your tongue.

Well, here was Aunt Sally again--arm-chair--pa and ma--the old days--check--and in her restless, scheming eyes the birth of a vague idea that grew ever more and more alluring,--nothing else than to take this very pretty niece of hers back to Washington, and enhance the Fensham position by a splendid marriage. She had a vision of balls and dinner-parties, all paid for by her millionaire brother; a showy French limousine; unlimited boxes at the theater and opera; and a powerful nephew-to-be, with a name to hoist the portcullis of many a proud social stronghold, and allow the wife of a highly-placed treasury official to squeeze in. The Motts, the Glendennings, the Pastors, the Van Schaicks--the Port Arthurs of Washington society--Sarah Fensham would assail all of them, holding before her one of their cherished sons, and defying them to shoot. A fascinating prospect indeed, and one not beyond realization, considering the girl's beauty, and her father's money.

On the subject being broached to Brother Bob, it was met with a hostility only comparable to a Polar bear being robbed of its cub. The whole marriage-market business nauseated him, he declared; his daughter should never be set up on the counter to be priced and pawed over; not only would her natural refinement revolt at it, but he inconsistently and with much warmth announced that Carthage was full of splendid young men, the sons of his old associates, amongst whom Phyllis should find her husband when the time came, and a fellow worth fifty of those Washington dudes and dough-heads.

"It's all very well for you to talk," said Sally coldly, "but I should say it was more for Phyllis to decide than for you."

"She wouldn't hear of such a thing," protested Mr. Ladd heatedly. "She is a quiet, home-loving girl, and wouldn't put herself in a show-window for anything on earth."

"My house is not a show-window; and what is there immodest or wrong in her meeting the nicest men in America?"

"Besides, she wouldn't care to leave me."

Angry as she was, there was something in this remark that suddenly touched Sally Fensham. She was hard and aggressive, but her heart was not altogether withered, and under extraordinary circumstances could even be moved.

"My poor Bob," she said, holding the lapels of his coat, and looking up at him; "do you not know that Phyllis may meet a man to-day at dinner, and to-morrow at tea, and the day after drive with him for an hour in the Park--and then what's father or mother or anything in the world if she loves him? Bob, dear, just get it out of your head that you are going to keep Phyllis. When the right man comes you will no more count to her than--than that chair!--Oh, yes, of course, every girl loves her father in a way--but you have only been keeping her heart warm--and once it's set on fire--good-by! And, Bob, dear, listen, is it not common sense to let her see the right kind of young men; to sift them and weigh them a bit? Is it a marriage-market to admit none but those who are presentable and well-bred and come of nice people? Is that a show-window? No, it's giving a girl a chance to choose--the chance I wish to Heaven I'd had. We simply try to get the nicest man there is, and you are more apt to get a prize from a hundred than from six!"

"That applies just as much to Carthage as to Washington."

"Bob, you don't know what you've been risking. Your whole way of living is utterly crazy. Why, anybody--anybody could come here, and make love to her, and carry her off under your nose--some awful commercial traveler or cheap pianist with frowzy hair--Oh, Bob, girls are such fools--such crazy, crazy fools!"

"Phyllis isn't."

"Was I?"

"No, I don't think you were."

"But didn't I marry Sam Fensham?"

"I don't see that that--"

Sally laughed; and it was not a pleasant laugh to hear in its self-revelation. Sam was notoriously more successful as a treasury official than as a husband.

"Bob, she has to go to Washington with me, and you must put your hand in your pocket, and do things handsomely."

"Against her will?"

Again Sally laughed, more harshly and cynically than before.

"Just you ask her," she said.

That night Mr. Ladd did so, and saw with a sinking heart the electrifying effect it had on her.

Go! Why, she'd jump out of her shoes to go, and wasn't daddy the dearest, darlingest, adorablest person in the world to propose it! And Aunt Sally's kindness--wasn't it wonderful! She would meet senators and ambassadors, and dance in the White House with lovely barons and counts, and try out her French on a real Frenchman and see if he could understand it!--A winter in Washington! What could be more exciting, more delirious!

Mr. Ladd affected to share her delight, and manfully concealed his true feelings, which were altogether bitter and sad. But he was a brave old fellow, and knew how to take his disappointments smilingly. Besides, what claim had he to resist the inevitable? What right? What justification? He would have bitten his tongue out before he would have reproached her, or marred, by the slightest word, her overflowing and girlish exuberance. It was only as they kissed each other good night that the pent-up appeal came.

"Don't forget your old dad in the shuffle," he said. "It's--it's going to be very hard for him without you, Phyllis."

Her instant contrition was very sweet to him, very comforting and dear. In fact, he had to struggle pretty desperately to allay the storm of tenderness he evoked.--No, no, he wanted her to go to Washington. It was the right thing to do--the only thing to do. A girl ought to see something of the big world before she married and settled down.--Oh, every girl said that to herself, but you couldn't get away from the fact that they were made for men, and men for them, and a father just held the fort till the Golden Young Man arrived.

How they laughed, with tears in their eyes! How infinitely precious was the love that bound them together! Dad was never to be lost in the shuffle--never, never; and he was to write every day, and she was to write; and if it were a hundred Washingtons she'd come straight back to him if he were lonely, for to her there was only one real Golden Young Man, and that was her darling, darling father.

Yet as Mr. Ladd shut the study door, and returned to his seat beside the lamp, he knew in spite of himself that he had said good-by. His guardianship was over; near, now, was that unknown man, that unknown rival, for whose pleasure he had lavished twenty years of incessant care and devotion. Though Ladd was hardly a believer, the wish came out with the fervency of a prayer: "Oh, my God, let him be worthy of her!"

CHAPTER III

She did write every day; sometimes the merest snippets, sometimes long, graphic letters, full of the new life and the new people. Her début had been an immense success. Eddie Phelps, a horrid, tallowy, patronizing person, but socially a dictator, had put the stamp of his approval on her, and she had managed to receive it and not burst--which, if Papa only knew it, was a very remarkable feat. But, anyway, she had been hall-marked "sterling," and was enjoying herself furiously. And the young men were so different from Carthage, so much more polished and elegant--and pertinacious. Washington young men simply didn't know what "No" meant, and it was like shoveling snow to get rid of them. But Aunt Sarah was a regular White Wings, and the poor, the detrimental, and the fast--every one, in fact, who wasn't a first-class parti with references from his last place--got carted away before he knew what had struck him.

And Aunt Sally! "Why, Papa, we didn't know her at all. She is as young as I am, and twice as eager, and dances her stockings through every other night. Washington is divided between the people who hate her, and the people who love her, and they put a tremendous zip into either end of it. What she really wants is to marry me at the cold end, and strengthen her position as she calls it; and though I say it, who shouldn't, the cold-end young men are coming in fast. When one proposes to me, she calls it a scalp, and looks, oh, so pleased! But if I see any of them working up to that I try to stop him in time, though it's awfully exciting just the same. That's why I've only three scalps to report instead of about eight. Oh, Papa, what fun it is!"

In time her letters began to change, and there were little signs of disillusionment. One was almost a tract on worldliness, in which she talked about Vanity Fair, and dancing on coffins, and the inner hunger of the soul. There were also increasing references to J. Whitlock Pastor, always coupled with "ideals." J. Whitlock Pastor was quite a remarkable young man of thirty, with "a beautiful austerity," and "fine mind." His people were immensely wealthy, and immensely fashionable--even in Carthage there was a sacredness about the name of Pastor--and Phyllis said there was something splendid in his taking up forestry as a life work, and devoting himself to it, heart and soul, when he had been born--not with a silver spoon--but with a bird's-egg diamond in his mouth.

If there was anything to be said against J. Whitlock Pastor, it was that he was almost too good to be true. He wanted to leave the world better for his having been, and all that--and seemed to have what might be called an excruciating sense of duty. "A very quiet and rather a sad man," wrote Phyllis, "whom one might easily mistake for a muff if one hadn't seen him on horseback. He rides superbly, and I never saw a ring-master in a circus who could come anywhere near him."

All this worked up to a telegram that reached Mr. Ladd a few weeks later: "I accepted him last night, and, Papa, please come on quick and bless us."

Mr. Ladd hastened to Washington as speedily as his affairs would allow, which was five days later, and arrived just in time to dress for the introductory dinner at Mrs. Pastor's--J. Whitlock's mother's. He tried to imagine he was delighted, and caught his daughter in his arms with the enthusiasm of a stage parent. But Phyllis was so pale, so calm, so undemonstrative that he hardly knew what to make of her. He put her cool indifference down to Washington training, but still it puzzled and troubled him. It was so unlike a girl who had met her fate--so unlike another pair of lovers that had been so much in his head that day--Genivieve de Levancour, and a certain Bob Ladd. The contrast gave him a certain sense of foreboding.

In the carriage she was very silent, and nestled against him like a tired child. He repeated his congratulations; he strove again to be delighted; joked, not without effort, about the exalted position of the Pastors, and what a come-down it was for them to marry such poor white trash as the Ladds. Then it occurred to him that perhaps this jarred upon her! "Forgive me, Phyllis," he said humbly. "I--I hardly know what I am saying. I--I guess I'm trying to hide what this recalls to me--what this means to me."

She pressed his hand, and snuggled it against her cheek, but still shrouded herself in reserve.

"Papa," she said suddenly, "you'd stick to me through thick and thin, wouldn't you? Whatever I did--however foolish or silly I might be, you'd always love me, wouldn't you?"

"By God, yes," he answered, "though why on earth you should ask--"

"Only to make sure," she exclaimed, brightening. "Just to be certain that my old-dog father hadn't changed. Now say bow-wow, just to show that you haven't!"

Mr. Ladd, very much mystified, and not at all comfortable in his mind, obediently bow-wowed. It set Phyllis off in a peal of laughter, and it was with apparent hilarity that both descended at the Pastor's front door.

Whitlock's mother received them in the drawing-room. She was a stately, gray-haired woman, with a subdued voice, and a graciousness that was almost oppressive. Her guests had hardly been seated, when J. Whitlock himself appeared, and excused himself, with faultless and somewhat unnecessary courtesy, for not having been found awaiting their arrival. Mr. Ladd saw before him a tall, thin young man, of a polished and somewhat cold exterior, with a dryness of expression that was positively parching. Like one of those priceless enamels of the Orient, one felt that J. Whitlock Pastor had been roasted and glazed, roasted and glazed, roasted and glazed until the substance beneath had become but a matter of conjecture. The enamel was magnificent--but where was the man? Mr. Ladd, with a choking sense of disappointment, began to suspect there was none.

J. Whitlock opened the proceedings much as the czar might have opened a Duma. He recited a neat, dry, commonplace little address of welcome, and sounded a key-note of constraint and formality that was rigorously maintained throughout the evening. The address was seconded by the empress-dowager, and then it was Mr. Ladd's turn to swear loyalty to the throne, and burst into cheers. He did so as well as he could, but it was a poor, lame attempt; and when, almost in despair, he went up to J. Whitlock, and impulsively wrung the Imperial hand, the very atmosphere seemed to shiver at the sacrilege.

A frigid dinner followed in a dining-room of overpowering magnificence. There was a high-class conversation to match, interrupted from time to time by a small British army--small in number--but prodigal of inches, and calves, and chest-measure--who stealthily pounced on plates, obtruded thumbs, and stopped breathing when they served you. Mr. Ladd, smarting with an inexplicable resentment, compounded of jealousy, scorn and chagrin, writhed in his chair, and tugged at his mustache, and gazed from his daughter to his prospective son-in-law with melancholy wonder.

Yet Phyllis seemed to be perfectly contented, sitting there so demure, elegant and self-possessed at the terrible board of the Romanoffs. Mr. Ladd could have wished that she had shown a little more assertion, a little more--well, he hardly knew what but something to offset the unconscious arrogance of these people, and to show them that a Ladd was as good as they were, if not a darned sight better! But Phyllis, if anything, was too much the other way. There was a humility in her sweetness, her deference, her touching desire to please. To her father she seemed to have accepted too readily, too gratefully, her beggar-maid position at that kingly table.

But as he watched her some doubts assailed him. He remembered how singular she had been in the carriage, how over-wrought, and unlike her usual self. Her eyes, fixed so constantly on her intended's, had in them more pleading than love; more a curious, studying, seeking look, as though she, too, was trying to penetrate the enamel, and see beneath. But her voice softened as she spoke to him; she smiled and colored at his allusions to "us" and "our"; she shyly referred to their projected honeymoon in the western forests, and spoke rapturously of galloping through the glades at the head of twenty rangers, all sunburned and jingling and armed to the teeth.

What was an old fellow to make of it, anyway? One could bring up a girl from a baby, and still not know her. Mr. Ladd was very much perplexed.

After dinner, the ladies left the two men at their coffee, and retired. The British Army set out liqueurs, cigars, a spirit-lighter, and then noiselessly vanished. Now that they were alone together, Mr. Ladd hoped that J. Whitlock would unbend; hoped that the long-deferred process of making his acquaintance would begin. He might not be an ideal son-in-law, but it was horse-sense to make the best of him. You had to take the son-in-law God gave you. Besides, the man that Phyllis loved was bound to have a fine nature; and if he could unveil it to her, he surely could unveil it to her father. So, between sips of Benedictine, and through the haze of a good cigar, Mr. Ladd essayed the task.

He commenced by describing his own early manhood; his courtship of Phyllis' mother; his marriage in face of a thousand difficulties. Again and again he faltered; it was all so sacred; his eyes were often moist--but he persevered; he had to win this young man, and how better than by appealing to the sentiment that unites all true lovers? The elderly railroad president could not bear utterly to be left out of these two young lives. His daughter was lost to him; at best a husband leaves little for a father; this stranger had it now in his power to make that little almost nothing. Small wonder, then, that Mr. Ladd struggled for his shred of happiness; put pride on one side; exerted every faculty he possessed to attract the friendship of Phyllis' master. For a husband is a master; a woman is the slave of the man she loves; forty centuries have changed nothing but the words, and the size and metal of the ring.

It used to be of iron, and was worn on the neck.

Mr. Ladd's gaze, that had been fixed in vacancy, of a sudden fell full on J. Whitlock's face. What he saw was an expression so cold, so delicately supercilious, so patiently polite, that he stopped as suddenly as though he had been struck by lightning. Was it for this, then, that he had opened this holy of holies, into which no human being before had ever looked,--this inmost recess of his soul, now profaned, it seemed to him, for ever? For a second his shame transcended even his disappointment. He had dishonored the dead, besides dishonoring himself. He had allowed this tall, thin, bored creature to hear things too dear, too intimate, to be spoken even to Phyllis. My God, what an old fool he had been, what an ass!

"Had we not better join the ladies?" inquired J. Whitlock, after the pause had lasted long enough to redeem the proposal from any appearance of rudeness.

"I suppose we had," returned Mr. Ladd, in a tone as dry as his host's; and together they both sought the drawing-room.

A long, long hour followed before, in decency, a very flustered, embittered, and upset middle-aged gentleman could dare to say his adieux. From the frescoed ceiling the painted angels must certainly have wept at the sight beneath; or, if they did not weep, they surely yawned. The labored conversation, the make-believe cordiality, the awful gap when a topic fell to rise no more, certainly made it an evening that never could be forgotten. Blessed Briton who said: "Mr. Ladd's kerridge!" Twice blessed Briton who handed them into it, and uttered the magic word "'Ome!"

"Did you like him, Papa?"

"A delightful young man, Phyllis, perfectly delightful."

"And his mother?"

"Charming, charming!"

"I never saw either one of them unbend as they did to you."

"It was a great compliment. I appreciate it."

"You don't think I could have done better?"

"No, indeed. Not if you love him."

"Papa?"

"Yes, dearest?"

"Papa, I've done something awful. Shut your eyes, and I'll try to tell you."

"Phyllis, what do you--?"

"Are they shut--tight--tight?"

"Yes, but I don't--"

"Now, don't talk, Papa, but listen like a good little railroad president, and I'll tell you what I think of J. Whitlock Pastor, and that is he's unbearable! No, no, I'm not joking--I mean it, I mean it! He's unbearable, and his mother's unbearable, and the forty yards around them is unbearable, and I wouldn't marry him for anything under the sun, no, not if he was the only man in the world except the clergyman who would do it; and Papa, I'm so mortified and ashamed and miserable that I don't know what to do. Didn't you notice me to-night, and how shy and crushed I was, sitting there like a little Judas, and feeling, oh, horribly wicked and treacherous? It was all I could do not to scream out that I hated him, just as loud as I could: I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!--I was trying to tell you that when we started, but I didn't have the courage. I wanted you to see him for yourself; to realize how unendurable he is; I--I--wanted you not to blame me too much, Papa."

To Mr. Ladd it was like a reprieve at the gallows' foot. Blame her? Why, elation ran to his head like wine; he caught her in his arms and hugged her; had he saved her from drowning he could not have been more passionately thankful. His opinion of the young man came out in a torrent of unvarnished Anglo-Saxon. To every epithet he applied to him, Phyllis added a worse. In their wild humor, and bubbling over with a laughter that verged on the hysterical, they vied with each other in tearing J. Whitlock to pieces.

"But, Phyllis, Phyllis, how did you ever come to do it?"

"I don't know, Papa."

"But you must have liked him?"

"I thought I did."

"Was it the attraction of his position--his name--and all that kind of thing?"

"No, I thought I loved him."

"How could you have thought such a thing?"

"It's incredible, but I did, Papa. I loved him right up to the moment when he kissed me. And how could I stop him after having looked down at my toes, and said 'Yes.' He's been kissing me for five days--and, Papa, I hate him."

The fierceness she put into these three words was vitriolic. Disgust, revulsion, outraged pride flooded her cheek with carmine.

"Papa, I can't make any excuses for myself. It's not prudery; it's not that; but somehow the real me didn't like the real him, and that's all I can say about it!"

"You'll have to write to him, and break it off."

"But what am I to tell him, Papa? It's so awful and humiliating for him. I guess I'll just put it down to insanity in my family."

"But, good Lord, we haven't any--we've a very decent record."

"Oh, Papa, I simply must have been insane to have got engaged to him.--I'll write him a beautiful letter of regret, and inclose a doctor's certificate!"

Her incorrigible humor was again asserting itself. She outlined the letter, her eyes dancing with merriment. Mr. Ladd, in no mood to criticize these swift transitions, joined in whole-heartedly. They laughed and laughed till the tears came, and arrived home like noisy children from a party.

Mrs. Fensham, in a very décolleté gown, and looking like a sylph of twenty-five, was waiting for the carriage to take her to a ball. She swam up in front of Bob, and raised her two little hands to his shoulders--a graceful gesture, and one she was very fond of.

"And you found him a perfect dear, didn't you?" she murmured ecstatically.

"Well, I don't know that I did," faltered Brother Bob, placing a kiss on the top of her head. "The fact is, Sally, we've decided to call it off!"

"Bob, you haven't broken the engagement!"

Her lisping voice turned suddenly metallic. She stared from her brother to her niece, a sylph no longer, but a woman of forty-five, pale with apprehension and anger.

"Phyllis has made a mistake, that's all," he said. "He looked very nice in the show-window, but now we are going to take him back, and get a credit-slip for something we want more."

"A new automobile coat for Papa," put in Phyllis mischievously.

"And you can both laugh about it!" exclaimed Aunt Sarah in appalled accents. "Laugh at throwing over J. Whitlock Pastor! Oh, you little Carthage nobodies--haven't you any sense at all--don't you know what you are doing--isn't he as much a duke with us as any Marlborough or Newcastle in England? He was too good; he was too nice; he wasn't enough of a snob to blow and brag--and that's what he gets for it, the 'No' of a silly girl, who'd prefer a barber's block clerk to the greatest gentleman in America!"

She tottered to the mantelpiece and burst into tears--the first tears she had shed in twenty worldly and scheming years--and the only tears that did attend the rupture of the Pastor-Ladd engagement.

CHAPTER IV

There was the usual chatter, the usual slanders, the usual innuendoes that follow such an event. Charming little assassins, in Paquin gowns and picture hats flew about sticking pins into Phyllis' reputation. Those worse gossips, the clubs, were not behindhand either; and old gentlemen, who ought to have known better, unctuously laid their heads together and passed the lies along. It is so much the custom to dwell on the good side of human nature that we are apt to forget the existence of another--that cruel malignancy, which, in embryo, may be seen any time at the monkey-house in the Zoo. In its more developed human form it jostles at our elbows every day.

The American duke himself behaved with a beautiful propriety. Publicly he took all the blame on his own shoulders, and hied him to the western wilds to scourge the campers and cigarette-smokers who infested his beloved forests. Thus congenially employed, he was quite willing to wait for Time's healing hand to do the rest. In a year he was completely reënameled, and took a finer polish than ever.

Mr. Ladd hoped that Phyllis would return to Carthage to hide her head from the storm. But she insisted on staying in Washington, and "seeing it through," which she did with the prettiest defiance imaginable, returning pin for pin with gay insouciance, and dancing the night out in all manner of lions' dens. In her veins there ran the blood of that old aristocratic South--of those fighting-cock Frenchmen, dark, lithe and graceful, who had loved, gambled and gone the pace with headlong recklessness and folly; of those fiery Spaniards, more grave and still more dissolute, to whom pride was the very breath of life, and who could call out a man and shoot him with the stateliest of courtesy.--What a race it had been in the heyday of its wildness and youth, the torment of women, the terror of men, alluring even now through the haze of by-gone pistol-smoke! And though it has been dead and gone these hundred and fifty years, the strain yet persists in some Phyllis here, some stripling there, attenuated perhaps, but far, far from lost.

Even to-day such intrepidity casts its spell. The eyes that are unafraid, the mouth that can smile in peril, do we not still admire their possessor--and that most of all in a young, high-bred and exceedingly attractive woman? Washington certainly did in Phyllis Ladd--young-man Washington, that is,--and they trooped after her in cohorts, and would have drunk champagne from her little slipper had she let them.

Months rolled by. The tide of Phyllis' letters rose in Mr. Ladd's drawer--countless pages in that fine girlish hand, full of zest, full of the joy of living, revealing, intimate, and silent only in regard to the most important matter of all--J. Whitlock's successor.

Mr. Ladd knew what value to set on her assertion that she was "tired of men." He waited, not without jealousy, for preference to show itself; reading and re-reading every allusion that might afford a clue. If she wrote that "the ambassador was a very kind old man, with aristocratic legs, and a profile like a horse, who singled me out for much more than my share of attention"--Mr. Ladd would forthwith look up that ambassador; get his diplomatic rating; and worry about his being sixty-six, and twice a widower.

One day, quite out of the sky, a card was brought him inscribed, "Captain Baron Sempft von Piller, First Attaché, Imperial German Embassy, Washington." As a rule, applicants to see Mr. Ladd had first to state their business, and undergo a certain amount of sifting before they were admitted. In this manner inventors were weeded out, cranks, people with a grievance against the claims' department, book-agents, labor-leaders, charity-mongers, bogus clergymen who had been refused half-rates--all that host who buzzed like mosquitoes outside Mr. Ladd's net. But the First Attaché of the Imperial German Embassy was given an open track, which he took with a military stride, and the clank of an invisible sword.

Mr. Ladd turned in his chair, and beheld a florid, tall, fine-looking young man of twenty-eight or so, with the stiff carriage of a Prussian officer, and unshrinking blue eyes that had been trained not to droop in the face of anything.

The captain wasted no time in preliminaries. In a carefully-rehearsed sentence, innocent of all punctuation, and delivered in a breath, he said: "It is not my intention to trespass overlong on the time of I know a much-engrossed gentleman but if you will kindly grant me three minutes I shall be happy to convince you of the integrity of my character and the honor of my intentions Mr. Ladd Sir."

Taking another breath that swelled out his magnificent chest at least four inches, he resumed: "This I now lay before you is my birth-certificate these are the reports on my gymnasium courses at Pootledam respectively marked good very good indifferent good very good till inspired by the thought of a military career I entered on probation subsequently made permanent by the vote of my fellow-officers the tenth regiment of Uhlans which after six years of honorable commendation I left regretted by every one to place myself in the diplomatic service Mr. Ladd Sir."

Taking a third breath, he went on:

"By kindly glancing at this letter which I have the honor to bear from my esteemed chief whom I am proud also to call my friend you will see to your complete satisfaction that I am no needy adventurer trading on an historic and greatly-renowned name but a man of substance promise and ability with the assurance of reaching if I live the highest place it is in the power of my country and my emperor to grant Mr. Ladd Sir."

He was inhaling his fourth breath when Mr. Ladd managed to interpose a speech of his own.

"I am delighted to see you, captain," he said, "and I shall be happy to oblige you in any way I can. Perhaps you desire to inspect what is really one of the most perfect double-track railroad systems in this country, operated at the minimum of expense, and with an efficiency that makes the K. B. and O. very favorably regarded by our public. If it falls below the high standard of your own government-owned lines, you must credit us with a traffic at least sixteen-fold larger per mile than that of yours. I will ask you to bear this in mind before making too critical a comparison."

A boyish and most engaging smile overspread the captain's features, and for the moment he almost forgot how to go on with the set speech he had learned so carefully. But he stiffened his shoulders, threw back his head, and continued, like a student up for a difficult and trying examination: "Before paying my addresses to one whose youth beauty and charm has taken captive a heart hitherto untouched by the sentiment of love I judged it only right as a gentleman and a former German officer before seeking to compromise the lady's inclination in any way whatever to provide myself with the necessary proofs of my unassailable position and honor and lay them with profound respect in the hands of her highly-considered and greatly-esteemed father Mr. Ladd Sir."

Mr. Ladd nearly fell off his chair at this announcement; but controlling himself, he bent hastily over the papers, and managed to hide his stupefaction. He was very much bewildered, and though favorably impressed by Von Piller, had the American's distrust of all foreigners, particularly if titled. The word "baron" conjured up horrible stories of imposture and mortification; hungry fortune-hunters; shameless masqueraders preying on credulity and snobbishness, always with debts at home and often wives; old-world wolves ravening for the trusting lambs of the new.

But the ambassador's letter was most explicit, and its authenticity could be tested in an hour. The craftiest of wolves would not dare to take such a risk. Wonder of wonders, it seemed, too, that the baron was rich--one of the Westphalian iron kings--with great landed estates besides. Yes, he was certainly a very eligible young man. No harm could be done by rising and shaking hands with him. Mr. Ladd did so, impressively.

"You are very punctilious," he said. "I wish we had more of that ourselves. Your conduct is manly and straightforward, and I esteem it highly. Frankly, I should prefer my daughter to marry an American--but if a foreigner is to win her, I should be very happy to have that foreigner you."

The baron, who was now quite out of set-speeches, and had to flounder in English of his own making, murmured: "I lofe her--oh, how I lofe her! My friends they say, 'crazy, crazy,' but I say, 'no, this tells me I am wise.'"

And with that he pressed his hand to his heart, with an air of such simplicity and devotion that Mr. Ladd was touched.

"You're a fine young man," he said, "and I wish you luck."

"You will speak well of me to her?--Manly, straightforward--you will say those words?"

"With pleasure, Baron."

The florid face beamed; the blue eyes were shining; Mr. Ladd remembered the tendency of foreigners to embrace, and hastened to put the desk between them.

"I will go now," exclaimed Von Piller. "I will what you call, get busy. I will lay at her little feet the heart of a man that adores her!"

"Don't be in too big a hurry," said the railroad president kindly. "Take an old fellow's advice; begin by trying to make a good impression."

Von Piller smiled complacently.

"Already have I done it," he remarked. "She likes me very mooch. The battle is half-won, and all I need is General Papa to reinforce."

It suddenly shot through General Papa's mind that the baron was not so simple as he appeared. Mr. Ladd's first feeling of compassion for a hopeless suit changed to a grinding jealousy. It was intolerable to him that anybody should carry off his precious daughter, and this amiable young man at once took on the hue of an enemy. Their farewell was stiff and formal; and when, two hours later, the confirming telegram arrived from the German embassy, Mr. Ladd hotly consigned Captain Baron Sempft von Piller to the devil.

CHAPTER V

Von Piller had not under-estimated the "good impression." It was certainly good enough for him to become, two days later, the successful suitor for Phyllis' hand. The engagement was in the papers, and everybody was happy--save Mr. Ladd. On top of his natural resentment at any poor human biped in trousers daring to aspire to his daughter, there were two letters from Washington that embittered him beyond measure. The one was from Phyllis; the other from Sarah Fensham; and though very different in expression their gist was the same. He was besought not to come to Washington.

"Dear, darling old daddy," wrote Phyllis, "The whole thing is such gossamer, so faint and delicate and eider-downish, that one belittling look of yours, one unguarded and critical word--would utterly destroy it. Of course, Sempft is not the Golden Young Man, and I know it very well, but I really do like him lots, and if you will give it six weeks to 'set,' as masons say, I believe that it will turn very nicely into love. But just now--! Oh, Papa, the poor little building would topple so easily--and you know how hard I have found it already to stay too close to those big, greedy, grasping creatures who want to race off with one as a poodle does with a stick. Not that Sempft isn't awfully nice and considerate, but I know there will be times when--! Oh, Papa, be patient, and give me a chance, for if you should hurry over and catch me in the right humor, I would send him away so fast that he would think he was fired out of a Zalinski cannon!"

Sarah's letter was in a more wounding strain: "For Heaven's sake, stay away, my dearest brother, or you will ruin everything. That girl of yours is too fastidious and wilful for belief, and from the bottom of my heart I am sorry for the poor dear baron, who is making such a goddess out of an icicle. She is possessed of the same insane pride that you have, and is quite of your own opinion that nobody is good enough for her. After bringing her up all wrong, don't add to your folly by breaking off a second splendid match. Stay in Carthage, and try to acquiesce in the fact that sooner or later she is bound to marry somebody; and thank your stars that it is somebody to be proud of. I know she is too good for any one but an archangel, but still, steel yourself to accept a young, wealthy, handsome, brilliant, accomplished, high-born and distinguished son-in-law, who has the world at his feet. Naturally to you it is an intolerable prospect. I don't ask you to say that it is not. But for Heaven's sake, remain in Carthage, and keep your sulks at a distance."

After his first anger had passed, Mr. Ladd took himself seriously to task, and forced that other self of his to admit the undeniable justice of both these letters. He was a cantankerous, cross-grained old curmudgeon, and the right place for a cantankerous, cross-grained old curmudgeon was unquestionably--Carthage. If he were so utterly unable to make allowances for youth and immaturity--and he had to assent to the fact that he was unable--he ought, at any rate, to have the grace to keep his fault-finding face turned to the wall. Phyllis was right. Sarah was right. Everybody was right, except a hot-headed old fellow, with a sick and jealous heart, who, if he did not restrain himself, would end by marring his daughter's future beyond recall.--Yes, he would hold himself in; he would do nothing to incur reproach; he would let things take their course, and pretend to be a sort of Sunny Jim, smilingly regarding events from Carthage.

It was none too easy an undertaking, but he was sustained in some degree by the hurried little scrawls that reached him, day by day, from Phyllis.--It was all going splendidly. She was so proud of Sempft. He was everywhere such a favorite. He was so high-spirited, and manly--and so crazily in love with her. It was nice to have him so crazily in love with her. It was nice to lead such a big, swaggering soldier by a pink ribbon--to pin him with a little, girlish ticket marked "reserved"--to see him jump at the mere raising of an eyebrow when some embezzling young débutante had sneaked him away into a corner.--Then there was the engagement ring she could not pull her glove over, with diamonds so large and flashing that they'd light the gas; there was the gorgeous pearl-necklace, which Aunt Sarah would not allow her to accept yet; there was the emperor's wonderful cablegram of congratulation, all about Germany and America, as though the two countries were engaged, instead of merely she and Sempft. It made her feel so important, so international--and horrid, shabby men snap-shotted her on the street like a celebrity, walking backwards with cameras in their hands while everybody fell over everybody to see what was going on!--Oh, yes, Papa, she was saving it up to brag about to her grandchildren--when she was a tiresome old lady in a castle corner, with nothing to do but bore chubby little German aristocrats.

Her gaiety and sprightliness never wavered. Her content, her happiness were transparent. If her ardor for Baron von Piller seemed never to pass the big-brother limits, it might be assumed she concealed her feelings, and was either too shy or too modest to betray them. Mr. Ladd, who read her letters with a microscope, noticed the omission, and--wondered. His misgivings were not untinged with pleasure. Did she really love this man, he asked himself again and again? It was impossible to be certain. Had it not been for the J. Whitlock Pastor episode he would have been in less doubt. But with this in mind, he could not help wondering--wondering a great deal.

The answer to these conjectures came with a startling unexpectedness. One afternoon, on his return home, he found the front door open, and an expressman staggering up to it with a trunk. In the hall were five more trunks, and Henry and Edwards, both in shirt-sleeves, were departing for the upper regions with another. Before Mr. Ladd could ask a question there was a swift rush of skirts, an inroad of barking dogs, and a radiant young person was hanging to his neck with round, bare arms. It was Phyllis, her eyes dancing, her face flushed with the romp she had been having with the dogs, her hair in wild disorder, and half down her back.

"I'm home, Papa," she cried, "home for good, and in such awful disgrace you oughtn't to take me in! Yes, your wayward girl has crept back to the dear old farm, and though the snow was deep, and all she had was a crust from a crippled child--she's here, Papa, at last, and, oh, oh, oh, so glad!--Down, Watch, down! Teddy, you'll get one in the nose if you don't stop!--Oh, the little wretch has got my slipper off!"

Teddy scampered away with it, and there was a lively tussle before it was recovered, with all manner of laughter and slaps and growls.

"But Captain von Piller?" demanded Mr. Ladd. "Is he coming? Is he here, too?"

"No, Papa," she returned, "he isn't here, and he never will be here, and I left him screaming till you could hear it all over Washington. Just howling, Papa, and calling for warships! And Aunt Sarah was hollering, too, till the only dignified thing left was to tie my sheets together and let myself out, which I did before there was a riot!"

"Phyllis, you don't mean that your engagement--"

"Hush, Papa, we can't talk here.--Come upstairs to your den."

There she heaped up a dozen pillows on the divan; settled herself with Watch's head on her lap, and Wally and Teddy beside her; asked if there were any chocolate creams, and resigned herself to there being none; and then, pushing back the soft, thick hair from her eyes, told her father to sit at her feet, and not to crowd a valuable dog.

"Yes, all that's finished," she said. "It was splendid and international, and all that, but I could not stand it any more. He was just like poor Whitlock, only worse. I don't know how to describe it, Papa, for he was awfully correct and all that--I wouldn't for worlds have you think he wasn't--only he expected all the conventional things that go with being engaged, and wanted me to nestle against his waistcoat, and, and--pant with joy I suppose--and whisper what a beautiful, wonderful, irresistible, bubble-bubble-bubble person he was--and shyly kiss his hand, probably--Oh, well, Papa, I tried to, and I didn't like it, and in spite of myself it seemed wrong and humiliating--and he was so large, and pink, and German, and so much of him rolled over his collar, and everybody seemed in such a conspiracy to poke us into dark corners and leave us there, and so finally I just said, 'No, I've made a mistake, and here's your ring, and here's the cablegram from the Kaiser, and here's the photograph of your dead mother--and would you mind getting out of my life, please?--and friends are requested to accept this the only intimation.'"

"And how did he take it?"

"He wouldn't take it--that was the trouble. He made a frightful fuss. He couldn't have made more if we had been really married, and I had announced my intention of running away with the elevator-boy! He scrunched my hands till I thought the bones would break, and might have thrown me out of the window if tea hadn't come in the nick of time. Then he went off to Aunt Sarah, with the German idea of stinging up the family--as though twenty aunts could make me love a man I didn't--and succeeded so well that she practically drove me out. Oh, her position! I never heard the end of it--and of course she said I had ruined it, and that she never could hold up her head again. The only thing to do was to run. So I ran and ran and ran--to my old dad!"

She slipped her hand down, and held her father's collar as though he, too, were a dog, and gave it an affectionate little tug.

"My darling old dad," she murmured.

"It's not so bad to have one, is it?" he said. "To know where there is a snug harbor, and an old fellow who thinks you are perfect, and everything you do is right. You will get a lot of criticism for this, and I suppose Washington will boil over--but to my thinking, you couldn't have done better, and I am thankful for your courage. If you don't love a man, for God's sake, don't marry him, even if you're both walking up the aisle, and he's twiddling the ring!--To tell the truth, I wasn't a bit partial to Von Piller, and found it pretty hard to sit tight, and be told he was forty different kinds of a paragon."

"My darling Papa," she observed sweetly, "you're never going to like anybody who wants to marry me, and it's sure to cost me some worry when the right person does come.--Do you suppose he ever will?"

"Oh, I guess so."

"In spite of the awful record I have made? Aunt Sarah says I am branded as a coquette, and no decent man will ever have anything more to do with me."

"Rubbish."

Phyllis fondled Watch's ears, which were long and silky, and tried the effect on dog-beauty of overlapping them on his head.

"Papa, what's the matter with me? Why haven't I any sense? Why am I not like other girls?"

"You are very fastidious."

"Yes, that's true."

"And very proud."

"Yes, inherited."

"And demand a great deal."

"Yes--everything."

"You are in love with love--and are rather in a hurry."

"Oh, Papa--shut your eyes--I am love-hungry. I want to love--I'm crazy to love. Only--only--"

"The right man hasn't arrived?"

"I hope it's that. If it isn't, I'm going to have a bad time of it. It seems so useless; this getting engaged and then hating the poor wretch.--It's such a terrible waste of energy and heart-beats all round."

"Dad included."

"What a nuisance I am, to be sure! I've exhausted everybody's patience except yours, and that's getting thin. It will end in my living alone in a shanty with nothing but dogs, and the faded photographs of the men I've thrown over. Aunt Sarah called me an awful name; called me an engagement-buster; said that the habit would grow and grow till I was a horrid old maid with nothing to tease but a parrot.--Though I'd love to have a parrot--two of them--and raise little parrots! Little fluffy baby parrots must be adorable. Papa, let's buy a pair to-morrow, and you'll teach the he-one to swear, and I'll teach the she-one to be gentle and submissive and always have her own way. And Papa--?"

"Yes, dearest?"

"You aren't cross with me, are you?"

"Not a bit."

"And I may live with you, and add up your bills, and bring you your slippers, and dream all day of that Golden Young Man who doesn't exist?"

"Oh, don't say that--He does, Phyllis."

"Papa, he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't!"

CHAPTER VI

Socially speaking Carthage was as distant from Washington as is Timbuctoo. While the Von Piller hurricane was raging in the nation's capital, the Carthage barometer showed "fair and rising." To a storm-tossed little mariner, it was like gaining the lee of some palmy isle, and casting anchor in still water. The islanders, too, if a trifle homespun and provincial, were the most delightful people, and unspoiled by any intrusion of a higher civilization. Phyllis had not realized how entirely her outlook had changed until she returned to her own home. She saw her former school fellows with new eyes, and while she could not forbear smiling at some of their ways, she liked them better than ever before.--They, on their side, regarded with awe this fashionable young beauty, who had jilted a Pastor, and given the mitten to a real, live, guaranteed baron, and who had descended in their midst, like a racer in a paddock of donkeys.

Some of them felt very donkeyfied indeed. Tom Fergus, a gelatinous young man, somewhat forward and familiar, who was alluded to in the local papers as "one of the leaders of the younger set" said she was "raving pretty, but, my stars, what was a fellow to talk to her about?" Billy Phillpots, who worked in his father's store (many of the young fellows "worked in his father's store") vetoed her as "insufferably stuck up," he having escorted her home one night, and failed to extort the usual toll at the garden-gate.--The good night kiss at the garden-gate was quite a Carthage institution, and as innocent as the kiss of an early Christian.

Life in Carthage was altogether Early Christian--for the young people of the better families. They met every night, and moved in flocks, like sparrows, alighting first in one house and then another--taking up the carpets for dancing, improvising suppers, crowding round the fireplaces to sing, and tell stories. Presumably there was some social line drawn somewhere; but money at least counted for little, and anybody that was "nice" was allowed in. And it must be said, on the whole, that they were remarkably "nice," and very much a credit to high-class democracy. The boys were well-mannered, brotherly and respectful; the girls charming in their blitheness and gaiety. Occasionally there was a match, and a couple disappeared as completely as though they had fallen into the river and been swept away. You couldn't marry, and still be a sparrow. No, indeed! You passed into another world, and six months after the sparrows would hardly know you on the street. One would not venture to say this was cruel--though it always came as a shock to the newly-wedded pair--it was just the sparrow way, that's all.

Phyllis was soon flying with the rest of them, and her ready adaptability caused her to be accepted in their midst without more than a passing hesitation. Hiding her riper and more womanly nature, and absorbing herself in this animated triviality, she pretended to be as much a sparrow as any of the flock, and no less lively and empty-headed. She was lonely, heart-tired, and very much adrift on the sea of life; and in the engaging childishness of these girls and boys, who, though of her own age, were mentally only up to her elbow, she found a sort of solace, a sort of peace. They kept her from thinking; their chatter and good spirits were exhilarating; the naïve admiration of the young men warmed, and yet did not disturb her.--Before her long flight to other skies, the little bird might well be thankful for the sparrows.

Spring came--summer. Her twenty-first birthday passed in the Adirondacks, where her father had a cottage in that wilderness of woods and lakes. She was in her twenty-second year now, and knew what it was to feel old--oh, so old! That she was able, by the laws of the land, to buy and hold real-estate seemed but a poor set-off to this encroachment of time--though her father repeatedly pointed out this new privilege the years had brought. She could marry, too, without his consent--another empty concession to maturity, considering there was no one to marry with or without it. Of course, there were a few silly babies running after her as though she were a woolly sheep--but no one that the wildest stretch of imagination could consider a man. Some of their fathers ran, too--stout widowers panting with the unaccustomed exertion,--but that was grotesque and disgusting. Far or wide, high or low, there wasn't a pin feather of the Golden Young Man. His noble race was extinct. He lived in books, but you never met him. Never, never. He had died out a million years ago, leaving nothing save a tradition for poets and novelists to paw over.

Quite convinced that it was a wretched world, Phyllis danced and rode, picnicked and camped out after deer in a bewitching Wild West costume, and was always the first to a party, and the last to leave it--all very much like one who found it tolerable enough. Some would have called her an insatiable little pleasure-seeker, and been wholly misled. "What are any of us doing except waiting for a man?" she once announced with shocking candor. "It's the fashion to talk of 'other interests' and we girls are all graduating, and slumming, and teaching little foreign Jews to sing 'My Country 'Tis of Thee, and Columbia, Gem of the Ocean, and learning to be trained nurses and bacteriologists--just in the effort to save our poor little self-respect. We ruin our complexions, dim our eyes, and spoil our nice hands--all the property of some future lord and master, whom we really are pilfering--and who's deceived? Who takes it seriously? We don't, who do it. Poof, what a pretense it is!--If you have to wait, why not two-step through it as I do, and be as happy as you can, like people snowed up in a train. That's what a young girl is--snowed up--and I only wish some one would come with a spade and dig me out!"

These racy confidences entertained and delighted her father, but on other people they often had a contrary effect. The truth from the lips of babes and sucklings, however phenomenal, is also disconcerting. Old women, who in private taught their daughters a revolting cynicism, and called it "putting them on their guard," were much overcome by Phyllis' frankness. It was "bold"; it was "unladylike"; it was "dreadful." They tore Phyllis to pieces, and prophesied the most awful things. It may be that they were right. Selfishness is a fine ballast, and an anxious regard for number one keeps many a little ship on an undeviating course. Phyllis was made to smart for her unconventional sayings, and they often came back to her, so distorted and coarsened by their travels, that her cheeks flushed with anger.

"There's one thing I am learning fast," she said, "and that is, all my friends seem to be men, and all my enemies, women--and I may as well get used to it now. I know there are a few exceptions either way, but it's substantially that, anyhow, and one might as well face up to it, and save trouble."

"I'm afraid you are what they call a man's woman, my dear," said Mr. Ladd.

"I'm glad of it," exclaimed Phyllis saucily. "I don't want to be any other kind of a woman, least of all one of those sneaking, cowardly, backbiting, hypocritical things. I don't wonder they used to whip them in the good old days. If men hadn't degenerated so terribly, they'd be whipping them now!"

Autumn saw her back in Carthage again. Aunt Sarah was begging to have her for another Washington winter, and was in a beautifully forgiving humor. The breaches in her social position had been repaired, and the Demon Want, confound him, was knocking loudly at the door of her elegant establishment--so that the hope of another visit, with its accompanying shower of Brother Bob's gold, loomed very attractively before these cold, blue eyes. But Phyllis could not be beguiled; she had no wish to repeat that mad winter; her mood was all the other way--for her big tranquil house, her books, her dogs, her horses, and long dreaming hours to herself, undisturbed. She had loved Washington, and had exhausted it. The strain of its business-like gaiety was not to be endured again. It was a factory of pleasure, and the hours over-long, the tasks over-hard. Aunt Sarah might ring the bell all she wished, but the factory that winter would be one toiler short. When a person has entered her twenty-second year, that advanced age brings with it a certain serenity unknown to wilder twenty. You are glad to lie back with a dog's head in your lap, and lazily watch the procession. Silly young men, choking in immense collars, no longer can keep you out of bed till three A.M. Let the new débutantes have that doubtful joy. Twenty-two preferred her book, and her silent rooms.--Not that Carthage was without its simple relaxations, but they were well spaced out, with long intervals between.

"Miss Daisy wants you on the 'phone, Miss."

"Oh, all right--I'm coming.--Hello, hello, hello--What a dear you are to ask me--A--matinée Wednesday? Love to!--What's it to be?"

"Oh, Phyllis, you won't be offended, will you, but I'm so poor, and their boxes are only five dollars, and will hold six, and they've promised to squeeze in three more chairs--and so I've invited nine--and it's in that cheap, horrid Thalia Theater, but nobody can hurt us in a box, and everybody says the play's wonderful, and you can eat peanuts, which you can't do in a real theater; and it's Moths, by Ouida, and Cyril Adair is the star, and he is so wonderfully handsome--oh, you must have seen his pictures in the barber-shop windows--and anyway, even if he isn't, the play is delightfully wicked--because I had such a fight with mama about it, and then Howard has been twice, which he wouldn't have done if it wasn't; and even if it isn't, how am I to give a theater-party on no more than five dollars? The Columbia boxes are fifteen, and so are the Lyceum's, and when they say six, it's six, and you simply couldn't dare to ask nine girls because they wouldn't let them in. But the Thalia man was so pleased and impressed that I believe he would have included ice-cream if I had asked him--and Phyllis?"

"Yes, darling."

"It would give such a lot of ginger to it, if you would lend me your carriage and the dog-cart--! Oh, I knew you would! What a comfort you are, Phyllis. I don't know how I'd get along without you, you are always so generous and obliging. Nettie Havens has volunteered tea at her house--just insisted on it when I told her. I guess that poor little five never went so far in all its little history! I can't think it ever ran a whole theater-party before, with carriages and teas. It's an awful tacky way of doing things, I admit, but what does it matter if we have a good time?--Yes, that's the only way to look at it, and you're a darling. Do you know I think Harry Thayre is sweet on--! Oh, bother, she says I've to ring off, or pay another nickel. If it was a man she'd let him have fifteen cents' worth! Well, good-by, good-by--!"

It was a pretty sight they presented in their box, a veritable flower-bed of young American womanhood. The bright, girlish faces, the laughter, the animation, the sparkling eyes, the ripples of merriment, the air of innocent bravado--all were in such contrast to the usual patrons of the Thalia that the house could not take its eyes off them. It was essentially a shop-girl-and-best-young-man theater, with a hoodlum gallery, and a general appearance of extreme youth. Those who did not chew gum were almost conspicuous, and a formidable young man with a voice of brass, perambulated the aisles with a large tray, and terrorized nickels and dimes from the pockets of swains. He had a humorous directness that made the price of immunity seem cheap at the money. It was worth a dime any time to escape him.

And the play?

It was a rousing love-story, crude, stilted, old-fashioned, but developed with a force and earnestness that Ouida has always possessed. The brutal Prince, the ill-used Princess, Corrèze, the idol of the public, the tenor whose voice has taken the world by storm, heart-broken and noble in his hopeless love--here were full-blooded situations to make the heart beat. And how nine of them did beat in that crowded box. And what scalding tears rolled down those youthful cheeks! And what little fists clenched as the Prince, passing all bounds, and incensed to frenzy, struck--positively struck--the adorable being who was clinging so desperately to honor and duty! Who could blame Corrèze for what was to follow? Assuredly not our nine rosebuds, who, if anything, found the splendid creature almost too backward, too self-sacrificing. But--!

And Cyril Adair, who played Corrèze with a fervid pathos that tore the heart out of your breast! Of course, you knew he had taken the world by storm. Of course you knew the public idolized him. Wasn't he the handsomest, manliest, most chivalrous fellow alive? Hadn't he a voice to melt a stone, or drive, as cutting as a rapier, through even a Prince? His firm chin, his faultless teeth, his strange, smoldering, compelling eyes, his vigorous yet graceful frame--small wonder that the Princess threw everything to the winds for such a man. Under the circumstances none of the nine would have waited half so long. The Princess' devotion to honor and duty seemed hardly less than morbid. Her patience under insults was positively exasperating. She clung to respectability with both hands--screamed, raged, but stuck to it as tight as a limpet--until a blow in the face, and the vilest of epithets from her brutal husband, toppled her finally to perdition--that is, if it were perdition to link the remainder of her life with that glorious being, and abandon everything for love.

The box applauded wildly, and led off the whole house. The curtain was made to rise again and again. Corrèze, advancing to the footlights, was left in no doubt as to where he had scored his heaviest hit, and rewarded those eager, girlish faces with a glance of his fine eyes, and a bow intended for them alone. Phyllis was the least enthusiastic of the party, and her silence during the first intermission was noisily commented on. She ate caramels slowly, and added nothing but monosyllables and an enigmatic smile to the rapturous demonstrations of her companions. But had they noticed her during the further course of the performance, they might have had something else to wonder at. With parted lips, and breath so faint that she seemed not to breathe at all--with a face paling to marble, and poignant with a curious and unreasoning distress, her eyes never quitted those of Cyril Adair, and fixed themselves on his in a stare so troubled, so fascinated, that her soul seemed to leave her body and to pass the footlights.

CHAPTER VII

The tea that followed was but a blurred memory, a confused recollection of noise and chatter, with a stab at the heart every time the actor's name was mentioned. She was thankful to get home, and lock herself in her room. She was in a tumult of shame, agitation, and an exquisite guilty joy. She partly undressed, and threw herself on her bed, shutting her eyes to win back the face and voice that had moved her to the depths. What had he done to her? A few hours before she had never known of his existence. The merest accident had revealed it to her, and now he was causing the blood to surge through her veins, and mantle her cheeks with dishonor. For it was dishonor. Everything in her revolted at such a position. His preposterous name struck fiercely on her pride and her sense of the ridiculous--Cyril Adair! How could any one, masquerading under such an egregious alias, dare to give her a moment's concern. She burst out laughing at herself, a contemptuous and bitter laugh. Cyril Adair! No dazzled little housemaid could have been sillier than she.

Yet his face haunted her, the tones of his voice, that strange, smoldering look in his eyes. How greedily that dreadful woman had kissed him! Those were no stage kisses. Before a thousand people she had abandoned herself to his arms, and fastened that painted mouth to his in an ecstasy. The audience thought it was acting. Phyllis, with a keener perception, saw the truth, and it made her savage with jealousy. That dreadful woman was shameless, crazy, beside herself. She had wooed him with every fiber of her body, pressing his head to her bosom, using every artifice to inflame him, and what had brought down the thunders of the house had not been a delineation of passion, but the naked thing itself.

It was horrible. Actors and actresses were horrible. No wonder they were despised even while they were run after. No wonder their lives were notorious. How could it be otherwise when--? But she envied that woman. Yes, she envied that woman, terrible as it was to admit it. Hated her, and envied her.--No, she pitied her as one of her own silly, headlong sex, cursed with this need to love. She was no longer young; she was thirty years old if a day; she was probably poor, disreputable, with nothing in the world but a trunk full of trashy finery, and no home but a cheap hotel. Love was the only thing she had, poor wretch, the only thing.

And Cyril Adair? It was hard to imagine him in private life except as Corrèze. But, of course, he wasn't Corrèze--that was absurd. Perhaps he would be so changed that one would scarcely know him on the street. She had heard of such disillusions--of tottering old men playing boys--and wasn't Bernhardt sixty? But a woman can tell, a woman who--who--cares. That vigorous manhood was no made-up pretense; such freshness, such warmth, such grace, could not be affected; he was certainly not much more than thirty, on the border line of youth and early-maturity when men, to her, possessed their greatest charm.

Lying there, in a swoon of shy delight, she allowed her fancy to fly away in dreams. Hand in hand, they trod a fairy-land of love and rapture. She stole sentences from his part, and made him repeat them to her alone--avowals, passionate and tender, in all the mellow sweetness of the voice that still reëchoed in her heart. He was Corrèze, and she, in the madness of her infatuation, had forced her way to him and thrown herself humbly at his feet. His love was not for her; she aspired to no such heights; but she had come to be his little slave; to follow him in his wanderings; to sleep across his door, and guard him while he slept. To be near him was all she asked. His little slave, who, when he was dejected and weary, would nestle beside him, and cover his hand with the softest kisses. She wanted no reward; she would try not to be jealous of those great ladies, though there would be times when she could not hold back her feelings, and his hand, as she drew it across her eyes, would be all wet with tears.

With her maid's knock at the door there came a sudden revulsion. Phyllis called to her to go away, unwilling to be seen in her defenselessness, and fearful of she knew not what. But the spell was broken. The bubble of that pretty fantasy vanished at one touch of fact. Harsh reality obtruded itself, and with it a pitiless self-arraignment. She had been swept off her feet by a third-class actor, in a third-class play, full of mawkish sentiment and unreality, in a third-class theater where they chewed gum, and ate apples while they wept over the hero's woes! A wave of self-disgust rose within her. She felt soiled, humiliated. How dared this cheap, showy creature reach out to take such liberties with a woman a thousand times above him? A creature, who in all probability ate with his knife, carried on low love affairs with admiring shop-girls, and practised his fascinations before a mirror, like a trick-monkey! Pah, the thought of her amorous imaginings reddened her cheeks, and consumed her with bitterness and shame. Where was her self-respect, her modesty? If wishes could have killed, there would have been no performance of Moths that night at the Thalia Theater.

At dinner she convulsed her father with an account of the play, in which neither Adair nor the audience were in any way spared. In her zest and mockery, it all took on a richly humorous aspect, and at times she was interrupted by her own silvery peals of laughter. To hear her, how could any one have guessed that she had been stirred as she had never been stirred before, and that the screaming farce she described had been in reality the one drama that had ever touched her? Was it in revenge for what she had suffered? Was it perversity? Or was it the attempt to conquer a physical attraction so irresistible that it tormented and terrified her even while she fought it with the best of all weapons--derision?

She passed a wretched night, tossing and turning on her bed in a whirl of emotions. She was haunted by that face which appeared to regard her with such reproach. Why had she betrayed him, it seemed to ask? The smoldering eyes, compelling always, were questioning and melancholy. That look, of such singular intensity, and with its strange and mysterious appeal to some other self of hers, again asserted its resistless power. She felt herself slipping back, in a langour of tenderness, to the mood that had shocked her so much before. In vain she repeated the saving words--threw out those little life-buoys to a swimmer drowning in unworthy love--"third-class actor"--"matinée hero"--"shop-girls' idol."--The drowning swimmer continued to drown, unhelped. The life-buoys floated away, and disappeared. Engulfing love, worthy or unworthy, drew down her spent body to the blue and coraled depths, and held her there, fainting with delight.

In our secret hearts, who has not, at some time or other, felt an unreasoning desire for one all unknown. Is love, indeed--true love, anything else? Glamour and idealization--we would not go far without either, and many, hand in hand, have trod the long path to the grave, and died happy with their illusions. Nature, to screen her coarser intent, fools us, little children that we are, with these pretty and poetic artifices. May it always be so, for God knows, it is an ugly world, and it does not do to peer too curiously behind the scenes.

There was a Mrs. Beekman that Phyllis knew, the widow of a distinguished lawyer, left with nothing, who had bravely set herself to earn her living as a milliner. It was to the credit of Carthage that Mrs. Beekman's altered fortunes had not impaired its regard for her. She kept her friends in spite of the "Hortense" over her shop, and a window full of home-made hats, which, of themselves, would have amply justified ostracism. It was no new thing for Mrs. Beekman to act as chaperon, and repay, in this small measure, many kindnesses that verged on charity. So she was not surprised, though much pleased and excited, when Phyllis telephoned, and asked her to go with her to the theater. "I liked the play so much I want to see it again," trickled that tiny voice into her ear, "and though it's at that awful Thalia Theater, we can sit in a box, and be quite safe and comfortable.--May I call for you a little after eight, dear?"

Mrs. Beekman, who was an indefatigable pleasure-seeker, consented with effusiveness. Phyllis was a darling to have thought of her. One of her girls had told her the play was splendid, and that the star--oh, what didn't she say about the star! Was Phyllis crazy about him, too? Hee, hee, all alike under their skins, as Kipling said! Not that she liked Kipling--he was so unrefined--but Miss Britt (you know Miss Britt, the silly one, with poodle eyes, and a poodle-fool if ever there was one) Miss Britt raved for hours about his "somber beauty." Wasn't it killing! If Adair wanted to, he could leave town with two box-cars of conquests! My, the milliners wouldn't have a girl left, and the ice-cream parlors would all have to shut.--At eight, dear?--And dress quietly so as not to attract attention? Hee, hee, it was quite a lark, wasn't it?

Sitting in the same box, on the same chair, but with a feeling as though years had elapsed since she had last been there, Phyllis again saw the curtain rise on Moths. The impulse that had brought her, the mad desire to see the man who had tortured her so cruelly, had changed to a cold critical mood, to a disdain so comprehensive that it included herself no less than Adair. Dispassionate and contemptuous, it cost her no effort to steel herself against his first appearance. His mouth was undeniably rather coarse; she detected a self-complacency beneath his Corrèze that his acting failed to hide; she saw his glance seek the back-benches with a satisfaction at finding them filled, that struck her as somehow greedy and tradesmanlike. What a disgusting business it was to posture and rant, and choke back sham tears, and mimic the sacredest things in life--and watch back-benches with an eye to the evening's profits! The wretchedest laborer, with his pick and shovel, was more of a man. At any rate he did something that was dignified, that was useful and wanted. He was not framed in cardboard; there was no row of lights at his honest, muddy feet; his loving was a private matter, and when he kissed he meant it.--How fortunate it was that she had come! How unerring the instinct that had brought her back to be cured!

But as the play proceeded such reflections were forgotten in the intensity of her absorption. Again she was leaning forward with parted lips; rapt, over-borne, lost to everything, and pale with an indescribable tumult of emotion. She was conscious of no audience; of naught save the man who held her captive with a power so absolute and irresistible that birth, training, pride, weighed as nothing in the balance. His voice pierced her heart; his eyes seemed to draw the soul from her body; she trembled at her own helplessness, though the realization of it was also a strange and intoxicating pleasure.

But intermingled with that pleasure, darting through it like a tongue of flame, was a jealousy of Miss de Vere that not even the bitterest of contempt could allay. Phyllis felt to the full the degradation of being jealous of any one bearing so preposterous a name. Lydia de Vere! Her lips curled at herself. Oh, that shoddy affectation of aristocracy! Lydia de Vere! And that in a ten-twenty-thirty cent theater, and hardly clothed above the waist; and yet, in spite of her painted face, her dyed hair, and all of her thirty years, with shoulders and breast that a duchess might have envied, she was handsome in her common, flamboyant, chorus-girl way, with the meaningless good looks that one associates with tights and gilt spears. Her acting was stilted and false; her fine ladyism an impossible assumption; she railed at the Prince in the accents of a cook giving notice. But her love for Corrèze taxed no histrionic powers. It was vehement and real, as were the kisses she bestowed so freely, and the caresses she lingered over with voluptuous satisfaction. Beneath the drama of fictitious personages was another of flesh and blood, like a splash of scarlet on a printed page.

What fury and anguish lay pent up in one girlish bosom! What a suffocating sense of defeat, bitterness and shame!-- To burn with jealousy of such a woman was more lowering than to-- No, she would not admit that word to herself. It was folly, infatuation, madness--but not love. It would pass with the swiftness it had come, leaving her in wonder at herself, though the scar would remain for many a long day. This man was robbing her of something that never perhaps could be altogether replaced. How wicked it was, how unjust--she who had done nothing to tempt the lightning! She hated him for it; she clenched her teeth and defied him; she understood now what she had read in books that there are men the mind scorns even while the body surrenders. But she was made of stronger stuff; she had pride and courage; her pearls were not for swine to trample on. She would put him out of her head for ever.

It was terrible how he always got back again. There were tones in his voice that melted every resolution. If ever laughter was music, it was his, and the contagion of it swept the house; and his face, though not handsome in the accepted sense, was striking in the effect it gave of an untamed, extraordinary and powerful nature, only half revealed. What was pride or courage or anything? What availed the hatred of that hotly-beating little heart? Had he not but to look her way to make it his own? Had he crushed it in his hand, would it not have died of joy? Hatred, resentment, outraged self-respect--words, nothing but words.

As the house streamed out she waited in dread for Mrs. Beekman's criticism. However desperately she might belittle Adair to herself, Phyllis shrank from hearing condemnation on other lips. The pride that had failed so utterly to defend her, had taken sides with the enemy, devotedly, passionately. Judge of her surprise, then, her pleasure and relief, when Mrs. Beekman said to her solemnly: "Phyllis, that man's a genius! He's perfectly splendid!" Misunderstanding her companion's silence, and thinking it implied dissent, she went on with a note of argument in her voice. "Of course one can feel somehow that he has had no advantages--that he has probably never been within ten miles of the people he is trying to represent--(do you remember his shaking hands with his gloves on?)--but just the same he has a wonderful and magnificent talent, and we'll hear of him as surely as the world heard of Henry Irving, or Booth, or Bernhardt. Truly, Phyllis, I believe the day will come when we'll be bragging of having admired Adair before he was famous; that is, if you feel like me about it," she added doubtfully.

"I do, I do!" cried Phyllis. "I've never seen anybody on the stage I've liked as much."

"Well, I have," said Mrs. Beekman candidly. "He certainly suffered from being with all those idiots, and I don't like that fling-ding walk of his.--I guess he's about five years short of the winning-post, but we'll see him romp in as sure as my name's Emma Beekman."

"Romping in" jarred somewhat on Phyllis' ear, but all the same Mrs. Beekman's admiration was very sweet to her, and in a queer sort of way was comforting and reassuring. There was dignity in idolizing a genius; it raised her in her own good opinion.

She forgot the apples and the chewing-gum; she forgot even Miss de Vere; a mantle of unreasoning happiness enveloped her, and with it came a gush of affection for Mrs. Beekman that quite astonished the latter. She held her hand in the dark, and tried, with many unseen blushes, to keep the one subject uppermost. To lie back in the carriage and hear Adair praised, thrilled her with delicious sensations. She was insatiable, and kept the milliner repeating "genius, genius, genius," like a parrot. It cost her an order for a twenty dollar hat, but what did she care? She would have given the clothes off her back in the extravagance of her desire. Fortunately Mrs. Beekman was nothing loath, and would have chattered for ever on this entrancing topic. "I guess we're as bad as my girls," she said, with her good-natured laugh, "and he could put us both in the box-car, too, if he had the mind."

"I shouldn't care if I was the only one," returned Phyllis gaily, "and anyway, I've always loved traveling!"

"It would be to the devil," said Mrs. Beekman half-seriously. "That's where such men come from, and that's where they go back--and if you could follow round the circle, I guess you'd find it mile-stoned with silly girls."

"Oh, if I went, I would stay to the end," cried Phyllis. "No putting me off at a way-station. I'd take a through ticket."

"And get there alone," put in Mrs. Beekman. "Men like that don't go far with any girl. They are a power for mischief, and they weren't much wrong in the old days to run them out of town--vagabonds and strolling players, you know. I guess in those times they used to take chickens, too, and anything portable. A bad lot, my dear, and they aren't any better to-day."

This was a poor return for a twenty-dollar hat, and without knowing exactly why, it made Phyllis exceedingly miserable. She felt a diminishing affection for Mrs. Beekman; and the world altogether suddenly took on a cold and dismal aspect. Her spirits were not revived by finding her father sitting up for her.

"What was the play?" he asked, taking her wraps.

"Moths, Papa."

"What? Twice?"

"Oh, I thought it would amuse me to see it again, and besides, Mrs. Beekman preferred it to anything else in town, and I really went for her sake, you know. It's a charity to take her out sometimes; her life is so monotonous, and one feels so sorry for her."

Mr. Ladd waited, smiling in advance, for another humorous take-off of the piece. But there was no fun in Phyllis that night. She drank a glass of water, kissed him good night, and went silently up to bed.

"She doesn't seem very well," he thought, with a shade of concern, and remembered that she had been pale and tired for some days past. "If she doesn't pick up in a day or two, I believe I'll get the doctor."

Had he seen her an hour later, his misgivings would have increased. Kneeling beside her bed, her face crushed in the coverlet, she was weeping softly and heart-brokenly to herself.

CHAPTER VIII