We chatted politely all through that interminable meal, no morsel of which aroused the faintest appreciation on my dry tongue. Finally the chairs were pushed back and my host excused himself to bring down some pieces of apparatus he had recently purchased, concerning which he professed to desire my invaluable opinion.
No sooner had he left the room than the polite smile dropped from Venice’s face like a discarded mask.
“Dick,” she cried, “what are you doing here?”
It was my first inkling that she suspected my true identity. I rallied quickly, however, and allowed my self-encouraged bitterness its outlet.
“Had I believed you would recognize me, Mrs. Marsden, I should not have inflicted my unwelcome presence upon you, I can assure you.”
She bit her lips and her head raised with a jerk. Then her mouth softened again as her great eyes searched mine.
“Yes, but why—” she broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps. Suddenly she leaned forward. “Meet me in the pine grove to-morrow afternoon—four o’clock,” she breathed. Then her husband entered.
The remainder of the evening I was forced to listen to Marsden’s eager dissertation on the alleged “static eliminator” which had been foisted upon him on his last trip to the city. Mechanically I answered or grunted in simulated appreciation when a pause in his endless monologue warned me that some reply was expected of me; but my pulses were leaping in exultation because of the fleeting hope which those few words from my lost Venice had kindled. I could not imagine why the offer to bridge the breach of years should come from her so voluntarily, yet it was enough for me that she remembered and wished to see me. I cared not why.
I arrived nearly an hour early that next afternoon, for I had been unable either to sleep or work during the interim. I shall not bore you with the particulars of that meeting, even were I free to reveal such sacred details. Suffice to say that after the preliminaries of doubt and misunderstanding had been brushed away—and it was not the simple process this synopsis would seem to infer, I can assure you—I stood revealed as the victim of a most ingenious and thoroughly knavish plot. Boiled down, it resembles one of those early movie scenarios.
You remember I spoke of Venice as related to the Long Island Potters, a branch of the family highly rated in the Social Register? You will also remember that before I undertook that expedition I was never particularly certain whence my next year’s expenses were to be derived, nor to what extent, if you understand what I mean. At about the time I was preparing for this expedition which I hoped would make me financially and scientifically independent, this wealthy branch of the family seriously “took up” my darling Venice, inviting her to live with them that summer. I remember now all too late, that even during that confusion of mind caused by the agony of leaving my loved one, coupled with the feverish preparations for departure, chill clouds of censure came from the aloof Potters. They made no effort to mask their disapproval of my humble self and prospects, yet in my blindness I had never connected them intimately with what followed.