“Irene, you know —— Jane, where in the world could she——”
Also he heard Jane’s hurried, low-voiced explanation.
“I was trying to tell you a while ago. Don’t you remember that I said how strange it all was? You see, he’s an acquaintance of mine from the Yellowstone. He was at the opera to-night. That’s why he is wearing evening clothes. But here come the Allens. Now, please——”
Mrs. Sturgis was obliged to take it at a gulp. She sat like some ruffled chicken doctored for the pip in her straw-heap of rug, smoothing her plumage, winking from smart of the idea and greeting her friends. Evidently she was none too taken with the impromptu rôle thrust upon her—would have preferred the thriller of lady-assailed-in-her-castle—but she played it with all due languor, not forgetting a line, even on Irene’s demand that she invite Mr. Pape, who to her still must look somewhat like a mere operative from the Arsenal Precinct, to join the supper party.
Pape’s first weak thought was to refuse. The patent pincers at the moment gave him a twinge, as they had several times during recent excitements. Really, he owed it to his feet to go home. But that wouldn’t sound either a legitimate or romantic excuse to a lady exacting as she was young and fair. The fear that if he went now he might never get back decided him to accept.
Despite his inspirational superiority to all slow-but-sure methods, he found himself unable to advance one step that night toward the girl to whom he had made a vow of service. Mills Harford was a substantial barrier, although the “bristles” of his mustache relaxed to show boyishly charming smiles. By everybody, Jasper included, “Harfy” was accorded absolute right to seat Miss Lauderdale at table, to serve her, to engage her attention.
Then there was the difficulty of Irene.
“They teased me like everything for letting Cousin Jane snatch you out of the box to-night,” she confided to Pape. “You see she took me by surprise. I won’t let her grab like that again. Don’t you ever worry. Nothing is impossible to Rene, either.”
He did worry, though. In her he caught his first glimpse of the perquisites of “our young ladies to-day,” and he couldn’t help worrying. Why should he? And yet, looking into ardent Irene’s eyes, why not?
When Pape descended the brownstone steps to the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue, it was not late from the standpoint of the company to whom he had said good-by. But he smiled to think how Hellroaring Valley had been wrapped in slumber hours and hours before.