“‘I don’t think Mrs. Darrell can see you again’”[Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
“‘Oh, papa!’ she said, ‘save my little pearl heart’”[6]
“... She caught him by the arm and whispered, ‘And could you leave me?’”[64]
“Baskerville took Anne out to dinner”[138]
“The little park was wholly deserted except for themselves”[236]
“The next minute she was fast in Baskerville’s arms”[280]

MRS. DARRELL

Chapter One

Time was, not so long ago, when Washington had some primitive aspects. This was when the city was merely a political capital and society was made up of the high government officials, the diplomatic corps, the army and navy, and senators were very great personages and even the now despised members of the House of Representatives had a place on the social chess-board. This was before the influx of recently acquired wealth and the building of splendid mansions wherein to house the retired trade. There were few private ball-rooms, and certain subscription dances were reckoned to be very smart. To these dances young ladies were not ashamed to wear muslin gowns, nor to go in the tram, carrying with them a contrivance known as a “party-bag,” which held their white slippers, fans, and gloves.

The young ladies were just as beautiful then as now, as certainly Captain Reginald Darrell and Captain Hugh Pelham, officers of the 178th Foot Regiment, then stationed in India, thought one night as they watched from the street those charming Washington girls thronging to the big Charity Ball of the season. It was a cold, clear January night, and the two young officers, cousins and chums, who had wandered idly from their hotel, watched with profound interest this phase of an American ball.

The event being a great Charity Ball, tickets were on sale at all the hotels. Pelham and Darrell had invested in a couple of tickets, and were now standing outside the building, doubting whether after all they should go in or not. They had heard and read much of American splendor, and this had come nearly deterring them from coming to America at all, considering their small allowance and modest pay in a foot regiment. Both of them, it was true, were the grandsons of a peer, but a peer almost as poor as Lazarus. Each had the enormous advantage of good birth, good breeding, and the urgent necessity of making his own way in the world. There was, it is true, some shadowy expectation of a fortune which Darrell might inherit as heir-at-law, and Pelham was next heir after Darrell. But the chance was so remote that the only present benefit they had out of it was mess-table joking, and a declaration on Darrell’s part that his love-affairs were always cruelly interfered with by Pelham. In fact, Pelham’s interference—that is to say, influence—with Darrell in every way was complete, Darrell being simple, brave, polite, handsome, and commonplace, while Pelham was short, dark, rather homely, of uncommon powers of mind and character. Pelham was much favored by women, whom he treated with remarkable gentleness and courtesy, but for whom he had felt a secret indifference.

Darrell, on the contrary, was devoted to the whole sex, their petted and curled darling. He thought a woman the object of the highest consequence,—that is to say, next to sport, which he regarded as something sacred, ranking with Church and State. He always had a dozen love-affairs on hand, and like the man in the old song, “He loved the ladies, every one.” In Darrell’s eyes, Pelham’s only fault was that he considered these love-affairs legitimate subjects of chaffing and laughing, while Darrell took them all with perfect seriousness.

It was Pelham who, in his desire to see the world, so far as his narrow purse would permit, had induced Darrell to plunge, so to speak, to the extent of going to India by way of the United States and spending three weeks in Washington, relying upon economy for the next five years when they would be with their regiment in India in the Punjaub.