We both went rather shakily into the parlor, but at that very moment, Checkers came in, his face quite pale and sober. “Look what I found in my room!” he said. It was a note from Aunt, saying that Boris and she were going to elope, that she had always loved him and knew they would be happy. “Scandalous!” he declared, “and what are we going to do about it?”
“He’s a worse scoundrel even than I thought,” said A. D.
“Checkers, it’s up to you to stop her. Take a taxicab to the steamship dock as quick as you can get there. Carpathia!” I shouted.
Checkers hurried out of the house while A. D. stayed on to comfort me and talk over the next step we could take in case Checkers was too late, and what people would say about the whole thing. At two o’clock there was no word, and calling up the dock by telephone, we found that the Carpathia had sailed at exactly one-thirty. Then I made A. D. go, and went sorrowfully up to bed, but not to sleep, hoping that nothing had happened to my twin.
Nor did he come back for hours. Finally, when it was almost daylight, there was a tap at my door and Checkers tiptoed in and began, “I found Aunt but she wouldn’t listen to me when I got to the dock. No go! She wouldn’t budge and Boris was pouring out a torrent of Russian that sounded to me like a bunch of fire crackers. The steamer sailed and I stayed on board, still arguing. Finally I told Boris I’d hand him over to the captain on any one of half a dozen charges that would put him behind the bars till he was ninety. He gave me an ugly look and slunk off,—I don’t know where for we didn’t see him again. Fortunately they had not succeeded in getting a clergyman to marry them. At last Aunt consented to return with me on the pilot boat on condition that neither of us would ever mention Boris’s name to her again.”
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“Gone into her room and shut the door. Poor defiant old dame. Polly, she’s ashamed of herself!” And Checkers went off to bed to make up his lost sleep.
I shall try to forget the Prince too if I can, but he’s a strange, fascinating and wicked person. Somehow I feel our paths will touch again some day, and I have deep down in my heart a pagan yearning to show him up in his real colors.