“Where is MacDaly?” asked Mr. Armour sternly.
“Gone home. I tell him go see you in morning.”
“Do you think that he will do so?”
“He sartin come,” and Joe, laughing musically, withdrew and left his master standing as if spellbound under the trees.
Stargarde and Vivienne walking to and fro on the lawn waited a long time for Armour to return. Finally he came slowly toward them. “Here is a note for you, Vivienne, from MacDaly,” he said.
The girl took it from him. “It is too dark here to read it. Let us go into the house. His productions are so amusing. ‘Miss Delavigne!’” she read when they three stood beside a lamp in the drawing room; “‘if it had pleased an all-wise Providence to place me in a different walk of life and I saw a black man—a thoroughly black man—at any period of time I should really consider him worthy of the intrinsic offering of one solitary lucifer match for a slight midsummer present. Though simple as it may appear, it would be as truly acceptable by my honorable self as it would by the black man, and it would by all means show you a lady undoubted. With a profundity of respect, Derrick Edward Fitz-James O’Grady MacDaly. P. S. This wonderful match would be to illuminate a fellow’s pipe.’”
Vivienne turned the paper over with a bewildered face. “It is enigmatical. Does he wish matches, Stargarde?”
Stargarde clad in a long black gown that made her seem paler than usual and her hair brighter, softly drew her fingers across Vivienne’s cheek. “He wishes a dollar, my child.”
“You have given this man a good deal of money, have you not?” asked Armour.
Vivienne blushed. “Not very much. He talks to me of my father.”