"I don't know. I felt sick. My father saw how white I was, and we left at once. Several months later he saw this figurine in a shop in Calcutta and bought it. He gave it to me."
John looked at him and said slowly, "Perhaps a cobra can't really kill anything as big and strong as a tiger."
"It can make it bad for him, though. I can remember Dad cursing that he didn't have a gun with him. A gun! That's you, John. When I've been walking lately, I've usually had you along, and I've been pretty safe from cobras."
"It's safer not to go walking at all."
"Well, even a tiger has to have some diversion," Rodrigo tried to lighten up the serious turn the conversation had taken. As John walked over to the mirror and resumed his adjusting of his cravat, Rodrigo said suddenly, "And guns too, John—sometimes guns don't act as they should, very good guns, too. And cobras raise the dickens with them too."
But John had hardly heard him, much less gotten the meaning of his friend's cryptic speech. And Rodrigo was instantly glad. John was so infatuated with Elise that mere words would never undeceive him. It must be something stronger than words. Likewise, Rodrigo must make very sure that Elise Van Zile was what he had described to John as the cobra type of woman.
After John left, Rodrigo sat down and tried to interest himself in a large, profusely illustrated volume on interior decoration. But he was in no mood to concentrate upon the hopelessly conventional illustrations and the dry, prosaic text. He flung the book down at length, and, lighting his pipe, walked nervously about the apartment. He was thinking of John and Elise Van Zile, and of himself. His feeling toward the sudden infatuation of his friend for Mrs. Palmer's niece and Elise's sudden interest in John contained not one atom of jealousy. Had she been the girl John thought she was, Rodrigo would have been delighted and would have rendered the match every assistance.
But Elise, Rodrigo kept telling himself, was the girl he thought she was. This business to-day of Sophie Binner, this tale of the cobra he had related to John, this whole raking up of his past had had a depressing effect upon him. The world looked awry that evening.
He confessed, after fifteen minutes of aimless walking about, that he was perhaps seeing things through a glass darkly. But of this much he was quite certain: Elise Van Zile was clever. Though John Dorning was not the type of man who appealed to her, she might decide to marry him for his money. Married or single, she would always be selfish, unscrupulous. She wanted a rich, safe husband.
If the husband were John Dorning, this would bring tragedy.