"Wasn't that silly of me to try to kill you the first time we met!" Her eyes danced with merriment. "I didn't know, of course, that any one was about. But you made a very nice catch of it! I had expected to receive you most formally in the drawing-room, but this really serves very well. That tree down yonder is inviting; suppose we stay out here and talk a bit."
This struck me as the pleasantest thing imaginable, though I was still dazed and my tongue seemed to have died in my mouth. This girl, this wholly charming and delightful young woman, was the monstrous being I had conjectured as the globe-trotting widow who had kidnapped and married my uncle! Not only had she married my uncle Bash and in due course buried him; she had been a widow when she married him! I furtively studied her face—a face that invited scrutiny—and her candid eyes that met my gaze of wonder and frank admiration easily and without a trace of self-consciousness. On the third finger of her left hand was a slender band of gold. The thing was staggering, bewildering. She was clearly anxious to be friendly, but nothing that I had thought of saying to her fitted the situation.
"In the first place," I finally began, "I must apologize most humbly for the earnest efforts of the servants to murder you last night. Mr. Torrence had promised to let me know when you would reach here, but he must have forgotten it. I had motored to a friend's house to dine and didn't get back until the mischief was done. I'm very sorry. You must have thought you had driven into a camp of savages!"
"Not for worlds would I have missed that," she exclaimed with a merry laugh. "It was perfectly delicious! And it was all my fault. I meant to remain a day at Hartford, you know, and send a message to Mr. Torrence from there, but I found that by pushing on I could reach here yesterday. Then the machine I hired showed every weakness that motors are subject to and we were hours later than the Hartford garage man promised. And you know we English always expect strange things to happen in America. I don't understand yet why those people at the gates were so jolly anxious to kill us; but it doesn't matter; you would only spoil the joke by explaining it."
However, I did my best—it was a weak attempt—to explain the nervousness of the veteran servants and their display of violence. Her arrival made it likely that we should soon know more about the "parties" whose visits and inquiries had so alarmed Antoine and his comrades. Now that I saw Mrs. Bashford the idea that any one could entertain malevolent designs upon her was more preposterous than ever, and I resolved that she must be shielded from annoyances of every kind. I told her with all the humor I could throw into the recital of the drilling of the bell-hops and of the uncomfortable relations between the Allied forces and the Teutonic minority on the estate.
"It was dear of Mr. Bashford to provide a home for these people; wasn't he really the kindest soul that ever lived?" she said softly.
She gazed wistfully seaward, and I saw the gleam of tears on her long lashes. My uncle had, then, meant something to her! No one, in speech or manner, could have suggested the adventuress less; Uncle Bash was a gentleman, a man of æsthetic tastes, and the girl was adorable. More remarkable things had happened in the history of love and marriage than that two such persons, meeting in a far corner of the world, would honestly care for each other. My respect for Uncle Bash grew; he had married the most attractive girl in the world, and here she was with the bloom of her girlhood upon her, tripping alone through a world that might have been created merely that she might confer light and cheer upon it.
"You stopped at Hartford," I began, breaking a long silence. "You have friends there——?"
"Not one! I had made a pious pilgrimage to Mark Twain's last home at Redding, and, hearing that he had lived at Hartford, I came through there to render my fullest homage. He has always been one of my heroes, you know." She laughingly lifted her hands and counted upon her fingers—"'The Jumping Frog,' Tom and Huck, and 'Mulberry Sellers,' 'The Prince and the Pauper,' and 'Pudd'nhead Wilson'! I know them all by heart!"
"Our introduction is complete," I said reverently. "Let's consider ourselves old friends."