My mystification was certainly deep enough without this suggestion that I was a mere character in a tale whose awkward beginning aroused only the gravest apprehensions as to the conclusion. She looked at her watch and continued:
"I'm so absurd—really I am, in ever so many ways, that no one would ever put me in a book. Every one would say no such person ever existed! It's incredible! And so I have to pretend I'm in a story all the time. It's the only way I can keep happy. And so many people are in my story now, not only Montani and the poor fellow locked up at Barton—oh, what if he should escape! Constance, it would be splendid if he should escape!"
"I don't think it would be splendid if he escaped!" I exclaimed, sitting up very straight at the bare thought of such a calamity. "He would either kill me or sue me for damages."
"Oh, that wouldn't fit into the story at all! Murder and damages are so frightfully sordid and generally disagreeable. We must have nothing like that in our story."
"You didn't finish your enumeration of characters," I suggested. "Is my part an important one or am I only a lay figure?"
"My dear boy," cried Mrs. Farnsworth, "you are the hero! You have been the hero from the hour the story began. If you should desert us now, whatever should we do!"
"If I'm the hero," I replied in her own key, "I shall begin making love to Alice at once."
Alice, far from being disturbed by my declaration, nodded her head approvingly.
"Oh, we had expected that! But you needn't be in a hurry. In a story like this one, that runs right on from day to day, we must leave a lot to chance. And there are ever so many chances——"
"Not all on the side of failure, I hope?"