If some of the icy water of Lake Superior had unexpectedly dropped upon him, he could not have appeared more startled than at the mention of this name.
“Ye gods!” he whispered huskily, “I had forgotten that man existed! For years he has never been out of my mind before.”
The girl’s eloquent eyes were fixed upon him.
“The smoke has disappeared into the blue,” she said, “but that name has brought you to earth again. Now tell me what he did.”
“Miss Berrington,” he said solemnly, “you are no more responsible for what Nicholson did, than I am for the actions of the savage who seized your horse. Let me forget again that either the white Indian or the savage ever lived.”
“No,” she persisted, “you must tell me.” And so he told her, sometimes puffing at his cigar like a steam-engine, again almost allowing it to go out. The narration was vivid, but possibly it might have been more interesting if he had not substituted the father for the daughter in the case of Miss Alice Fuller. When the recital was finished the girl shivered a little; and seeing that he noticed it she said: “I think it is getting cold, in spite of our fire. And now I shall bid you ‘Good night.’ I must thank you for the most interesting day and evening I ever spent in my life. Good night, and I hope you will not dream of Mr. Nicholson.”
He rose and took the hand she offered, raising it, before she was aware, to his lips.
“Princess,” he said, “I know of whom I shall dream.”
She laughed a little and was gone.
When the maid had girded round her the soft and trailing dressing-gown, bidding her mistress “Good night,” Constance Berrington opened the window, knelt down before it, placed her elbows on the low sill, with her chin on her open palms, and remained thus gazing at the moonlit lake. The ship of mist tolled the unheeded hours as on a silver chime. At last, with a sigh that seemed to end in a sob, she murmured: “Oh, how beautiful the world is, and yet I never appreciated it before!”