Copyright, 1918

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Lady Jane Thorne Comes to Dinner [1]

II Out of the Four Corners of the Earth [12]

III The City of Masks [24]

IV The Scion of a New York House [37]

V Mr. Thomas Trotter Hears Something to His Advantage [50]

VI The Unfailing Memory [67]

VII The Foundation of the Plot [79]

VIII Lady Jane Goes About It Promptly [94]

IX Mr. Trotter Falls into a New Position [110]

X Putting Their Heads—and Hearts—Together [121]

XI Winning by a Nose [134]

XII In the Fog [155]

XIII Not Clouds Alone Have Linings [172]

XIV Diplomacy [188]

XV One Night at Spangler's [202]

XVI Scotland Yard Takes a Hand [219]

XVII Friday for Luck [233]

XVIII Friday for Bad Luck [250]

XIX From Darkness to Light [263]

XX An Exchange of Courtesies [279]

XXI The Bride-Elect [294]

XXII The Beginning [307]

THE CITY OF MASKS

CHAPTER I

LADY JANE THORNE COMES TO DINNER

THE Marchioness carefully draped the dust-cloth over the head of an andiron and, before putting the question to the parlour-maid, consulted, with the intensity of a near-sighted person, the ornate French clock in the centre of the mantelpiece. Then she brushed her fingers on the voluminous apron that almost completely enveloped her slight person.

"Well, who is it, Julia?"

"It's Lord Temple, ma'am, and he wants to know if you're too busy to come to the 'phone. If you are, I'm to ask you something."

The Marchioness hesitated. "How do you know it is Lord Eric? Did he mention his name?"

"He did, ma'am. He said 'this is Tom Trotter speaking, Julia, and is your mistress disengaged?' And so I knew it couldn't be any one else but his Lordship."

"And what are you to ask me?"

"He wants to know if he may bring a friend around tonight, ma'am. A gentleman from Constantinople, ma'am."

"A Turk? He knows I do not like Turks," said the Marchioness, more to herself than to Julia.

"He didn't say, ma'am. Just Constantinople."

The Marchioness removed her apron and handed it to Julia. You would have thought she expected to confront Lord Temple in person, or at least that she would be fully visible to him despite the distance and the intervening buildings that lay between. Tucking a few stray locks of her snow-white hair into place, she approached the telephone in the hall. She had never quite gotten over the impression that one could be seen through as well as heard over the telephone. She always smiled or frowned or gesticulated, as occasion demanded; she was never languid, never bored, never listless. A chat was a chat, at long range or short; it didn't matter.

"Are you there? Good evening, Mr. Trotter. So charmed to hear your voice." She had seated herself at the little old Italian table.

Mr. Trotter devoted a full two minutes to explanations.

"Do bring him with you," cried she. "Your word is sufficient. He must be delightful. Of course, I shuddered a little when you mentioned Constantinople. I always do. One can't help thinking of the Armenians. Eh? Oh, yes,—and the harems."

Mr. Trotter: "By the way, are you expecting Lady Jane tonight?"

The Marchioness: "She rarely fails us, Mr. Trotter."

Mr. Trotter: "Right-o! Well, good-bye,—and thank you. I'm sure you will like the baron. He is a trifle seedy, as I said before,—sailing vessel, you know, and all that sort of thing. By way of Cape Town,—pretty well up against it for the past year or two besides,—but a regular fellow, as they say over here."

The Marchioness: "Where did you say he is stopping?"

Mr. Trotter: "Can't for the life of me remember whether it's the 'Sailors' Loft' or the 'Sailors' Bunk.' He told me too. On the water-front somewhere. I knew him in Hong Kong. He says he has cut it all out, however."

The Marchioness: "Cut it all out, Mr. Trotter?"

Mr. Trotter, laughing: "Drink, and all that sort of thing, you know. Jolly good thing too. I give you my personal guarantee that he—"

The Marchioness: "Say no more about it, Mr. Trotter. I am sure we shall all be happy to receive any friend of yours. By the way, where are you now—where are you telephoning from?"

Mr. Trotter: "Drug store just around the corner."

The Marchioness: "A booth, I suppose?"

Mr. Trotter: "Oh, yes. Tight as a sardine box."

The Marchioness: "Good-bye."

Mr. Trotter: "Oh—hello? I beg your pardon—are you there? Ah, I—er—neglected to mention that the baron may not appear at his best tonight. You see, the poor chap is a shade large for my clothes. Naturally, being a sailor-man, he hasn't—er—a very extensive wardrobe. I am fixing him out in a—er—rather abandoned evening suit of my own. That is to say, I abandoned it a couple of seasons ago. Rather nobby thing for a waiter, but not—er—what you might call—"

The Marchioness, chuckling: "Quite good enough for a sailor, eh? Please assure him that no matter what he wears, or how he looks, he will not be conspicuous."

After this somewhat ambiguous remark, the Marchioness hung up the receiver and returned to the drawing-room; a prolonged search revealing the dust-cloth on the "nub" of the andiron, just where she had left it, she fell to work once more on the velvety surface of a rare old Spanish cabinet that stood in the corner of the room.

"Don't you want your apron, ma'am?" inquired Julia, sitting back on her heels and surveying with considerable pride the leg of an enormous throne seat she had been rubbing with all the strength of her stout arms.

Her mistress ignored the question. She dabbed into a tiny recess and wriggled her finger vigorously.

"I can't imagine where all the dust comes from, Julia," she said.

"Some of it comes from Italy, and some of it from Spain, and some from France," said Julia promptly. "You could rub for a hundred years, ma'am, and there'd still be dust that you couldn't find, not to save your soul. And why not? I'd bet my last penny there's dust on that cabinet this very minute that settled before Napoleon was born, whenever that was."

"I daresay," said the Marchioness absently.

More often than otherwise she failed to hear all that Julia said to her, or in her presence rather, for Julia, wise in association, had come to consider these lapses of inattention as openings for prolonged and rarely coherent soliloquies on topics of the moment. Julia, by virtue of long service and a most satisfying avoidance of matrimony, was a privileged servant between the hours of eight in the morning and eight in the evening. After eight, or more strictly speaking, the moment dinner was announced, Julia became a perfect servant. She would no more have thought of addressing the Marchioness as "ma'am" than she would have called the King of England "mister." She had crossed the Atlantic with her mistress eighteen years before; in mid-ocean she celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday, and, as she had been in the family for ten years prior to that event, even a child may solve the problem that here presents a momentary and totally unnecessary break in the continuity of this narrative. Julia was English. She spoke no other language. Beginning with the soup, or the hors d'œuvres on occasion, French was spoken in the house of the Marchioness. Physically unable to speak French and psychologically unwilling to betray her ignorance, Julia became a model servant. She lapsed into perfect silence.

The Marchioness seldom if ever dined alone. She always dined in state. Her guests,—English, Italian, Russian, Belgian, French, Spanish, Hungarian, Austrian, German,—conversed solely in French. It was a very agreeable way of symphonizing Babel.

The room in which she and the temporarily imperfect though treasured servant were employed in the dusk of this stormy day in March was at the top of an old-fashioned building in the busiest section of the city, a building that had, so far, escaped the fate of its immediate neighbours and remained, a squat and insignificant pygmy, elbowing with some arrogance the lofty structures that had shot up on either side of it with incredible swiftness.

It was a large room, at least thirty by fifty feet in dimensions, with a vaulted ceiling that encroached upon the space ordinarily devoted to what architects, builders and the Board of Health describe as an air chamber, next below the roof. There was no elevator in the building. One had to climb four flights of stairs to reach the apartment.

From its long, heavily curtained windows one looked down upon a crowded cross-town thoroughfare, or up to the summit of a stupendous hotel on the opposite side of the street. There was a small foyer at the rear of this lofty room, with an entrance from the narrow hall outside. Suspended in the wide doorway between the two rooms was a pair of blue velvet Italian portières of great antiquity and, to a connoisseur, unrivaled quality. Beyond the foyer and extending to the area wall was the rather commodious dining-room, with its long oaken English table, its high-back chairs, its massive sideboard and the chandelier that is said to have hung in the Doges' Palace when the Bridge of Sighs was a new and thriving avenue of communication.

At least, so stated the dealer's tag tucked carelessly among the crystal prisms, supplying the observer with the information that, in case one was in need of a chandelier, its price was five hundred guineas. The same curious-minded observer would have discovered, if he were not above getting down on his hands and knees and peering under the table, a price tag; and by exerting the strength necessary to pull the sideboard away from the wall, a similar object would have been exposed.

In other words, if one really wanted to purchase any article of furniture or decoration in the singularly impressive apartment of the Marchioness, all one had to do was to signify the desire, produce a check or its equivalent, and give an address to the competent-looking young woman who would put in an appearance with singular promptness in response to a couple of punches at an electric button just outside the door, any time between nine and five o'clock, Sundays included.

The drawing-room contained many priceless articles of furniture, wholly antique—(and so guaranteed), besides rugs, draperies, tapestries and stuffs of the rarest quality. Bronzes, porcelains, pottery, things of jade and alabaster, sconces, candlesticks and censers, with here and there on the walls lovely little "primitives" of untold value. The most exotic taste had ordered the distribution and arrangement of all these objects. There was no suggestion of crowding, nothing haphazard or bizarre in the exposition of treasure, nothing to indicate that a cheap intelligence revelled in rich possessions.

You would have sat down upon the first chair that offered repose and you would have said you had wandered inadvertently into a palace. Then, emboldened by an interest that scorned politeness, you would have got up to inspect the riches at close range,—and you would have found price-marks everywhere to overcome the impression that Aladdin had been rubbing his lamp all the way up the dingy, tortuous stairs.

You are not, however, in the shop of a dealer in antiques, price-marks to the contrary. You are in the home of a Marchioness, and she is not a dealer in old furniture, you may be quite sure of that. She does not owe a penny on a single article in the apartment nor does she, on the other hand, own a penny's worth of anything that meets the eye,—unless, of course, one excepts the dust-cloth and the can of polish that follows Julia about the room. Nor is it a loan exhibit, nor the setting for a bazaar.

The apartment being on the top floor of a five-story building, it is necessary to account for the remaining four. In the rear of the fourth floor there was a small kitchen and pantry from which a dumb-waiter ascended and descended with vehement enthusiasm. The remainder of the floor was divided into four rather small chambers, each opening into the outer hall, with two bath-rooms inserted. Each of these rooms contained a series of lockers, not unlike those in a club-house. Otherwise they were unfurnished except for a few commonplace cane bottom chairs in various stages of decrepitude.

The third floor represented a complete apartment of five rooms, daintily furnished. This was where the Marchioness really lived.

Commerce, after a fashion, occupied the two lower floors. It stopped short at the bottom of the second flight of stairs where it encountered an obstacle in the shape of a grill-work gate that bore the laconic word "Private," and while commerce may have peeped inquisitively through and beyond the barrier it was never permitted to trespass farther than an occasional sly, surreptitious and unavailing twist of the knob.

The entire second floor was devoted to work-rooms in which many sewing machines buzzed during the day and went to rest at six in the evening. Tables, chairs, manikins, wall-hooks and hangers thrust forward a bewildering assortment of fabrics in all stages of development, from an original uncut piece to a practically completed garment. In other words, here was the work-shop of the most exclusive, most expensive modiste in all the great city.

The ground floor, or rather the floor above the English basement, contained the salon and fitting rooms of an establishment known to every woman in the city as

DEBORAH'S.

To return to the Marchioness and Julia.

"Not that a little dust or even a great deal of dirt will make any different to the Princess," the former was saying, "but, just the same, I feel better, if I know we've done our best."

"Thank the Lord, she don't come very often," was Julia's frank remark. "It's the stairs, I fancy."

"And the car-fare," added her mistress. "Is it six o'clock, Julia?"

"Yes, ma'am, it is."

The Marchioness groaned a little as she straightened up and tossed the dust-cloth on the table. "It catches me right across here," she remarked, putting her hand to the small of her back and wrinkling her eyes.

"You shouldn't be doing my work," scolded Julia. "It's not for the likes of you to be—"

"I shall lie down for half an hour," said the Marchioness calmly. "Come at half-past six, Julia."

"Just Lady Jane, ma'am? No one else?"

"No one else," said the other, and preceded Julia down the two flights of stairs to the charming little apartment on the third floor. "She is a dear girl, and I enjoy having her all to myself once in a while."

"She is so, ma'am," agreed Julia, and added. "The oftener the better."

At half-past seven Julia ran down the stairs to open the gate at the bottom. She admitted a slender young woman, who said, "Thank you," and "Good evening, Julia," in the softest, loveliest voice imaginable, and hurried up, past the apartment of the Marchioness, to the fourth floor. Julia, in cap and apron, wore a pleased smile as she went in to put the finishing touches on the coiffure of her mistress.

"Pity there isn't more like her," she said, at the end of five minutes' reflection. Patting the silvery crown of the Marchioness, she observed in a less detached manner: "As I always says, the wonderful part is that it's all your own, ma'am."

"I am beginning to dread the stairs as much as any one," said the Marchioness, as she passed out into the hall and looked up the dimly lighted steps. "That is a bad sign, Julia."

A mass of coals crackled in the big fireplace on the top floor, and a tall man in the resplendent livery of a footman was engaged in poking them up when the Marchioness entered.

"Bitterly cold, isn't it, Moody?" inquired she, approaching with stately tread, her lorgnon lifted.

"It is, my lady,—extremely nawsty," replied Moody. "The trams are a bit off, or I should 'ave 'ad the coals going 'alf an hour sooner than—Ahem! They call it a blizzard, my lady."

"I know, thank you, Moody."

"Thank you, my lady," and he moved stiffly off in the direction of the foyer.

The Marchioness languidly selected a magazine from the litter of periodicals on the table. It was La Figaro, and of recent date. There were magazines from every capital in Europe on that long and time-worn table.

A warm, soft light filled the room, shed by antique lanthorns and wall-lamps that gave forth no cruel glare. Standing beside the table, the Marchioness was a remarkable picture. The slight, drooping figure of the woman with the dust-cloth and creaking knees had been transformed, like Cinderella, into a fairly regal creature attired in one of the most fetching costumes ever turned out by the rapacious Deborah, of the first floor front!

The foyer curtains parted, revealing the plump, venerable figure of a butler who would have done credit to the lordliest house in all England.

"Lady Jane Thorne," he announced, and a slim, radiant young person entered the room, and swiftly approached the smiling Marchioness.

CHAPTER II

OUT OF THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH

"AM I late?" she inquired, a trace of anxiety in her smiling blue eyes. She was clasping the hand of the taut little Marchioness, who looked up into the lovely face with the frankest admiration.

"I have only this instant finished dressing," said her hostess. "Moody informs me we're in for a blizzard. Is it so bad as all that?"

"What a perfectly heavenly frock!" cried Lady Jane Thorne, standing off to take in the effect. "Turn around, do. Exquisite! Dear me, I wish I could—but there! Wishing is a form of envy. We shouldn't wish for anything, Marchioness. If we didn't, don't you see how perfectly delighted we should be with what we have? Oh, yes,—it is a horrid night. The trolley-cars are blocked, the omnibuses are stalled, and walking is almost impossible. How good the fire looks!"

"Cheerful, isn't it? Now you must let me have my turn at wishing, my dear. If I could have my wish, you would be disporting yourself in the best that Deborah can turn out, and you would be worth millions to her as an advertisement. You've got style, figure, class, verve—everything. You carry your clothes as if you were made for them and not the other way round."

"This gown is so old I sometimes think I was made for it," said the girl gaily. "I can't remember when it was made for me."

Moody had drawn two chairs up to the fire.

"Rubbish!" said the Marchioness, sitting down. "Toast your toes, my dear."

Lady Jane's gown was far from modish. In these days of swift-changing fashions for women, it had become passé long before its usefulness or its beauty had passed. Any woman would have told you that it was a "season before last model," which would be so distantly removed from the present that its owner may be forgiven the justifiable invention concerning her memory.

But Lady Jane's figure was not old, nor passé, nor even a thing to be forgotten easily. She was straight, and slim, and sound of body and limb. That is to say, she stood well on her feet and suggested strength rather than fragility. Her neck and shoulders were smooth and white and firm; her arms shapely and capable, her hands long and slender and aristocratic. Her dark brown hair was abundant and wavy;—it had never experienced the baleful caress of a curling-iron. Her firm, red lips were of the smiling kind,—and she must have known that her teeth were white and strong and beautiful, for she smiled more often than not with parted lips. There was character, intelligence and breeding in her face.

She wore a simple black velvet gown, close-fitting,—please remember that it was of an antiquity not even surpassed, as things go, by the oldest rug in the apartment,—with a short train. She was fully a head taller than the Marchioness, which isn't saying much when you are informed that the latter was at least half-a-head shorter than a woman of medium height.

On the little finger of her right hand she wore a heavy seal ring of gold. If you had known her well enough to hold her hand—to the light, I mean,—you would have been able to decipher the markings of a crest, notwithstanding the fact that age had all but obliterated the lines.

Dinner was formal only in the manner in which it was served. Behind the chair of the Marchioness, Moody posed loftily when not otherwise employed. A critical observer would have taken note of the threadbare condition of his coat, especially at the elbows, and the somewhat snug way in which it adhered to him, fore and aft. Indeed, there was an ever-present peril in its snugness. He was painfully deliberate and detached.

From time to time, a second footman, addressed as McFaddan, paused back of Lady Jane. His chin was not quite so high in the air as Moody's; the higher he raised it the less it looked like a chin. McFaddan, you would remark, carried a great deal of weight above the hips. The ancient butler, Cricklewick, decanted the wine, lifted his right eyebrow for the benefit of Moody, the left in directing McFaddan, and cringed slightly with each trip upward of the dumb-waiter.

The Marchioness and Lady Jane were in a gay mood despite the studied solemnity of the three servants. As dinner has no connection with this narrative except to introduce an effect of opulence, we will hurry through with it and allow Moody and McFaddan to draw back the chairs on a signal transmitted by Cricklewick, and return to the drawing-room with the two ladies.

"A quarter of nine," said the Marchioness, peering at the French clock through her lorgnon. "I am quite sure the Princess will not venture out on such a night as this."

"She's really quite an awful pill," said Lady Jane calmly. "I for one sha'n't be broken-hearted if she doesn't venture."

"For heaven's sake, don't let Cricklewick hear you say such a thing," said the Marchioness in a furtive undertone.

"I've heard Cricklewick say even worse," retorted the girl. She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. "No longer ago than yesterday he told me that she made him tired, or something of the sort."

"Poor Cricklewick! I fear he is losing ambition," mused the Marchioness. "An ideal butler but a most dreary creature the instant he attempts to be a human being. It isn't possible. McFaddan is quite human. That's why he is so fat. I am not sure that I ever told you, but he was quite a slim, puny lad when Cricklewick took him out of the stables and made a very decent footman out of him. That was a great many years ago, of course. Camelford left him a thousand pounds in his will. I have always believed it was hush money. McFaddan was a very wide-awake chap in those days." The Marchioness lowered one eye-lid slowly.

"And, by all reports, the Marquis of Camelford was very well worth watching," said Lady Jane.

"Hear the wind!" cried the Marchioness, with a little shiver. "How it shrieks!"

"We were speaking of the Marquis," said Lady Jane.

"But one may always fall back on the weather," said the Marchioness drily. "Even at its worst it is a pleasanter thing to discuss than Camelford. You can't get anything out of me, my dear. I was his next door neighbour for twenty years, and I don't believe in talking about one's neighbour."

Lady Jane stared for a moment. "But—how quaint you are!—you were married to him almost as long as that, were you not?"

"My clearest,—I may even say my dearest,—recollection of him is as a neighbour, Lady Jane. He was most agreeable next door."

Cricklewick appeared in the door.

"Count Antonio Fogazario," he announced.

A small, wizened man in black satin knee-breeches entered the room and approached the Marchioness. With courtly grace he lifted her fingers to his lips and, in a voice that quavered slightly, declared in French that his joy on seeing her again was only surpassed by the hideous gloom he had experienced during the week that had elapsed since their last meeting.

"But now the gloom is dispelled and I am basking in sunshine so rare and soft and—"

"My dear Count," broke in the Marchioness, "you forget that we are enjoying the worst blizzard of the year."

"Enjoying,—vastly enjoying it!" he cried. "It is the most enchanting blizzard I have ever known. Ah, my dear Lady Jane! This is delightful!"

His sharp little face beamed with pleasure. The vast pleated shirt front extended itself to amazing proportions, as if blown up by an invisible though prodigious bellows, and his elbow described an angle of considerable elevation as he clasped the slim hand of the tall young woman. The crown of his sleek black toupee was on a line with her shoulder.

"God bless me," he added, in a somewhat astonished manner, "this is most gratifying. I could not have lifted it half that high yesterday without experiencing the most excruciating agony." He worked his arm up and down experimentally. "Quite all right, quite all right. I feared I was in for another siege. I cannot tell you how delighted I am. Ahem! Where was I? Oh, yes—This is a pleasure, Lady Jane, a positive delight. How charming you are look—"

"Save your compliments, Count, for the Princess," interrupted the girl, smiling. "She is coming, you know."

"I doubt it," he said, fumbling for his snuff-box. "I saw her this afternoon. Chilblains. Weather like this, you see. Quite a distance from her place to the street-cars. Frightful going. I doubt it very much. Now, what was it she said to me this afternoon? Something very important, I remember distinctly,—but it seems to have slipped my mind completely. I am fearfully annoyed with myself. I remember with great distinctness that it was something I was determined to remember, and here I am forgetting—Ah, let me see! It comes to me like a flash. I have it! She said she felt as though she had a cold coming on or something like that. Yes, I am sure that was it. I remember she blew her nose frequently, and she always makes a dreadful noise when she blows her nose. A really unforgettable noise, you know. Now, when I blow my nose, I don't behave like an elephant. I—"

"You blow it like a gentleman," interrupted the Marchioness, as he paused in some confusion.

"Indeed I do," he said gratefully. "In the most polished manner possible, my dear lady."

Lady Jane put her handkerchief to her lips. There was a period of silence. The Count appeared to be thinking with great intensity. He had a harassed expression about the corners of his nose. It was he who broke the silence. He broke it with a most tremendous sneeze.

"The beastly snuff," he said in apology.

Cricklewick's voice seemed to act as an echo to the remark.

"The Right-Honourable Mrs. Priestly-Duff," he announced, and an angular, middle-aged lady in a rose-coloured gown entered the room. She had a very long nose and prominent teeth; her neck was of amazing length and appeared to be attached to her shoulders by means of vertical, skin-covered ropes, running from torso to points just behind her ears, where they were lost in a matting of faded, straw-coloured hair. On second thought, it may be simpler to remark that her neck was amazingly scrawny. It will save confusion. Her voice was a trifle strident and her French execrable.

"Isn't it awful?" she said as she joined the trio at the fireplace. "I thought I'd never get here. Two hours coming, my dear, and I must be starting home at once if I want to get there before midnight."

"The Princess will be here," said the Marchioness.

"I'll wait fifteen minutes," said the new-comer crisply, pulling up her gloves. "I've had a trying day, Marchioness. Everything has gone wrong,—even the drains. They're frozen as tight as a drum and heaven knows when they'll get them thawed out! Who ever heard of such weather in March?"

"Ah, my dear Mrs. Priestly-Duff, you should not forget the beautiful sunshine we had yesterday," said the Count cheerily.

"Precious little good it does today," she retorted, looking down upon him from a lofty height, and as if she had not noticed his presence before. "When did you come in, Count?"

"It is quite likely the Princess will not venture out in such weather," interposed the Marchioness, sensing squalls.

"Well, I'll stop a bit anyway and get my feet warm. I hope she doesn't come. She is a good deal of a wet blanket, you must admit."

"Wet blankets," began the Count argumentatively, and then, catching a glance from the Marchioness, cleared his throat, blew his nose, and mumbled something about poor people who had no blankets at all, God help them on such a night as this.

Lady Jane had turned away from the group and was idly turning the leaves of the Illustrated London News. The smallest intelligence would have grasped the fact that Mrs. Priestly-Duff was not a genial soul.

"Who else is coming?" she demanded, fixing the little hostess with the stare that had just been removed from the back of Lady Jane's head.

Cricklewick answered from the doorway.

"Lord Temple. Baron—ahem!—Whiskers—eh? Baron Wissmer. Prince Waldemar de Bosky. Count Wilhelm Frederick Von Blitzen."

Four young men advanced upon the Marchioness, Lord Temple in the van. He was a tall, good-looking chap, with light brown hair that curled slightly above the ears, and eyes that danced.

"This, my dear Marchioness, is my friend, Baron Wissmer," he said, after bending low over her hand.

The Baron, whose broad hands were encased in immaculate white gloves that failed by a wide margin to button across his powerful wrists, smiled sheepishly as he enveloped her fingers in his huge palm.

"It is good of you to let me come, Marchioness," he said awkwardly, a deep flush spreading over his sea-tanned face. "If I manage to deport myself like the bull in the china shop, pray lay it to clumsiness and not to ignorance. It has been a very long time since I touched the hand of a Marchioness."

"Small people, like myself, may well afford to be kind and forgiving to giants," said she, smiling. "Dear me, how huge you are."

"I was once in the Emperor's Guard," said he, straightening his figure to its full six feet and a half. "The Blue Hussars. I may add with pride that I was not so horribly clumsy in regimentals. After all, it is the clothes that makes the man." He smiled as he looked himself over. "I shall not be at all offended or even embarrassed if you say 'goodness, how you have grown!'"

"The best tailor in London made that suit of clothes," said Lord Temple, surveying his friend with an appraising eye. Out of the corner of the same eye he explored the region beyond the group that now clustered about the hostess. Evidently he discovered what he was looking for. Leaving the Baron high and dry, he skirted the edge of the group and, with beaming face, came to Lady Jane.

"My family is of Vienna," the Baron was saying to the Marchioness, "but of late years I have called Constantinople my home."

"I understand," said she gently. She asked no other question, but, favouring him with a kindly smile, turned her attention to the men who lurked insignificantly in the shadow of his vast bulk.

The Prince was a pale, dreamy young man with flowing black hair that must have been a constant menace to his vision, judging by the frequent and graceful sweep of his long, slender hand in brushing the encroaching forelock from his eyes, over which it spread briefly in the nature of a veil. He had the fingers of a musician, the bearing of a violinist. His head drooped slightly toward his left shoulder, which was always raised a trifle above the level of the right. And there was in his soft brown eyes the faraway look of the detached. The insignia of his house hung suspended by a red ribbon in the centre of his white shirt front, while on the lapel of his coat reposed the emblem of the Order of the Golden Star. He was a Pole.

Count Von Blitzen, a fair-haired, pink-skinned German, urged himself forward with typical, not-to-be-denied arrogance, and crushed the fingers of the Marchioness in his fat hand. His broad face beamed with an all-enveloping smile.

"Only patriots and lovers venture forth on such nights as this," he said, in a guttural voice that rendered his French almost laughable.

"With an occasional thief or varlet," supplemented the Marchioness.

"Ach, Dieu," murmured the Count.

Fresh arrivals were announced by Cricklewick. For the next ten or fifteen minutes they came thick and fast, men and women of all ages, nationality and condition, and not one of them without a high-sounding title. They disposed themselves about the vast room, and a subdued vocal hubbub ensued. If here and there elderly guests, with gnarled and painfully scrubbed hands, preferred isolation and the pictorial contents of a magazine from the land of their nativity, it was not with snobbish intentions. They were absorbing the news from "home," in the regular weekly doses.

The regal, resplendent Countess du Bara, of the Opera, held court in one corner of the room. Another was glorified by a petite baroness from the Artists' Colony far down-town, while a rather dowdy lady with a coronet monopolized the attention of a small group in the centre of the room.

Lady Jane Thorne and Lord Temple sat together in a dim recess beyond the great chair of state, and conversed in low and far from impersonal tones.

Cricklewick appeared in the doorway and in his most impressive manner announced Her Royal Highness, the Princess Mariana Theresa Sebastano Michelini Celestine di Pavesi.

And with the entrance of royalty, kind reader, you may consider yourself introduced, after a fashion, to the real aristocracy of the City of New York, United States of America,—the titled riff-raff of the world's cosmopolis.

CHAPTER III

THE CITY OF MASKS

NEW YORK is not merely a melting pot for the poor and the humble of the lands of the earth. In its capacious depths, unknown and unsuspected, float atoms of an entirely different sort: human beings with the blood of the high-born and lofty in their veins, derelicts swept up by the varying winds of adversity, adventure, injustice, lawlessness, fear and independence.

Lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses, counts and countesses, swarm to the Metropolis in the course of the speeding year, heralded by every newspaper in the land, fêted and feasted and glorified by a capricious and easily impressed public; they pass with pomp and panoply and we let them go with reluctance and a vociferous invitation to come again. They come and they go, and we are informed each morning and evening of every move they have made during the day and night. We are told what they eat for breakfast, luncheon and dinner; what they wear and what they do not wear; where they are entertained and by whom; who they are and why; what they think of New York and—but why go on? We deny them privacy, and they think we are a wonderful, considerate and hospitable people. They go back to their homes in far-off lands,—and that is the end of them so far as we are concerned.

They merely pause on the lip of the melting pot, briefly peer into its simmering depths, and then,—pass on.

It is not with such as they that this narrative has to deal. It is not of the heralded, the glorified and the toasted that we tell, but of those who slip into the pot with the coarser ingredients, and who never, by any chance, become actually absorbed by the processes of integration but remain for ever as they were in the beginning: distinct foreign substances.

From all quarters of the globe the drift comes to our shores. New York swallows the good with the bad, and thrives, like the cannibal, on the man-food it gulps down with ravenous disregard for consequences or effect. It rarely disgorges.

It eats all flesh, foul or fair, and it drinks good red blood out of the same cup that offers a black and nauseous bile. It conceals its inward revulsion behind a bland, disdainful smile, and holds out its hands for more of the meat and poison that comes up from the sea in ships.

It is the City of Masks.

Its men and women hide behind a million masks; no man looks beneath the mask his neighbour wears, for he is interested only in that which he sees with the least possible effort: the surface. He sees his neighbour but he knows him not. He keeps his own mask in place and wanders among the millions, secure in the thought that all other men are as casual as he,—and as charitable.

From time to time the newspapers come forward with stories that amaze and interest those of us who remain, and always will remain, romantic and impressionable. They tell of the royal princess living in squalor on the lower east side; of the heir to a baronetcy dying in poverty in a hospital somewhere up-town; of the countess who defies the wolf by dancing in the roof-gardens; of the lost arch-duke who has been recognized in a gang of stevedores; of the earl who lands in jail as an ordinary hobo; of the baroness who supports a shiftless husband and their offspring by giving music-lessons; of the retiring scholar who scorns a life of idleness and a coronet besides; of shifty ne'er-do-wells with titles at homes and aliases elsewhere; of fugitive lords and forgotten ladies; of thieves and bauds and wastrels who stand revealed in their extremity as the sons and daughters of noble houses.

In this City of Masks there are hundreds of men and women in whose veins the blood of a sound aristocracy flows. By choice or necessity they have donned the mask of obscurity. They tread the paths of oblivion. They toil, beg or steal to keep pace with circumstance. But the blood will not be denied. In the breast of each of these drifters throbs the pride of birth, in the soul of each flickers the unquenchable flame of caste. The mask is for the man outside, not for the man inside.

Recently there died in one of the municipal hospitals an old flower-woman, familiar for three decades to the thousands who thread their way through the maze of streets in the lower end of Manhattan. To them she was known as Old Peg. To herself she was the Princess Feododric, born to the purple, daughter of one of the greatest families in Russia. She was never anything but the Princess to herself, despite the squalor in which she lived. Her epitaph was written in the bold, black head-lines of the newspapers; but her history was laid away with her mask in a graveyard far from palaces—and flower-stands. Her headstone revealed the uncompromising pride that survived her after death. By her direction it bore the name of Feododric, eldest daughter of His Highness, Prince Michael Androvodski; born in St. Petersburgh, September 12, 1841; died Jan. 7, 1912; wife of James Lumley, of County Cork, Ireland.

It is of the high-born who dwell in low places that this tale is told. It is of an aristocracy that serves and smiles and rarely sneers behind its mask.

When Cricklewick announced the Princess Mariana Theresa the hush of deference fell upon the assembled company. In the presence of royalty no one remained seated.

She advanced slowly, ponderously into the room, bowing right and left as she crossed to the great chair at the upper end. One by one the others presented themselves and kissed the coarse, unlovely hand she held out to them. It was not "make-believe." It was her due. The blood of a king and a queen coursed through her veins; she had been born a Princess Royal.

She was sixty, but her hair was as black as the coat of the raven. Time, tribulation, and a harsh destiny had put each its own stamp upon her dark, almost sinister, face. The black eyes were sharp and calculating, and they did not smile with her thin lips. She wore a great amount of jewellery and a gown of blue velvet, lavishly bespangled and generously embellished with laces of many periods, values and, you could say, nativity.

The Honourable Mrs. Priestly-Duff having been a militant suffragette before a sudden and enforced departure from England, was the only person there with the hardihood to proclaim, not altogether sotto voce, that the "get-up" was a fright.

Restraint vanished the instant the last kiss of tribute fell upon her knuckles. The Princess put her hand to her side, caught her breath sharply, and remarked to the Marchioness, who stood near by, that it was dreadful the way she was putting on weight. She was afraid of splitting something if she took a long, natural breath.

"I haven't weighed myself lately," she said, "but the last time I had this dress on it felt like a kimono. Look at it now! You could not stuff a piece of tissue paper between it and me to save your soul. I shall have to let it out a couple of—What were you about to say, Count Fogazario?"

The little Count, at the Marchioness's elbow, repeated something he had already said, and added:

"And if it continues there will not be a trolley-car running by midnight."

The Princess eyed him coldly. "That is just like a man," she said. "Not the faintest idea of what we were talking about, Marchioness."

The Count bowed. "You were speaking of tissue paper, Princess," said he, stiffly. "I understood perfectly."

Once a week the Marchioness held her amazing salon. Strictly speaking, it was a co-operative affair. The so-called guests were in reality contributors to and supporters of an enterprise that had been going on for the matter of five years in the heart of unsuspecting New York. According to his or her means, each of these exiles paid the tithe or tax necessary, and became in fact a member of the inner circle.

From nearly every walk in life they came to this common, converging point, and sat them down with their equals, for the moment laying aside the mask to take up a long-discarded and perhaps despised reality. They became lords and ladies all over again, and not for a single instant was there the slightest deviation from dignity or form.

Moral integrity was the only requirement, and that, for obvious reasons, was sometimes overlooked,—as for example in the case of the Countess who eloped with the young artist and lived in complacent shame and happiness with him in a three-room flat in East Nineteenth street. The artist himself was barred from the salon, not because of his ignoble action, but for the sufficient reason that he was of ignoble birth. Outside the charmed conclave he was looked upon as a most engaging chap. And there was also the case of the appallingly amiable baron who had fired four shots at a Russian Grand-Duke and got away with his life in spite of the vaunted secret service. It was of no moment whatsoever that one of his bullets accidentally put an end to the life of a guardsman. That was merely proof of his earnestness and in no way reflected on his standing as a nobleman. Nor was it adequate cause for rejection that certain of these men and women were being sought by Imperial Governments because they were political fugitives, with prices on their heads.

The Marchioness, more prosperous than any of her associates, assumed the greater part of the burden attending this singular reversion to form. It was she who held the lease on the building, from cellar to roof, and it was she who paid that important item of expense: the rent. The Marchioness was no other than the celebrated Deborah, whose gowns issuing from the lower floors at prodigious prices, gave her a standing in New York that not even the plutocrats and parvenus could dispute. In private life she may have been a Marchioness, but to all New York she was known as the queen of dressmakers.

If you desired to consult Deborah in person you inquired for Mrs. Sparflight, or if you happened to be a new customer and ignorant, you were set straight by an attendant (with a slight uplifting of the eyebrows) when you asked for Madame "Deborah."

The ownership of the rare pieces of antique furniture, rugs, tapestries and paintings was vested in two members of the circle, one occupying a position in the centre of the ring, the other on the outer rim: Count Antonio Fogazario and Moody, the footman. For be it known that while Moody reverted once a week to a remote order of existence he was for the balance of the time an exceedingly prosperous, astute and highly respected dealer in antiques, with a shop in Madison Avenue and a clientele that considered it the grossest impertinence to dispute the prices he demanded. He always looked forward to these "drawing-rooms," so to speak. It was rather a joy to disregard the aspirates. He dropped enough hs on a single evening to make up for a whole week of deliberate speech.

As for Count Antonio, he was the purveyor of Italian antiques and primitive paintings, "authenticity guaranteed," doing business under the name of "Juneo & Co., Ltd. London, Paris, Rome, New York." He was known in the trade and at his bank as Mr. Juneo.

Occasionally the exigencies of commerce necessitated the substitution of an article from stock for one temporarily loaned to the fifth-floor drawing-room.

During the seven days in the week, Mr. Moody and Mr. Juneo observed a strained but common equality. Mr. Moody contemptuously referred to Mr. Juneo as a second-hand dealer, while Mr. Juneo, with commercial bitterness, informed his patrons that Pickett, Inc., needed a lot of watching. But on these Wednesday nights a vast abyss stretched between them. They were no longer rivals in business. Mr. Juneo, without the slightest sign of arrogance, put Mr. Moody in his place, and Mr. Moody, with perfect equanimity, quite properly stayed there.

"A chair over here, Moody," the Count would say (to Pickett, Inc.,) and Moody, with all the top-lofty obsequiousness of the perfect footman, would place a chair in the designated spot, and say:

"H'anythink else, my lord? Thank you, sir."

On this particular Wednesday night two topics of paramount interest engaged the attention of the company. The newspapers of that day had printed the story of the apprehension and seizure of one Peter Jolinski, wanted in Warsaw on the charge of assassination.

As Count Andreas Verdray he was known to this exclusive circle of Europeans, and to them he was a persecuted, unjustly accused fugitive from the land of his nativity. Russian secret service men had run him to earth after five years of relentless pursuit. As a respectable, industrious window-washer he had managed for years to evade arrest for a crime he had not committed, and now he was in jail awaiting extradition and almost certain death at the hands of his intriguing enemies. A cultured scholar, a true gentleman, he was, despite his vocation, one of the most distinguished units in this little world of theirs. The authorities in Warsaw charged him with instigating the plot to assassinate a powerful and autocratic officer of the Crown. In more or less hushed voices, the assemblage discussed the unhappy event.

The other topic was the need of immediate relief for the family of the Baroness de Flamme, who was on her death-bed in Harlem and whose three small children, deprived of the support of a hard-working music-teacher and deserted by an unconscionably plebeian father, were in a pitiable state of destitution. Acting on the suggestion of Lord Temple, who as Thomas Trotter earned a weekly stipend of thirty dollars as chauffeur for a prominent Park Avenue gentleman, a collection was taken, each person giving according to his means. The largest contribution was from Count Fogazario, who headed the list with twenty-five dollars. The Marchioness was down for twenty. The smallest donation was from Prince Waldemar. Producing a solitary coin, he made change, and after saving out ten cents for carfare, donated forty cents.

Cricklewick, Moody and McFaddan were not invited to contribute. No one would have dreamed of asking them to join in such a movement. And yet, of all those present, the three men-servants were in a better position than any one else to give handsomely. They were, in fact, the richest men there. The next morning, however, would certainly bring checks from their offices to the custodian of the fund, the Hon. Mrs. Priestly-Duff. They knew their places on Wednesday night, however.

The Countess du Bara, from the Opera, sang later on in the evening; Prince Waldemar got out his violin and played; the gay young baroness from the Artists' Colony played accompaniments very badly on the baby grand piano; Cricklewick and the footmen served coffee and sandwiches, and every one smoked in the dining-room.

At eleven o'clock the Princess departed. She complained a good deal of her feet.

"It's the weather," she explained to the Marchioness, wincing a little as she made her way to the door.

"Too bad," said the Marchioness. "Are we to be honoured on next Wednesday night, your highness? You do not often grace our gatherings, you know. I—"

"It will depend entirely on circumstances," said the Princess, graciously.

Circumstances, it may be mentioned,—though they never were mentioned on Wednesday nights,—had a great deal to do with the Princess's actions. She conducted a pawn-shop in Baxter street. As the widow and sole legatee of Moses Jacobs, she was quite a figure in the street. Customers came from all corners of the town, and without previous appointment. Report had it that Mrs. Jacobs was rolling in money. People slunk in and out of the front door of her place of business, penniless on entering, affluent on leaving,—if you would call the possession of a dollar or two affluence,—and always with the resolve in their souls to some day get even with the leech who stood behind the counter and doled out nickels where dollars were expected.

It was an open secret that more than one of those who kissed the Princess's hand in the Marchioness's drawing-room carried pawnchecks issued by Mrs. Jacobs. Business was business. Sentiment entered the soul of the Princess only on such nights as she found it convenient and expedient to present herself at the Salon. It vanished the instant she put on her street clothes on the floor below and passed out into the night. Avarice stepped in as sentiment stepped out, and one should not expect too much of avarice.

For one, the dreamy, half-starved Prince Waldemar was rarely without pawnchecks from her delectable establishment. Indeed it had been impossible for him to entertain the company on this stormy evening except for her grudging consent to substitute his overcoat for the Stradivarius he had been obliged to leave the day before.

Without going too deeply into her history, it is only necessary to say that she was one of those wayward, wilful princesses royal who occasionally violate all tradition and marry good-looking young Americans or Englishmen, and disappear promptly and automatically from court circles.

She ran away when she was nineteen with a young attaché in the British legation. It was the worst thing that could have happened to the poor chap. For years they drifted through many lands, finally ending in New York, where, their resources having been exhausted, she was forced to pawn her jewellery. The pawn-broker was one Abraham Jacobs, of Baxter street.

The young English husband, disheartened and thoroughly disillusioned, shot himself one fine day. By a single coincidence, a few weeks afterward, old Abraham went to his fathers in the most agreeable fashion known to nature, leaving his business, including the princess's jewels, to his son Moses.

With rare foresight and acumen, Mrs. Brinsley (the Princess, in other words), after several months of contemplative mourning, redeemed her treasure by marrying Moses. And when Moses, after begetting Solomon, David and Hannah, passed on at the age of twoscore years and ten, she continued the business with even greater success than he. She did not alter the name that flourished in large gold letters on the two show windows and above the hospitable doorway. For twenty years it had read: The Royal Exchange: M. Jacobs, Proprietor. And now you know all that is necessary to know about Mariana, to this day a true princess of the blood.

Inasmuch as a large share of her business came through customers who preferred to visit her after the fall of night, there is no further need to explain her reply to the Marchioness.

When midnight came the Marchioness was alone in the deserted drawing-room. The company had dispersed to the four corners of the storm-swept city, going by devious means and routes.

They fared forth into the night sans ceremony, sans regalia. In the locker-rooms on the floor below each of these noble wights divested himself and herself of the raiment donned for the occasion. With the turning of a key in the locker door, barons became ordinary men, countesses became mere women, and all of them stole regretfully out of the passage at the foot of the first flight of stairs and shivered in the wind that blew through the City of Masks.

"I've got more money than I know what to do with, Miss Emsdale," said Tom Trotter, as they went together out into the bitter wind. "I'll blow you off to a taxi."

"I couldn't think of it," said the erstwhile Lady Jane, drawing her small stole close about her neck.

"But it's on my way home," said he. "I'll drop you at your front door. Please do."

"If I may stand half," she said resolutely.

"We'll see," said he. "Wait here in the doorway till I fetch a taxi from the hotel over there. Oh, I say, Herman, would you mind asking one of those drivers over there to pick us up here?"

"Sure," said Herman, one time Count Wilhelm Frederick Von Blitzen, who had followed them to the side-walk. "Fierce night, ain'd it? Py chiminy, ain'd it?"

"Where is your friend, Mr. Trotter," inquired Miss Emsdale, as the stalwart figure of one of the most noted head-waiters in New York struggled off against the wind.

"He beat it quite a while ago," said he, with an enlightening grin.

"Oh?" said she, and met his glance in the darkness. A sudden warmth swept over her.

CHAPTER IV

THE SCION OF A NEW YORK HOUSE

AS Miss Emsdale and Thomas Trotter got down from the taxi, into a huge unbroken snowdrift in front of a house in one of the cross-town streets just off upper Fifth Avenue, a second taxi drew up behind them and barked a raucous command to pull up out of the way. But the first taxi was unable to do anything of the sort, being temporarily though explosively stalled in the drift along the curb. Whereupon the fare in the second taxi threw open the door and, with an audible imprecation, plunged into the drift, just in time to witness the interesting spectacle of a lady being borne across the snow-piled sidewalk in the arms of a stalwart man; and, as he gazed in amazement, the man and his burden ascended the half-dozen steps leading to the storm-vestibule of the very house to which he himself was bound.

His first shock of apprehension was dissipated almost instantly. The man's burden giggled quite audibly as he set her down inside the storm doors. That giggle was proof positive that she was neither dead nor injured. She was very much alive, there could be no doubt about it. But who was she?

The newcomer swore softly as he fumbled in his trousers' pocket for a coin for the driver who had run him up from the club. After an exasperating but seemingly necessary delay he hurried up the steps. He met the stalwart burden-bearer coming down. A servant had opened the door and the late burden was passing into the hall.

He peered sharply into the face of the man who was leaving, and recognized him.

"Hello," he said. "Some one ill, Trotter?"

"No, Mr. Smith-Parvis," replied Trotter in some confusion. "Disagreeable night, isn't it?"

"In some respects," said young Mr. Smith-Parvis, and dashed into the vestibule before the footman could close the door.

Miss Emsdale turned at the foot of the broad stairway as she heard the servant greet the young master. A swift flush mounted to her cheeks. Her heart beat a little faster, notwithstanding the fact that it had been beating with unusual rapidity ever since Thomas Trotter disregarded her protests and picked her up in his strong arms.

"Hello," he said, lowering his voice.

There was a light in the library beyond. His father was there, taking advantage, no doubt, of the midnight lull to read the evening newspapers. The social activities of the Smith-Parvises gave him but little opportunity to read the evening papers prior to the appearance of the morning papers.

"What is the bally rush?" went on the young man, slipping out of his fur-lined overcoat and leaving it pendant in the hands of the footman. Miss Emsdale, after responding to his hushed "hello" in an equally subdued tone, had started up the stairs.

"It is very late, Mr. Smith-Parvis. Good night."

"Never too late to mend," he said, and was supremely well-satisfied with what a superior intelligence might have recorded as a cryptic remark but what, to him, was an awfully clever "come-back." He had spent three years at Oxford. No beastly American college for him, by Jove!

Overcoming a cultivated antipathy to haste,—which he considered the lowest form of ignorance,—he bounded up the steps, three at a time, and overtook her midway to the top.

"I say, Miss Emsdale, I saw you come in, don't you know. I couldn't believe my eyes. What the deuce were you doing out with that common—er—chauffeur? D'you mean to say that you are running about with a chap of that sort, and letting him—"

"If you please, Mr. Smith-Parvis!" interrupted Miss Emsdale coldly. "Good night!"

"I don't mean to say you haven't the right to go about with any one you please," he persisted, planting himself in front of her at the top of the steps. "But a common chauffeur—Well, now, 'pon my word, Miss Emsdale, really you might just as well be seen with Peasley down there."

"Peasley is out of the question," said she, affecting a wry little smile, as of self-pity. "He is tooken, as you say in America. He walks out with Bessie, the parlour-maid."

"Walks out? Good Lord, you don't mean to say you'd—but, of course, you're spoofing me. One never knows how to take you English, no matter how long one may have lived in England. But I am serious. You cannot afford to be seen running around nights with fellows of that stripe. Rotten bounders, that's what I call 'em. Ever been out with him before?"

"Often, Mr. Smith-Parvis," she replied calmly. "I am sure you would like him if you knew him better. He is really a very—"

"Nonsense! He is a good chauffeur, I've no doubt,—Lawrie Carpenter says he's a treasure, but I've no desire to know him any better. And I don't like to think of you knowing him quite as well as you do, Miss Emsdale. See what I mean?"

"Perfectly. You mean that you will go to your mother with the report that I am not a fit person to be with the children. Isn't that what you mean?"

"Not at all. I'm not thinking of the kids. I'm thinking of myself. I'm pretty keen about you, and—"

"Aren't you forgetting yourself, Mr. Smith-Parvis?" she demanded curtly.

"Oh, I know there'd be a devil of a row if the mater ever dreamed that I—Oh, I say! Don't rush off in a huff. Wait a—"

But she had brushed past him and was swiftly ascending the second flight of stairs.

He stared after her in astonishment. He couldn't understand such stupidity, not even in a governess. There wasn't another girl in New York City, so far as he knew, who wouldn't have been pleased out of her boots to receive the significant mark of interest he was bestowing upon this lowly governess,—and here was she turning her back upon,—Why, what was the matter with her? He passed his hand over his brow and blinked a couple of times. And she only a paid governess! It was incredible.

He went slowly downstairs and, still in a sort of daze, found himself a few minutes later pouring out a large drink of whiskey in the dining-room. It was his habit to take a bottle of soda with his whiskey, but on this occasion he overcame it and gulped the liquor "neat." It appeared to be rather uplifting, so he had another. Then he went up to his own room and sulked for an hour before even preparing for bed. The more he thought of it, the graver her unseemly affront became.

"And to have her insult me like that," he said to himself over and over again, "when not three minutes before she had let that bally bounder carry her up—By gad, I'll give her something to think about in the morning. She sha'n't do that sort of thing to me. She'll find herself out of a job and with a damned poor reference in her pocket if she gets gay with me. She'll come down from her high horse, all right, all right. Positions like this one don't grow in the park. She's got to understand that. She can't go running around with chauffeurs and all—My God, to think that he had her in his arms! The one girl in all the world who has ever really made me sit up and take notice! Gad, I—I can't stand it—I can't bear to think of her cuddling up to that—The damned bounder!"

He sprang to his feet and bolted out into the hall. He was a spoiled young man with an aversion: an aversion to being denied anything that he wanted.

In the brief history of the Smith-Parvis family he occupied many full and far from prosaic pages. Smith-Parvis, Senior, was not a prodigal sort of person, and yet he had squandered a great many thousands of dollars in his time on Smith-Parvis, Junior. It costs money to bring up young men like Smith-Parvis, Junior; and by the same token it costs money to hold them down. The family history, if truthfully written, would contain passages in which the unbridled ambitions of Smith-Parvis, Junior, overwhelmed everything else. There would be the chapters excoriating the two chorus-girls who, in not widely separated instances, consented to release the young man from matrimonial pledges in return for so much cash; and there would be numerous paragraphs pertaining to auction-bridge, and others devoted entirely to tailors; to say nothing of uncompromising café and restaurant keepers who preferred the Smith-Parvis money to the Smith-Parvis trade.

The young man, having come to the conclusion that he wanted Miss Emsdale, ruthlessly decided to settle the matter at once. He would not wait till morning. He would go up to her room and tell her that if she knew what was good for her she'd listen to what he had to say. She was too nice a girl to throw herself away on a rotter like Trotter.

Then, as he came to the foot of the steps, he remembered the expression in her eyes as she swept past him an hour earlier. It suddenly occurred to him to pause and reflect. The look she gave him, now that he thought of it, was not that of a timid, frightened menial. Far from it! There was something imperious about it; he recalled the subtle, fleeting and hitherto unfamiliar chill it gave him.

Somewhat to his own amazement, he returned to his room and closed the door with surprising care. He usually slammed it.

"Dammit all," he said, half aloud, scowling at his reflection in the mirror across the room, "I—I wonder if she thinks she can put on airs with me." Later on he regained his self-assurance sufficiently to utter an ultimatum to the invisible offender: "You'll be eating out of my hand before you're two days older, my fine lady, or I'll know the reason why."

Smith-Parvis, Junior, wore the mask of a gentleman. As a matter-of-fact, the entire Smith-Parvis family went about masked by a similar air of gentility.

The hyphen had a good deal to do with it.

The head of the family, up to the time he came of age, was William Philander Smith, commonly called Bill by the young fellows in Yonkers. A maternal uncle, name of Parvis, being without wife or child at the age of seventy-eight, indicated a desire to perpetuate his name by hitching it to the sturdiest patronymic in the English language, and forthwith made a will, leaving all that he possessed to his only nephew, on condition that the said nephew and all his descendants should bear, henceforth and for ever, the name of Smith-Parvis.

That is how it all came about. William Philander, shortly after the fusion of names, fell heir to a great deal of money and in due time forsook Yonkers for Manhattan, where he took unto himself a wife in the person of Miss Angela Potts, only child of the late Simeon Potts, Esq., and Mrs. Potts, neither of whom, it would seem, had the slightest desire to perpetuate the family name. Indeed, as Angela was getting along pretty well toward thirty, they rather made a point of abolishing it before it was too late.

The first-born of William Philander and Angela was christened Stuyvesant Van Sturdevant Smith-Parvis, after one of the Pottses who came over at a time when the very best families in Holland, according to the infant's grandparents, were engaged in establishing an aristocracy at the foot of Manhattan Island.

After Stuyvesant,—ten years after, in fact,—came Regina Angela, who languished a while in the laps of the Pottses and the Smith-Parvis nurses, and died expectedly. When Stuyvie was fourteen the twins, Lucille and Eudora, came, and at that the Smith-Parvises packed up and went to England to live. Stuyvie managed in some way to make his way through Eton and part of the way through Oxford. He was sent down in his third year. It wasn't so easy to have his own way there. Moreover, he did not like Oxford because the rest of the boys persisted in calling him an American. He didn't mind being called a New Yorker, but they were rather obstinate about it.

Miss Emsdale was the new governess. The redoubtable Mrs. Sparflight had recommended her to Mrs. Smith-Parvis. Since her advent into the home in Fifth Avenue, some three or four months prior to the opening of this narrative, a marked change had come over Stuyvesant Van Sturdevant. It was principally noticeable in a recently formed habit of getting down to breakfast early. The twins and the governess had breakfast at half-past eight. Up to this time he had detested the twins. Of late, however, he appeared to have discovered that they were his sisters and rather interesting little beggars at that.

They were very much surprised by his altered behaviour. To the new governess they confided the somewhat startling suspicion that Stuyvie must be having softening of the brain, just as "grandpa" had when "papa" discovered that he was giving diamond rings to the servants and smiling at strangers in the street. It must be that, said they, for never before had Stuyvie kissed them or brought them expensive candies or smiled at them as he was doing in these wonderful days.

Stranger still, he never had been polite or agreeable to governesses—before. He always had called them frumps, or cats, or freaks, or something like that. Surely something must be the matter with him, or he wouldn't be so nice to Miss Emsdale. Up to now he positively had refused to look at her predecessors, much less to sit at the same table with them. He said they took away his appetite.

The twins adored Miss Emsdale.

"We love you because you are so awfuly good," they were wont to say. "And so beautiful," they invariably added, as if it were not quite the proper thing to say.

It was obvious to Miss Emsdale that Stuyvesant endorsed the supplemental tribute of the twins. He made it very plain to the new governess that he thought more of her beauty than he did of her goodness. He ogled her in a manner which, for want of a better expression, may be described as possessive. Instead of being complimented by his surreptitious admiration, she was distinctly annoyed. She disliked him intensely.

He was twenty-five. There were bags under his eyes. More than this need not be said in describing him, unless one is interested in the tiny black moustache that looked as though it might have been pasted, with great precision, in the centre of his long upper lip,—directly beneath the spreading nostrils of a broad and far from aristocratic nose. His lips were thick and coarse, his chin a trifle undershot. Physically, he was a well set-up fellow, tall and powerful.

For reasons best known to himself, and approved by his parents, he affected a distinctly English manner of speech. In that particular, he frequently out-Englished the English themselves.

As for Miss Emsdale, she was a long time going to sleep. The encounter with the scion of the house had left her in a disturbed frame of mind. She laid awake for hours wondering what the morrow would produce for her. Dismissal, no doubt, and with it a stinging rebuke for what Mrs. Smith-Parvis would consider herself justified in characterizing as unpardonable misconduct in one employed to teach innocent and impressionable young girls. Mingled with these dire thoughts were occasional thrills of delight. They were, however, of short duration and had to do with a pair of strong arms and a gentle, laughing voice.

In addition to these shifting fears and thrills, there were even more disquieting sensations growing out of the unwelcome attentions of Smith-Parvis, Junior. They were, so to speak, getting on her nerves. And now he had not only expressed himself in words, but had actually threatened her. There could be no mistake about that.

Her heart was heavy. She did not want to lose her position. The monthly checks she received from Mrs. Smith-Parvis meant a great deal to her. At least half of her pay went to England, and sometimes more than half. A friendly solicitor in London obtained the money on these drafts and forwarded it, without fee, to the sick young brother who would never walk again, the adored young brother who had fallen prey to the most cruel of all enemies: infantile paralysis.

Jane Thorne was the only daughter of the Earl of Wexham, who shot himself in London when the girl was but twelve years old. He left a penniless widow and two children. Wexham Manor, with all its fields and forests, had been sacrificed beforehand by the reckless, ill-advised nobleman. The police found a half-crown in his pocket when they took charge of the body. It was the last of a once imposing fortune. The widow and children subsisted on the charity of a niggardly relative. With the death of the former, after ten unhappy years as a dependent, Jane resolutely refused to accept help from the obnoxious relative. She set out to earn a living for herself and the crippled boy. We find her, after two years of struggle and privation, installed as Miss Emsdale in the Smith-Parvis mansion, earning one hundred dollars a month.

It is safe to say that if the Smith-Parvises had known that she was the daughter of an Earl, and that her brother was an Earl, there would have been great rejoicing among them; for it isn't everybody who can boast an Earl's daughter as governess.

One night in each week she was free to do as she pleased. It was, in plain words, her night out. She invariably spent it with the Marchioness and the coterie of unmasked spirits from lands across the seas.

What was she to say to Mrs. Smith-Parvis if called upon to account for her unconventional return of the night before? How could she explain? Her lips were closed by the seal of honour so far as the meetings above "Deborah's" were concerned. A law unwritten but steadfastly observed by every member of that remarkable, heterogeneous court, made it impossible for her to divulge her whereabouts or actions on this and other agreeable "nights out." No man or woman in that company would have violated, even under the gravest pressure, the compact under which so many well-preserved secrets were rendered secure from exposure.

Stuyvesant, in his rancour, would draw an ugly picture of her midnight adventure. He would, no doubt, feel inspired to add a few conclusions of his own. Her word, opposed to his, would have no effect on the verdict of the indulgent mother. She would stand accused and convicted of conduct unbecoming a governess! For, after all, Thomas Trotter was a chauffeur, and she couldn't make anything nobler out of him without saying that he wasn't Thomas Trotter at all.

She arose the next morning with a splitting headache, and the fear of Stuyvesant in her soul.

He was waiting for her in the hall below. The twins were accorded an unusually affectionate greeting by their big brother. He went so far as to implant a random kiss on the features of each of the "brats," as he called them in secret. Then he roughly shoved them ahead into the breakfast-room.

Fastening his gaze upon the pale, unsmiling face of Miss Emsdale, he whispered:

"Don't worry, my dear. Mum's the word."

He winked significantly. Revolted, she drew herself up and hurried after the children, unpleasantly conscious of the leer of admiration that rested upon her from behind.

He was very gay at breakfast.

"Mum's the word," he repeated in an undertone, as he drew back her chair at the conclusion of the meal. His lips were close to her ear, his hot breath on her cheek, as he bent forward to utter this reassuring remark.

CHAPTER V

MR. THOMAS TROTTER HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE

TWO days later Thomas Trotter turned up at the old book shop of J. Bramble, in Lexington Avenue.

"Well," he said, as he took his pipe out of his pocket and began to stuff tobacco into it, "I've got the sack."

"Got the sack?" exclaimed Mr. Bramble, blinking through his horn-rimmed spectacles. "You can't be serious."

"It's the gospel truth," affirmed Mr. Trotter, depositing his long, graceful body in a rocking chair facing the sheet-iron stove at the back of the shop. "Got my walking papers last night, Bramby."

"What's wrong? I thought you were a fixture on the job. What have you been up to?"

"I'm blessed if I know," said the young man, shaking his head slowly. "Kicked out without notice, that's all I know about it. Two weeks' pay handed me; and a simple statement that he was putting some one on in my place today."

"Not even a reference?"

"He offered me a good one," said Trotter ironically. "Said he would give me the best send-off a chauffeur ever had. I told him I couldn't accept a reference and a discharge from the same employer."

"Rather foolish, don't you think?"

"That's just what he said. I said I'd rather have an explanation than a reference, under the circumstances."

"Um! What did he say to that?"

"Said I'd better take what he was willing to give."

Mr. Bramble drew up a chair and sat down. He was a small, sharp-featured man of sixty, bookish from head to foot.

"Well, well," he mused sympathetically. "Too bad, too bad, my boy. Still, you ought to thank goodness it comes at a time when the streets are in the shape they're in now. Almost impossible to get about with an automobile in all this snow, isn't it? Rather a good time to be discharged, I should say."

"Oh, I say, that is optimism. 'Pon my soul, I believe you'd find something cheerful about going to hell," broke in Trotter, grinning.

"Best way I know of to escape blizzards and snow-drifts," said Mr. Bramble, brightly.

The front door opened. A cold wind blew the length of the book-littered room.

"This Bramble's?" piped a thin voice.

"Yes. Come in and shut the door."

An even smaller and older man than himself obeyed the command. He wore the cap of a district messenger boy.

"Mr. J. Bramble here?" he quaked, advancing.

"Yes. What is it? A telegram?" demanded the owner of the shop, in some excitement.

"I should say not. Wires down everywheres. Gee, that fire looks good. I gotta letter for you, Mr. Bramble." He drew off his red mittens and produced from the pocket of his thin overcoat, an envelope and receipt book. "Sign here," he said, pointing.

Mr. Bramble signed and then studied the handwriting on the envelope, his lips pursed, one eye speculatively cocked.

"I've never seen the writing before. Must be a new one," he reflected aloud, and sighed. "Poor things!"

"That establishes the writer as a woman," said Trotter, removing his pipe. "Otherwise you would have said 'poor devils.' Now what do you mean by trifling with the women, you old rogue?" The loss of his position did not appear to have affected the nonchalant disposition of the good-looking Mr. Trotter.

"God bless my soul," said Mr. Bramble, staring hard at the envelope, "I don't believe it is from one of them, after all. By 'one of them,' my lad, I mean the poor gentlewomen who find themselves obliged to sell their books in order to obtain food and clothing. They always write before they call, you see. Saves 'em not only trouble but humiliation. The other kind simply burst in with a parcel of rubbish and ask how much I'll give for the lot. But this,—Well, well, I wonder who it can be from? Doesn't seem like the sort of writing—"

"Why don't you open it and see?" suggested his visitor.

"A good idea," said Mr. Bramble; "a very clever thought. There is a way to find out, isn't there?" His gaze fell upon the aged messenger, who warmed his bony hands at the stove. He paused, the tip of his forefinger inserted under the flap. "Sit down and warm yourself, my friend," he said. "Get your long legs out of the way, Tom, and make room for him. That's right! Must be pretty rough going outside for an old codger like you."

The messenger "boy" sat down. "Yes, sir, it sure is. Takes 'em forever in this 'ere town to clean the snow off'n the streets. 'Twasn't that way in my day."

"What do you mean by your 'day'?"

"Haven't you ever heard about me?" demanded the old man, eyeing Mr. Bramble with interest.

"Can't say that I have."

"Well, can you beat that? There's a big, long street named after me way down town. My name is Canal, Jotham W. Canal." He winked and showed his toothless gums in an amiable grin. "I used to be purty close to old Boss Tweed; kind of a lieutenant, you might say. Things were so hot in the old town in those days that we used to charge a nickel apiece for snowballs. Five cents apiece, right off the griddle. That's how hot it was in my day."

"My word!" exclaimed Mr. Bramble.

"He's spoofing you," said young Mr. Trotter.

"My God," groaned the messenger, "if I'd only knowed you was English I'd have saved my breath. Well, I guess I'll be on my way. Is there an answer, Mr. Bramble?"

"Um—aw—I quite forgot the—" He tore open the envelope and held the missive to the light. "'Pon my soul!" he cried, after reading the first few lines and then jumping ahead to the signature. "This is most extraordinary." He was plainly agitated as he felt in his pocket for a coin. "No answer,—that is to say,—none at present. Ahem! That's all, boy. Goodbye."

Mr. Canal shuffled out of the shop,—and out of this narrative as well.

"This will interest you," said Mr. Bramble, lowering his voice as he edged his chair closer to the young man. "It is from Lady Jane Thorne—I should say, Miss Emsdale. Bless my soul!"

Mr. Trotter's British complacency was disturbed. He abandoned his careless sprawl in the chair and sat up very abruptly.

"What's that? From Lady Jane? Don't tell me it's anything serious. One would think she was on her deathbed, judging by the face you're—"

"Read it for yourself," said the other, thrusting the letter into Trotter's hand. "It explains everything,—the whole blooming business. Read it aloud. Don't be uneasy," he added, noting the young man's glance toward the door. "No customers on a day like this. Some one may drop in to get warm, but—aha, I see you are interested."

An angry flush darkened Trotter's face as his eyes ran down the page.

"'Dear Mr. Bramble: (she wrote) I am sending this to you by special messenger, hoping it may reach you before Mr. Trotter drops in. He has told me that he spends a good deal of his spare time in your dear old shop, browsing among the books. In the light of what may already have happened, I am quite sure you will see him today. I feel that I may write freely to you, for you are his friend and mine, and you will understand. I am greatly distressed. Yesterday I was informed that he is to be summarily dismissed by Mr. Carpenter. I prefer not to reveal the source of information. All I may say is that I am, in a way, responsible for his misfortune. If the blow has fallen, he is doubtless perplexed and puzzled, and, I fear, very unhappy. Influence has been brought to bear upon Mr. Carpenter, who, you may not be by way of knowing, is a close personal friend of the people in whose home I am employed. Indeed, notwithstanding the difference in their ages, I may say that he is especially the friend of young Mr. S-P. Mr. Trotter probably knows something about the nature of this friendship, having been kept out till all hours of the morning in his capacity as chauffeur. My object in writing to you is two-fold: first, to ask you to prevail upon him to act with discretion for the present, at least, as I have reason to believe that there may be an attempt to carry out a threat to "run him out of town"; secondly, to advise him that I shall stop at your place at five o'clock this afternoon in quest of a little book that now is out of print. Please explain to him also that my uncertainty as to where a letter would reach him under these new conditions accounts for this message to you. Sincerely your friend,

"Jane Emsdale.'"

"Read it again, slowly," said Mr. Bramble, blinking harder than ever.

"What time is it now?" demanded Trotter, thrusting the letter into his own pocket. A quick glance at the watch on his wrist brought a groan of dismay from his lips. "Good Lord! A few minutes past ten. Seven hours! Hold on! I can almost see the words on your lips. I'll be discreet, so don't begin prevailing, there's a good chap. There's nothing to be said or done till I see her. But,—seven hours!"

"Stop here and have a bite of lunch with me," said Mr. Bramble, soothingly.

"Nothing could be more discreet than that," said Trotter, getting up to pace the floor. He was frowning.

"It's quite cosy in our little dining-room upstairs. If you prefer, I'll ask Mirabeau to clear out and let us have the place to ourselves while—"

"Not at all. I'll stop with you, but I will not have poor old Mirabeau evicted. We will show the letter to him. He is a Frenchman and he can read between the lines far better than either of us."

At twelve-thirty, Mr. Bramble stuck a long-used card in the front door and locked it from the inside. The world was informed, in bold type, that he had gone to lunch and would not return until one-thirty.

In the rear of the floor above the book-shop were the meagrely furnished bedrooms and kitchen shared by J. Bramble and Pierre Mirabeau, clock-maker and repairer. The kitchen was more than a kitchen. It was also a dining-room, a sitting-room and a scullery, and it was as clean and as neat as the proverbial pin. At the front was the work-shop of M. Mirabeau, filled with clocks of all sizes, shapes and ages. Back of this, as a sort of buffer between the quiet bedrooms and the busy resting-place of a hundred sleepless chimes, was located the combination store-room, utilized by both merchants: a musty, dingy place crowded with intellectual rubbish and a lapse of Time.

Mirabeau, in response to a shout from the fat Irishwoman who came in by the day to cook, wash and clean up for the tenants, strode briskly into the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. He was a tall, spare old man with uncommonly bright eyes and a long grey beard.

His joy on beholding the young guest at their board was surpassed only by the dejection communicated to his sensitive understanding by the dismal expression on the faces of J. Bramble and Thomas Trotter.

He broke off in the middle of a sentence, and, still grasping the hand of the guest, allowed his gaze to dart from one to the other.

"Mon dieu!" he exclaimed, swiftly altering his tone to one of the deepest concern. "What has happened? Has some one died? Don't tell me it is your grandfather, my boy. Don't tell me that the old villain has died at last and you will have to go back and step into his misguided boots. Nothing else can—"

"Worse than that," interrupted Trotter, smiling. "I've lost my situation."

M. Mirabeau heaved a sigh of relief. "Ah! My heart beats again. Still," with a vastly different sigh, "he cannot go on living for ever. The time is bound to come when you—"

An admonitory cough from Mr. Bramble, and a significant jerk of the head in the direction of the kitchen-range, which was almost completely obscured by the person of Mrs. O'Leary, caused M. Mirabeau to bring his remarks to an abrupt close.

When he was twenty-five years younger, Monsieur Mirabeau, known to every one of consequence in Paris by his true and lawful name, Count André Drouillard, as handsome and as high-bred a gentleman as there was in all France, shot and killed, with all the necessary ceremony, a prominent though bourgeoise general in the French Army, satisfactorily ending a liaison in which the Countess and the aforesaid general were the principal characters. Notwithstanding the fact that the duel had been fought in the most approved French fashion, which almost invariably (except, in case of accident) provides for a few well-scattered shots and subsequent embraces on the part of the uninjured adversaries, the general fell with a bullet through his heart.

So great was the consternation of the Republic, and so unpardonable the accuracy of the Count, that the authorities deemed it advisable to make an example of the unfortunate nobleman. He was court-martialled by the army and sentenced to be shot. On the eve of the execution he escaped and, with the aid of friends, made his way into Switzerland, where he found refuge in the home of a sequestered citizen who made antique clocks for a living. A price was put upon his head, and so relentless were the efforts to apprehend him that for months he did not dare show it outside the house of his protector.

He repaid the clockmaker with honest toil. In course of time he became an expert repairer. With the confiscation of his estates in France, he resigned himself to the inevitable. He became a man without a country. One morning the newspapers in Paris announced the death, by suicide, of the long-sought pariah. A few days later he was on his way to the United States. His widow promptly re-married and, sad to relate, from all reports lived happily ever afterwards.

The bourgeoise general, in his tomb in France, was not more completely dead to the world than Count André Drouillard; on the other hand, no livelier, sprightlier person ever lived than Pierre Mirabeau, repairer of clocks in Lexington Avenue.

And so if you will look at it in quite the proper spirit, there is but one really morbid note in the story of M. Mirabeau: the melancholy snuffing-out of the poor general,—and even that was brightened to some extent by the most sumptuous military funeral in years.

"What do you make of it?" demanded Mr. Trotter, half-an-hour later in the crowded work-shop of the clockmaker.

M. Mirabeau held Miss Emsdale's letter off at arm's length, and squinted at it with great intensity, as if actually trying to read between the lines.

"I have an opinion," said M. Mirabeau, frowning. Whereupon he rendered his deductions into words, and of his two listeners Thomas Trotter was the most dumbfounded.

"But I don't know the blooming bounder," he exclaimed,—"except by sight and reputation. And I have reason to know that Lady Jane loathes and detests him."

"Aha! There we have it! Why does she loathe and detest him?" cried M. Mirabeau. "Because, my stupid friend, he has been annoying her with his attentions. It is not an uncommon thing for rich young men to lose their heads over pretty young maids and nurses, and even governesses."

"'Gad, if I thought he was annoying her I'd—I'd—"

"There you go!" cried Mr. Bramble, nervously. "Just as she feared. She knew what she was about when she asked me to see that you did not do anything—"

"Hang it all, Bramble, I'm not doing anything, am I? I'm only saying things. Wait till I begin to do things before you preach."

"That's just it!" cried Mr. Bramble. "You invariably do things when you get that look in your eyes. I knew you long before you knew yourself. You looked like that when you were five years old and wanted to thump Bobby Morgan, who was thirteen. You—"

M. Mirabeau interrupted. He had not been following the discussion. Leaning forward, he eyed the young man keenly, even disconcertingly.

"What is back of all this? Admitting that young Mr. S.-P. is enamoured of our lovely friend, what cause have you given him for jealousy? Have you—"

"Great Scot!" exclaimed Trotter, fairly bouncing off the work-bench on which he sat with his long legs dangling. "Why,—why, if that's the way he feels toward her he must have had a horrible jolt the other night. Good Lord!" A low whistle followed the exclamation.

"Aha! Now we are getting at the cause. We already have the effect. Out with it," cried M. Mirabeau, eager as a boy. His fine eyes danced with excitement.

"Now that I think of it, he saw me carry her up the steps the other night after we'd all been to the Marchioness's. The night of the blizzard, you know. Oh, I say! It's worse than I thought." He looked blankly from one to the other of the two old men.

"Carried her up the steps, eh? In your good strong arms, eh? And you say 'now that I think of it.' Bless your heart, you scalawag, you've been thinking of nothing else since it happened. Ah!" sighed M. Mirabeau, "how wonderful it must have been! The feel of her in your arms, and the breath of her on your cheek, and—Ah! It is a sad thing not to grow old. I am not growing old despite my seventy years. If I could but grow old, and deaf, and feeble, perhaps I should then be able to command the blood that thrills now with the thought of—But, alas! I shall never be so old as that! You say he witnessed this remarkable—ah—exhibition of strength on your part?" He spoke briskly again.

"The snow was a couple of feet deep, you see," explained Trotter, who had turned a bright crimson. "Dreadful night, wasn't it, Bramble?"

"I know what kind of a night it was," said the old Frenchman, delightedly. "My warmest congratulations, my friend. She is the loveliest, the noblest, the truest—"

"I beg your pardon," interrupted Trotter, stiffly. "It hasn't gone as far as all that."

"It has gone farther than you think," said M. Mirabeau shrewdly. "And that is why you were discharged without—"

"By gad! The worst of it all is, she will probably get her walking papers too,—if she hasn't already got them," groaned the young man. "Don't you see what has happened? The rotter has kicked up a rumpus about that innocent,—and if I do say it,—gallant act of mine the other night. They've had her on the carpet to explain. It looks bad for her. They're the sort of people you can't explain things to. What rotten luck! She needs the money and—"

"Nothing of the kind has happened," said M. Mirabeau with conviction. "It isn't in young Mr. S.-P.'s plans to have her dismissed. That would be—ah, what is it you say?—spilling the beans, eh? The instant she relinquishes her place in that household all hope is lost, so far as he is concerned. He is shrewd enough to realize that, my friend. You are the fly in his ointment. It is necessary to the success of his enterprise to be well rid of you. He doesn't want to lose sight of her, however. He—"

"Run me out of town, eh?" grated Trotter, his thoughts leaping back to the passage in Lady Jane's letter. "Easier said than done, he'll find."

Mr. Bramble coughed. "Are we not going it rather blindly? All this is pure speculation. The young man may not have a hand in the business at all."

"He'll discover he's put his foot in it if he tries any game on me," said Mr. Trotter.

M. Mirabeau beamed. "There is always a way to checkmate the villain in the story. You see it exemplified in every melodrama on the stage and in every shilling shocker. The hero,—and you are our hero,—puts him to rout by marrying the heroine and living happily to a hale old age. What could be more beautiful than the marriage of Lady Jane Thorne and Lord Eric Carruthers Ethelbert Temple? Mon dieu! It is—"

"Rubbish!" exclaimed Mr. Trotter, suddenly looking down at his foot, which was employed in the laudable but unnecessary act of removing a tiny shaving from a crack in the floor. "Besides," he went on an instant later, acknowledging an interval of mental consideration, "she wouldn't have me."

"It is my time to say 'rubbish,'" said the old Frenchman. "Why wouldn't she have you?"

"Because she doesn't care for me in that way, if you must know," blurted out the young man.

"Has she said so?"

"Of course not. She wouldn't be likely to volunteer the information, would she?" with fine irony.

"Then how do you know she doesn't care for you in that way?"

"Well, I—I just simply know it, that's all."

"I see. You are the smartest man of all time if you know a woman's heart without probing into it, or her mind without tricking it. She permitted you to carry her up the steps, didn't she?"

"She had to," said Trotter forcibly. "That doesn't prove anything. And what's more, she objected to being carried."

"Um! What did she say?"

"Said she didn't in the least mind getting her feet wet. She'd have her boots off as soon as she got into the house."

"Is that all?"

"She said she was awfully heavy, and—Oh, there is no use talking to me. I know how to take a hint. She just didn't want me to—er—carry her, that's the long and the short of it."

"Did she struggle violently?"

"What?"

"You heard me. Did she?"

"Certainly not. She gave in when I insisted. What else could she do?" He whirled suddenly upon Mr. Bramble. "What are you grinning about, Bramby?"

"Who's grinning?" demanded Mr. Bramble indignantly, after the lapse of thirty or forty seconds.

"You were, confound you. I don't see anything to laugh at in—"

"My advice to you," broke in M. Mirabeau, still detached, "is to ask her."

"Ask her? Ask her what?"

"To marry you. As I was saying—"

"My God!" gasped Trotter.

"That is my advice also," put in Mr. Bramble, fumbling with his glasses and trying to suppress a smile,—for fear it would be misinterpreted. "I can't think of anything more admirable than the union of the Temple and Wexham families in—"

"But, good Lord," cried Trotter, "even if she'd have me, how on earth could I take care of her on a chauffeur's pay? And I'm not getting that now. I wish to call your attention to the fact that your little hero has less than fifty pounds,—a good deal less than fifty,—laid by for a rainy day."

"I've known a great many people who were married on rainy days," said M. Mirabeau brightly, "and nothing unlucky came of it."

"Moreover, when your grandfather passes away," urged Mr. Bramble, "you will be a very rich man,—provided, of course, he doesn't remain obstinate and leave his money to some one else. In any event, you would come in for sufficient to—"

"You forget," began Trotter, gravely and with a dignity that chilled the eager old man, "that I will not go back to England, nor will I claim anything that is in England, until a certain injustice is rectified and I am set straight in the eyes of the unbelievers."

Mr. Bramble cleared his throat. "Time will clear up everything, my lad. God knows you never did the—"

"God knows it all right enough, but God isn't a member of the Brunswick Club, and His voice is never heard there in counsel. He may lend a helping hand to those who are trying to clear my name, because they believe in me, but the whole business is beginning to look pretty dark to me."

"Ahem! What does Miss—ah, Lady Jane think about the—ah, unfortunate affair?" stammered Mr. Bramble.

"She doesn't believe a damn' word of it," exploded Trotter, his face lighting up.

"Good!" cried M. Mirabeau. "Proof that she pities you, and what more could you ask for a beginning? She believes you were unjustly accused of cheating at cards, that there was a plot to ruin you and to drive you out of the Army, and that your grandfather ought to be hung to a lamp post for believing what she doesn't believe. Good! Now we are on solid, substantial ground. What time is it, Bramble?"

Mr. Bramble looked at a half-dozen clocks in succession.

"I'm blessed if I know," he said. "They range from ten o'clock to half-past six."

"Just three hours and twenty-two minutes to wait," said Thomas Trotter.

CHAPTER VI

THE UNFAILING MEMORY

PRINCE WALDEMAR DE BOSKY, confronted by the prospect of continued cold weather, decided to make an appeal to Mrs. Moses Jacobs, sometime Princess Mariana di Pavesi. She had his overcoat, the precious one with the fur collar and the leather lining,—the one, indeed, that the friendly safe-blower who lodged across the hall from him had left behind at the outset of a journey up-state.

"More than likely," said the safe-blower, who was not only surprised but gratified when the "little dago" came to visit him in the Tombs, "more than likely I sha'n't be needin' an overcoat for the next twelve or fourteen year, kid, so you ain't robbin' me,—no, sir, not a bit of it. I make you a present of it, with my compliments. Winter is comin' on an' I can't seem to think of anybody it would fit better'n it does you. You don't need to mention as havin' received it from me. The feller who owned it before I did might accidentally hear of it and—but I guess it ain't likely, come to think of it. To the best of my recollection, he lives 'way out West somewhere,—Toledo, I think, or maybe Omaha,—and he's probably got a new one by this time. Much obliged fer droppin' in here to see me, kid. So long,—and cut it out. Don't try to come any of that thanks guff on me. You might as well be usin' that coat as the moths. Besides, I owe you something for storage, don't forget that. I was in such a hurry the last time I left town I didn't have a chance to explain. You didn't know it then,—and I guess if you had knowed it you wouldn't have been so nice about lookin' out for my coat durin' the summer,—but I was makin' a mighty quick getaway. Thanks fer stoppin' in to remind me I left the coat in your room that night. I clean forgot it, I was in such a hurry. But lemme tell you one thing, kid, I'll never ferget the way you c'n make that fiddle talk. I don't know as you'd 'a' played fer me as you used to once in awhile if you'd knowed I was what I am, but it makes no difference now. I just loved hearin' you play. I used to have a hard time holdin' in the tears. And say, kid, keep straight. Keep on fiddlin'! So long! I may see you along about 1926 or 8. And say, you needn't be ashamed to wear that coat. I didn't steal it. It was a clean case of mistaken identity, if there ever was one. It happened in a restaurant." He winked.

And that is how the little violinist came to be the possessor of an overcoat with a sable collar and a soft leather lining.

He needed it now, not only when he ventured upon the chilly streets but when he remained indoors. In truth, he found it much warmer walking the streets than sitting in his fireless room, or even in going to bed.

It was a far cry from the dapper, dreamy-eyed courtier who kissed the chapped knuckles of the Princess Mariana on Wednesday night to the shrinking, pinched individual who threaded his way on Friday through the cramped lanes that led to the rear of the pawn-shop presided over by Mrs. Jacobs.

And an incredibly vast gulf lay between the Princess Mariana and the female Shylock who peered at him over a glass show-case filled with material pledges in the shape of watches, chains, rings, bracelets, and other gaudy tributes left by a shifting constituency.

"Well?" she demanded, fixing him with a cold, offensive stare. "What do you want?"

He turned down the collar of his thin coat, and straightened his slight figure in response to this unfriendly greeting.

"I came to see if you would allow me to take my overcoat for a few days,—until this cold spell is over,—with the understanding—"

"Nothing doing," said she curtly. "Six dollars due on it."

"But I have not the six dollars, madam. Surely you may trust me."

"Why didn't you bring your fiddle along? You could leave it in place of the coat. Go and get it and I'll see what I can do."

"I am to play tonight at the house of a Mr. Carpenter. He has heard of me through our friend Mr. Trotter, his chauffeur. You know Mr. Trotter, of course."

"Sure I know him, and I don't like him. He insulted me once."

"Ah, but you do not understand him, madam. He is an Englishman and he may have tried to be facetious or even pleasant in the way the English—"

"Say, don't you suppose I know when I'm insulted? When a cheap guy like that comes in here with a customer of mine and tells me I'm so damned mean they won't even let me into hell when I die,—well, if you don't call that an insult, I'd like to know what it is. Don't talk to me about that bum!"

"Is that all he said?" involuntarily fell from the lips of the violinist, as if, to his way of thinking, Mr. Trotter's remark was an out-and-out compliment. "Surely you have no desire to go to hell when you die."

"No, I haven't, but I don't want anybody coming in here telling me to my face that there'd be a revolution down there if I tried to get in. I've got as much right there as anybody, I'd have him know. Cough up six or get out. That's all I've got to say to you, my little man."

"It is freezing cold in my room. I—"

"Don't blame me for that. I don't make the weather. And say, I'm busy. Cough up or—clear out."

"You will not let me have it for a few days if I—"

"Say, do you think I'm in business for my health? I haven't that much use—" she snapped her fingers—"for a fiddler anyhow. It's not a man's job. That's what I think of long-haired guys like—Beat it! I'm busy."

With head erect the little violinist turned away. He was half way to the door when she called out to him.

"Hey! Come back here! Now, see here, you little squirt, you needn't go turning up your nose at me and acting like that. I've got the goods on you and a lot more of those rummies up there. I looked 'em over the other night and I said to myself, says I: 'Gee whiz, couldn't I start something if I let out what I know about this gang!' Talk about earthquakes! They'd—Here! What are you doing? Get out from behind this counter! I'll call a cop if you—"

The pallid, impassioned face of Prince Waldemar de Bosky was close to hers; his dark eyes were blazing not a foot from her nose.

"If I thought you were that kind of a snake I'd kill you," he said quietly, levelly.

"Are—are you threatening me?" sputtered Mrs. Jacobs, trying in vain to look away from those compelling eyes. She could not believe her senses.

"No. I am merely telling you what I would do if you were that kind of a snake."

"See here, don't you get gay! Don't you forget who you are addressing, young man. I am—"

"I am addressing a second-hand junk dealer, madam. You are at home now, not sitting in the big chair up at—at—you know where. Please bear that in mind."

"I'll call some one from out front and have you chucked into—"

"Do you even think of violating the confidence we repose in you?" he demanded. "The thought must have been in your mind or you would not have uttered that remark a moment ago. You are one of us, and we've treated you as a—a queen. I want to know just where you stand, Mrs. Jacobs."

"You can't come in here and bawl me out like this, you little shrimp! I'll—"

"Keep still! Now, listen to me. If I should go to our friends and repeat what you have just said, you would never see the inside of that room again. You would never have the opportunity to exchange a word with a single person you have met there. You would be stripped of the last vestige of glory that clings to you. Oh, you may sneer! But down in your heart you love that bit of glory,—and you would curse yourself if you lost it."

"It's—it's all poppy-cock, the whole silly business," she blurted out. But it was not anger that caused her voice to tremble.

"You know better than that," said he, coldly.

"I don't care a rap about all that foolishness up there. It makes me sick," she muttered.

"You may lie to me but you cannot lie to yourself, madam. Under that filthy, greasy skin of yours runs the blood that will not be denied. Pawn-broker, miser,—whatever you may be to the world, to yourself you are a princess royal. God knows we all despise you. You have not a friend among us. But we can no more overlook the fact that you are a princess of the blood than we can ignore the light of day. The blood that is in you demands its tribute. You have no control over the mysterious spark that fires your blood. It burns in spite of all you may do to quench it. It is there to stay. We despise you, even as you would despise us. Am I to carry your words to those who exalt you despite your calling, despite your meanness, despite all that is base and sordid in this rotten business of yours? Am I to let them know that you are the only—the only—what is the name of the animal I've heard Trotter mention?—ah, I have it,—the only skunk in our precious little circle? Tell me, madam, are you a skunk?"

Her face was brick red; she was having difficulty with her breathing. The pale, white face of the little musician dazzled her in a most inexplicable way. Never before had she felt just like this.

"Am I a—what?" she gasped, her eyes popping.

"It is an animal that has an odour which—"

"Good God, you don't have to tell me what it is," she cried, but in suppressed tones. Her gaze swept the rear part of the shop. "It's a good thing for you, young fellow, that nobody heard you call me that name. Thank the good Lord, it isn't a busy day here. If anybody had heard you, I'd have you skinned alive."

"A profitless undertaking," he said, smiling without mirth, "but quite in your line, if reports are true. You are an expert at skinning people, alive or dead. But we are digressing. Are you going to turn against us?"

"I haven't said I was going to, have I?"

"Not in so many words."

"Well, then, what's all the fuss about? You come in here and shoot off your mouth as if—And say, who are you, anyhow? Tell me that! No, wait a minute. Don't tell me. I'll tell myself. When a man is kicked out of his own family because he'd sooner play a fiddle than carry a sword, I don't think he's got any right to come blatting to me about—"

"The cruelest monster the world has ever known, madam," he interrupted, stiffening, "fiddled while Rome was burning. Fiddlers are not always gentle. You may not have heard of one very small and unimportant incident in my own life. It was I who fiddled,—badly, I must confess,—while the Opera House in Poltna was burning. A panic was averted. Not a life was lost. And when it was all over some one remembered the fiddler who remained upon the stage and finished the aria he was playing when the cry of fire went up from the audience. Brave men,—far braver men than he,—rushed back through the smoke and found him lying at the footlights, unconscious. But why waste words? Good morning, madam. I shall not trouble you again about the overcoat. Be good enough to remember that I have kissed your hand only because you are a princess and not because you have lent me five dollars on the wretched thing."

The angry light in his brown eyes gave way to the dreamy look once more. He bowed stiffly and edged his way out from behind the counter into the clogged area that lay between him and the distant doorway. Towering above him on all sides were heaps of nondescript objects, classified under the generic name of furniture. The proprietress of this sordid, ill-smelling crib stared after him as he strode away, and into her eyes there stole a look of apprehension.

She followed him to the front door, overtaking him as his hand was on the latch.

"Hold on," she said, nervously glancing at the shifty-eyed, cringing assistant who toiled not in vain,—no one ever toiled in vain in the establishment of M. Jacobs, Inc.,—behind a clump of chairs;—"hold on a second. I don't want you to say a word to—to them about—about all this. You are right, de Bosky. I—I have not lost all that once was mine. You understand, don't you?"

He smiled. "Perfectly. You can never lose it, no matter how low you may sink."

"Well," she went on, hesitatingly, "suppose we forget it."

He eyed her for a moment in silence, shaking his head reflectively. "It is most astonishing," he said at last.

"What's astonishing?" she demanded sharply.

"I was merely thinking of your perfect, your exquisite French, madam!"

"French? Are you nutty? I've been talkin' to you in English all the time."

He nodded his head slowly. "Perhaps that is why your French is so astonishing," he said, and let it go at that.

"Look at me," she exclaimed, suddenly breaking into French as she spread out her thick arms and surveyed with disgust as much of her ample person as came within range of an obstructed vision, "just look at me. No one on earth would take me for a princess, would he? And yet that is just what I am. I think of myself as a princess, and always will, de Bosky. I think of myself,—of my most unlovely, unregal self,—as the superior of every other woman who treads the streets of New York, all of these base born women. I cannot help it. I cannot think of them as equals, not even the richest and the most arrogant of them. You say it is the blood, but you are wrong. Some of these women have a strain of royal blood in them—a far-off, remote strain, of course,—but they do not know it. That's the point, my friend. It is the knowing that makes us what we are. It isn't the blood itself. If we were deprived of the power to think, we could have the blood of every royal family in Europe in our veins, and that is all the good it would do us. We think we are nobler, better than all the rest of creation, and we would keep on thinking it if we slept in the gutter and begged for a crust of bread. And the proof of all this is to be found in the fact that the rest of creation will not allow us to forget. They think as we do, in spite of themselves, and there you have the secret of the supremacy we feel, in spite of everything."

Her brilliant, black eyes were flashing with something more than excitement. The joy, the realization of power glowed in their depths, welling up from fires that would never die. Waldemar de Bosky nodded his head in the most matter-of-fact way. He was not enthralled. All this was very simple and quite undebatable to him.

"I take it, therefore, that you retract all that you said about its being poppycock," he said, turning up his coat collar and fastening it close to his throat with a long and formidable looking safety pin.

"It may be poppycock," she said, "but we can't help liking it—not to save our lives."

"And I shall not have to kill you as if you were a snake, eh?"

"Not on your life," said Mrs. Moses Jacobs in English, opening the door for him.

He passed out into the cold and windy street and she went back to her dingy nook at the end of the store, pausing on the way to inform an assistant that she was not to be disturbed, no matter who came in to see her.

While she sat behind her glittering show-case and gazed pensively at the ceiling of her ugly storehouse, Waldemar de Bosky went shivering through the streets to his cold little backroom many blocks away. While she was for the moment living in the dim but unforgotten past, a kindly memory leading her out of the maze of other people's poverty and her own avarice into broad marble halls and vaulted rooms, he was thinking only of the bitter present with its foodless noon and of pockets that were empty. While maudlin tears ran down her oily cheeks and spilled aimlessly upon a greasy sweater with the spur of memory behind them, tears wrought by the sharp winds of the street glistened in his squinting eyes.

Memory carried him back no farther than the week before and he was distressed only by its exceeding frailty. He could not, for the life of him, remember the address of J. Bramble, bookseller,—a most exasperating lapse in view of the fact that J. Bramble himself had urged him to come up some evening soon and have dinner with him, and to bring his Stradivarius along if he didn't mind. Mind? Why, he would have played his heart out for a good square meal. The more he tried to remember J. Bramble's address, the less he thought of the overcoat with the fur collar and the soft leather lining. He couldn't eat that, you know.

In his bleak little room in the hall of the whistling winds, he took from its case with cold-benumbed fingers the cherished violin. Presently, as he played, the shivering flesh of him grew warm with the heat of an inward fire; the stiff, red fingers became limp and pliable; the misty eyes grew bright and feverish. Fire,—the fires of love and genius and hope combined,—burnt away the chill of despair; he was as warm as toast!

And hours after the foodless noon had passed, he put the treasure back into its case and wiped the sweat from his marble brow. Something flashed across his mind. He shouted aloud as he caught at what the flash of memory revealed.

"Lexington Avenue! Three hundred and something, Lexington Avenue! J. Bramble, bookseller! Ha! Come! Come! Let us be off!"

He spoke to the violin as if it were a living companion. Grabbing up his hat and mittens, he dashed out of the room and went clattering down the hall with the black leather case clasped tightly under his arm.

It was a long, long walk to three hundred and something Lexington Avenue, but in due time he arrived there and read the sign above the door. Ah, what a great thing it is to have a good, unfailing memory!

And so it came to pass that Prince Waldemar de Bosky and Lady Jane Thorne met at the door of J. Bramble, bookseller, at five of the clock, and entered the shop together.

CHAPTER VII

THE FOUNDATION OF THE PLOT

MR. BRAMBLE had never been quite able to resign himself to a definitely impersonal attitude toward Lord Eric Temple. He seemed to cling, despite himself, to a privilege long since outlawed by time and circumstance and the inevitable outgrowing of knickerbockers by the aforesaid Lord Eric. Back in the good old days it had been his pleasant,—and sometimes unpleasant,—duty to direct a very small Eric in matters not merely educational but of deportment as well. In short, Eric, at the age of five, fell into the capable, kindly and more or less resolute hands of a well-recommended tutor, and that tutor was no other than J. Bramble.

At the age of twelve, the boy went off to school in a little high hat and an Eton suit, and J. Bramble was at once, you might say, out of the frying pan into the fire. In other words, he was promoted by his lordship, the boy's grandfather, to the honourable though somewhat onerous positions of secretary, librarian and cataloguer, all in one. He had been able to teach Eric a great many things he didn't know, but there was nothing he could impart to his lordship.

That irascible old gentleman knew everything. After thrice informing his lordship that Sir Walter Scott was the author of Guy Mannering, and being thrice informed that he was nothing of the sort, the desolate Mr. Bramble realized that he was no longer a tutor,—and that he ought to be rather thankful for it. It exasperated him considerably, however, to have the authorship of Guy Mannering arbitrarily ascribed to three different writers, on three separate occasions, when any schoolboy could have told the old gentleman that Fielding and Sterne and Addison had no more to do with the book than William Shakespeare himself. His lordship maintained that no one could tell him anything about Scott; he had him on his shelves and he had read him from A to Izzard. And he was rather severe with Mr. Bramble for accepting a position as librarian when he didn't know any more than that about books.

And from this you may be able to derive some sort of an opinion concerning the cantankerous, bull-headed old party (Bramble's appellation behind the hand) who ruled Fenlew Hall, the place where Tom Trotter was reared and afterwards disowned.

Also you may be able to account in a measure for Mr. J. Bramble's attitude toward the tall young man, an attitude brought on no doubt by the revival, or more properly speaking the survival, of an authority exercised with rare futility but great satisfaction at a time when Eric was being trained in the way he should go. If at times Mr. Bramble appears to be mildly dictatorial, or gently critical, or sadly reproachful, you will understand that it is habit with him, and not the captiousness of old age. It was his custom to shake his head reprovingly, or to frown in a pained sort of way, or to purse his lips, or even to verbally take Mr. Trotter to task when that young man deviated,—not always accidentally,—from certain rules of deportment laid down for him to follow in his earliest efforts to be a "little gentleman."

For example, when the two of them, after a rather impatient half-hour, observed Miss Emsdale step down from the trolley car at the corner above and head for the doorway through which they were peering, Mr. Bramble peremptorily said to Mr. Trotter:

"Go and brush your hair. You will find a brush at the back of the shop. Look sharp, now. She will be here in a jiffy."

And you will perhaps understand why Mr. Trotter paid absolutely no attention to him.

Miss Emsdale and the little violinist came in together. The latter's teeth were chattering, his cheeks were blue with the cold.

"God bless my soul!" said Mr. Bramble, blinking at de Bosky. Here was an unforeseen complication.

Miss Emsdale was resourceful. "I stopped in to inquire, Mr. Bramble,—this is Mr. Bramble, isn't it?—if you have a copy of—"

"Please close the door, Trotter, there's a good fellow," interrupted Mr. Bramble, frowning significantly at the young man.

"It is closed," said Mr. Trotter, tactlessly. He was looking intently, inquiringly into the blue eyes of Miss Emsdale.

"I closed it as I came in," chattered de Bosky.

"Oh, did you?" said Mr. Bramble. "People always leave it open. I am so in the habit of having people leave the door open that I never notice when they close it. I—ahem! Step right this way, please, Miss Ems—ahem! I think we have just the book you want."

"I am not in any haste, Mr. Bramble," said she, regarding de Bosky with pitying eyes. "Let us all go back to the stove and—and—" She hesitated, biting her lip. The poor chap undoubtedly was sensitive. They always are.

"Good!" said Mr. Bramble eagerly. "And we'll have some tea. Bless my soul, how fortunate! I always have it at five o'clock. Trotter and I were just on the point of—so glad you happened in just at the right moment, Miss Emsdale. Ahem! And you too, de Bosky. Most extraordinary. You may leave your pipe on that shelf, Trotter. It smells dreadfully. No, no,—I wouldn't even put it in my pocket if I were you. Er—ahem! You have met Mr. Trotter, haven't you, Miss Emsdale?"

"You poor old boob," said Trotter, laying his arm over Bramble's shoulder in the most affectionate way. "Isn't he a boob, Miss Emsdale?"

"Not at all," said she severely. "He is a dear."

"Bless my soul!" murmured Mr. Bramble, doing as well as could be expected. He blessed it again before he could catch himself up.

"Sit here by the stove, Mr. de Bosky," said Miss Emsdale, a moment later. "Just as close as you can get to it."

"I have but a moment to stay," said de Bosky, a wistful look in his dark eyes.

"You'll have tea, de Bosky," said Mr. Bramble firmly. "Is the water boiling, Trotter?"

A few minutes later, warmed by the cup of tea and a second slice of toast, de Bosky turned to Trotter.

"Thanks again, my dear fellow, for speaking to your employer about my playing. This little affair tonight may be the beginning of an era of good fortune for me. I shall never forget your interest—"

"Oh, that's off," said Trotter carelessly.

"Off? You mean?" cried de Bosky.

"I'm fired, and he has gone to Atlantic City for the week-end."

"He—he isn't going to have his party in the private dining-room at,—you said it was to be a private dining-room, didn't you, with a few choice spirits—"

"He has gone to Atlantic City with a few choice spirits," said Trotter, and then stared hard at the musician's face. "Oh, by Jove! I'm sorry," he cried, struck by the look of dismay, almost of desperation, in de Bosky's eyes. "I didn't realize it meant so much to—"

"It is really of no consequence," said de Bosky, lifting his chin once more and straightening his back. The tea-cup rattled ominously in the saucer he was clutching with tense fingers.

"Never mind," said Mr. Bramble, anticipating a crash and inspired by the kindliest of motives; "between us we've smashed half a dozen of them, so don't feel the least bit uncomfortable if you do drop—"

"What are you talking about, Bramby?" demanded Trotter, scowling at the unfortunate bookseller. "Have some more tea, de Bosky. Hand up your cup. Little hot water, eh?"

Mr. Bramble was perspiring. Any one with half an eye could see that it was of consequence to de Bosky. The old bookseller's heart was very tender.

"Don't drink too much of it," he warned, his face suddenly beaming. "You'll spoil your appetite for dinner." To the others: "Mr. de Bosky honours my humble board with his presence this evening. The finest porterhouse steak in New York—Eh, what?"

"It is I," came a crisp voice from the bottom of the narrow stairway that led up to the living-quarters above. Monsieur Mirabeau, his whiskers neatly brushed and twisted to a point, his velvet lounging jacket adorned with a smart little boutonnière, his shoes polished till they glistened, approached the circle and, bending his gaunt frame with gallant disdain for the crick in his back, kissed the hand of the young lady. "I observed your approach, my dear Miss Emsdale. We have been expecting you for ages. Indeed, it has been the longest afternoon that any of us has ever experienced."

Mr. Bramble frowned. "Ahem!" he coughed.

"I am sorry if I have intruded," began de Bosky, starting to arise.

"Sit still," said Thomas Trotter. He glanced at Miss Emsdale. "You're not in the way, old chap."

"You mentioned a book, Miss Emsdale," murmured Mr. Bramble. "When you came in, you'll remember."

She looked searchingly into Trotter's eyes, and finding her answer there, remarked:

"Ample time for that, Mr. Bramble. Mr. de Bosky is my good friend. And as for dear M. Mirabeau,—ah, what shall I say of him?" She smiled divinely upon the grey old Frenchman.

"I commend your modesty," said M. Mirabeau. "It prevents your saying what every one knows,—that I am your adorer!"

Tom Trotter was pacing the floor. He stopped in front of her, a scowl on his handsome face.

"Now, tell us just what the infernal dog said to you," he said.

She started. "You—you have already heard something?" she cried, wonderingly.

"Ah, what did I tell you?" cried M. Mirabeau triumphantly, glancing first at Trotter and then at Bramble. "He is in love with her, and this is what comes of it. He resorts to—"

"Is this magic?" she exclaimed.

"Not a bit of it," said Trotter. "We've been putting two and two together, the three of us. Begin at the beginning," he went on, encouragingly. "Don't hold back a syllable of it."

"You must promise to be governed by my advice," she warned him. "You must be careful,—oh, so very careful."

"He will be good at any rate," said Mr. Bramble, fixing the young man with a look. Trotter's face went crimson.

"Ahem!" came guardedly from M. Mirabeau. "Proceed, my dear. We are most impatient."

The old Frenchman's deductions were not far from right. Young Mr. Smith-Parvis, unaccustomed to opposition and believing himself to be entitled to everything he set his heart on having, being by nature predatory, sustained an incredible shock when the pretty and desirable governess failed utterly to come up to expectations. Not only did she fail to come up to expectations but she took the wind completely out of his sails, leaving him adrift in a void so strange and unusual that it was hours before he got his bearings again. Some of the things she said to him got under a skin so thick and unsensitive that nothing had ever been sharp enough to penetrate it before.

The smartting of the pain from these surprising jabs at his egotism put him into a state of fury that knew no bounds. He went so far as to accuse her of deliberately trying to be a lady,—a most ridiculous assumption that didn't fool him for an instant. She couldn't come that sort of thing with him! The sooner she got off her high-horse the better off she'd be. It had never entered the head of Smith-Parvis Jr. that a wage-earning woman could be a lady, any more than a wage-earning man could be a gentleman.

The spirited encounter took place on the afternoon following her midnight adventure with Thomas Trotter. Stuyvesant lay in wait for her when she went out at five o'clock for her daily walk in the Park. Overtaking her in one of the narrow, remote little paths, he suggested that they cross over to Bustanoby's and have tea and a bite of something sweet. He was quite out of breath. She had given him a long chase, this long-limbed girl with her free English stride.

"It's a nice quiet place," he said, "and we won't see a soul we know."

Primed by assurance, he had the hardihood to grasp her arm with a sort of possessive familiarity. Whereupon, according to the narrator, he sustained his first disheartening shock. She jerked her arm away and faced him with blazing eyes.

"Don't do that!" she said. "What do you mean by following me like this?"

"Oh, come now," he exclaimed blankly; "don't be so damned uppish. I didn't sleep a wink last night, thinking about you. You—"

"Nor did I sleep a wink, Mr. Smith-Parvis, thinking about you," she retorted, looking straight into his eyes. "I am afraid you don't know me as well as you think you do. Will you be good enough to permit me to continue my walk unmolested?"

He laughed in her face. "Out here to meet the pretty chauffeur, are you? I thought so. Well, I'll stick around and make the crowd. Is he likely to pop up out of the bushes and try to bite me, my dear? Better give him the signal to lay low, unless you want to see him nicely booted."

("My God!" fell from Thomas Trotter's compressed lips.)

"Then I made a grievous mistake," she explained to the quartette. "It is all my fault, Mr. Trotter. I brought disaster upon you when I only intended to sound your praises. I told him that nothing could suit me better than to have you pop up out of the bushes, just for the pleasure it would give me to see him run for home as fast as he could go. It made him furious."

Smith-Parvis Jr. proceeded to give her "what for," to use his own words. In sheer amazement, she listened to his vile insinuations. She was speechless.

"And here am I," he had said, toward the end of the indictment, "a gentleman, born and bred, offering you what this scurvy bounder cannot possibly give you, and you pretend to turn up your nose at me. I am gentleman enough to overlook all that has transpired between you and that loafer, and I am gentleman enough to keep my mouth shut at home, where a word from me would pack you off in two seconds. And I'd like to see you get another fat job in New York after that. You ought to be jolly grateful to me."

"If I am the sort of person you say I am," she had replied, trembling with fury, "how can you justify your conscience in letting me remain for a second longer in charge of your little sisters?"

"What the devil do I care about them? I'm only thinking of you. I'm mad about you, can't you understand? And I'd like to know what conscience has to do with that."

Then he had coolly, deliberately, announced his plan of action to her.

"You are to stay on at the house as long as you like, getting your nice little pay check every month, and something from me besides. Ah, I'm no piker! Leave it all to me. As for this friend of yours, he has to go. He'll be out of a job tomorrow. I know Carpenter. He will do anything I ask. He'll have to, confound him. I've got him where he can't even squeak. And what's more, if this Trotter is not out of New York inside of three days, I'll land him in jail. Oh, don't think I can't do it, my dear. There's a way to get these renegade foreigners,—every one of 'em,—so you'd better keep clear of him if you don't want to be mixed up in the business. I am doing all this for your own good. Some day you'll thank me. You are the first girl I've ever really loved, and—I—I just can't stand by and let you go to the devil with my eyes shut. I am going to save you, whether you like it or not. I am going to do the right thing by you, and you will never regret chucking this rotter for me. We will have to be a little careful at home, that's all. It would never do to let the old folks see that I am more than ordinarily interested in you, or you in me. Once, when I was a good deal younger and didn't have much sense, I spoiled a—but you wouldn't care to hear about it."

She declared to them that she would never forget the significant grin he permitted himself in addition to the wink.

"The dog!" grated Thomas Trotter, his knuckles white.

M. Mirabeau straightened himself to his full height,—and a fine figure of a man was he!

"Mr. Trotter," he said, with grave dignity, "it will afford me the greatest pleasure and honour to represent you in this crisis. Pray command me. No doubt the scoundrel will refuse to meet you, but at any rate a challenge may be—"

Miss Emsdale broke in quickly. "Don't,—for heaven's sake, dear M. Mirabeau,—don't put such notions into his head! It is bad enough as it is. I beg of you—"

"Besides," said Mr. Bramble, "one doesn't fight duels in this country, any more than one does in England. It's quite against the law."

"I sha'n't need any one to represent me when it comes to punching his head," said Mr. Trotter.

"It's against the law, strictly speaking, to punch a person's head," began Mr. Bramble nervously.

"But it's not against the law, confound you, Bramby, to provide a legal excuse for going to jail, is it? He says he's going to put me there. Well, I intend to make it legal and—"

"Oh, goodness!" cried Miss Emsdale, in dismay.

"—And I'm not going to jail for nothing, you can stake your life on that."

"Do you think, Mr. Trotter, that it will add to my happiness if you are lodged in jail on my account?" said she. "Haven't I done you sufficient injury—"

"Now, you are not to talk like that," he interrupted, reddening.

"But I shall talk like that," she said firmly. "I have not come here to ask you to take up my battles for me but to warn you of danger. Please do not interrupt me. I know you would enjoy it, and all that sort of thing, but it isn't to be considered. Hear me out."

She went on with her story. Young Mr. Smith-Parvis, still contending that he was a gentleman and a friend as well as an abject adorer, made it very plain to her that he would stand no foolishness. He told her precisely what he would do unless she eased up a bit and acted like a good, sensible girl. He would have her dismissed without character and he would see to it that no respectable house would be open to her after she left the service of the Smith-Parvises.

"But couldn't you put the true situation before his parents and tell 'em what sort of a rotten bounder he is?" demanded Trotter.

"You do not know them, Mr. Trotter," she said forlornly.

"And they'd kick you out without giving you a chance to prove to them that he is a filthy liar and—"

"Just as Mr. Carpenter kicked you out," she said.

"By gad, I—I wouldn't stay in their house another day if I were you," he exclaimed wrathfully. "I'd quit so quickly they wouldn't have time to—"

"And then what?" she asked bitterly. "Am I so rich and independent as all that? You forget that I must have a 'character,' Mr. Trotter. That, you see, would be denied me. I could not obtain employment. Even Mrs. Sparflight would be powerless to help me after the character they would give me."

"But, good Lord, you—you're not going to stay on in the house with that da— that nasty brute, are you?" he cried, aghast.

"I must have time to think, Mr. Trotter," she said quietly. "Now, don't say anything more,—please! I shall take good care of myself, never fear. My woes are small compared to yours, I am afraid. The next morning after our little scene in the park, he came down to breakfast, smiling and triumphant. He said he had news for me. Mr. Carpenter was to dismiss you that morning, but had agreed not to prefer charges against you,—at least, not for the present." She paused to moisten her lips. There was a harassed look in her eyes.

"Charges?" said Trotter, after a moment. The other men leaned forward, fresh interest in their faces.

"Did you say charges, Miss Emsdale?" asked Mr. Bramble, putting his hand to his ear.

"He told me that Mr. Carpenter was at first determined to turn you over to the police, but that he had begged him to give you a chance. He—he says that Mr. Carpenter has had a private detective watching you for a fortnight, and—and—oh, I cannot say it!"

"Go on," said Trotter harshly; "say it!"

"Well, of course, I know and you understand it is simply part of his outrageous plan, but he says your late employer has positive proof that you took—that you took some marked bank notes out of his overcoat pocket a few days ago. He had been missing money and had provided himself with marked—"

Trotter leaped to his feet with a cry of rage.

"Sit down!" commanded Mr. Bramble. "Sit down! Where are you going?"

"Great God! Do you suppose I can sit still and let him get away with anything like that?" roared Trotter. "I'm going to jam those words down Carpenter's craven throat. I'm—"

"You forget he is in Atlantic City," said de Bosky, as if suddenly coming out of a dream.

"Oh, Lord!" groaned Trotter, very white in the face.

There were tears in Miss Emsdale's eyes. "They—he means to drive you out of town," she murmured brokenly.

"Fine chance of that!" cried Trotter violently.

"Let us be calm," said M. Mirabeau, gently taking the young man's arm and leading him back to the box on which he had been sitting. "You must not play into their hands, and that is what you would be doing if you went to him in a rage. As long as you remain passive, nothing will come of all this. If you show your teeth, they will stop at nothing. Take my word for it, Trotter, before many hours have passed you will be interviewed by a detective,—a genuine detective, by the way, for some of them can be hired to do anything, my boy,—and you will be given your choice of going to prison or to some far distant city. You—"

"But how in thunder is he going to prove that I took any marked bills from him? You've got to prove those things, you know. The courts would not—"

"Just a moment! Did he pay you by check or with bank notes this morning?"

"He gave me a check for thirty dollars, and three ten-dollar bills and a five." ·

"Have you them on your person at present?"

"Not all of them. I have—wait a second! We'll see." He fumbled in his pocket for the bill-folder.

"What did you do with the rest?"

"Paid my landlady for—good Lord! I see what you mean! He paid me with marked bills! The—the damned scoundrel!"

"He not only did that, my boy, but he put a man on your trail to recover them as fast as you disposed of them," said M. Mirabeau calmly.

CHAPTER VIII

LADY JANE GOES ABOUT IT PROMPTLY

A FEW minutes before six o'clock that same afternoon, Mr. James Cricklewick, senior member of the firm of Cricklewick, Stackable & Co., linen merchants, got up from his desk in the crowded little compartment labelled "Private," and peered out of the second-floor window into the busy street below. Thousands of people were scurrying along the pavements in the direction of the brilliantly lighted Fifth Avenue, a few rods away; vague, dusky, unrecognizable forms in the darkness that comes so early and so abruptly to the cross-town streets at the end of a young March day. The middle of the street presented a serried line of snow heaps, piled up by the shovellers the day before,—symmetrical little mountains that formed an impassable range over which no chauffeur had the temerity to bolt in his senseless ambition to pass the car ahead.

Mr. James Cricklewick sighed. He knew from past experience that the Rock of Ages was but little more enduring than the snow-capped range in front of him. Time and a persistent sun inevitably would do the work of man, but in the meantime Mr. Cricklewick's wagons and trucks were a day and a half behind with deliveries, and that was worth sighing about. As he stood looking down the street, he sighed again. For more than forty years Mr. Cricklewick had made constant use of the phrase: "It's always something." If there was no one to say it to, he satisfied himself by condensing the lament into a strictly personal sigh.

He first resorted to the remark far back in the days when he was in the service of the Marquis of Camelford. If it wasn't one thing that was going wrong it was another; in any event it was "always something."

Prosperity and environment had not succeeded in bringing him to the point where he could snap his fingers and lightly say in the face of annoyances: "It's really nothing."

The fact that he was, after twenty-five years of ceaseless climbing, at the head of the well-known and thoroughly responsible house of Cricklewick, Stackable & Co., Linen Merchants and Drapers,—(he insisted on attaching the London word, not through sentiment, but for the sake of isolation),—operated not at all in bringing about a becalmed state of mind. Habitually he was disturbed by little things, which should not be in the least surprising when one stops to think of the multitudinous annoyances he must have experienced while managing the staff of under-servants in the extensive establishment of the late Marquis of Camelford.

He had never quite outgrown the temperament which makes for a good and dependable butler,—and that, in a way, accounts for the contention that "it is always something," and also for the excellent credit of the house he headed. Mr. Cricklewick made no effort to deceive himself. He occasionally deceived his wife in a mild and innocuous fashion by secretly reverting to form, but not for an instant did he deceive himself. He was a butler and he always would be a butler, despite the fact that the business and a certain section of the social world looked upon him as a very fine type of English gentleman, with a crest in his shop window and a popularly accepted record of having enjoyed a speaking acquaintance with Edward, the late King of England. Indeed, the late king appears to have enjoyed the same privilege claimed and exercised by the clerks, stenographers and floorwalkers in his employ, although His Majesty had a slight advantage over them in being free to call him "Cricky" to his face instead of behind his back.

Mr. Cricklewick, falling into a snug fortune when he was forty-five and at a time when the Marquis felt it to be necessary to curtail expenses by not only reducing his staff of servants but also the salaries of those who remained, married very nicely into a draper's family, and soon afterward voyaged to America to open and operate a branch of the concern in New York City. His fortune, including the savings of twenty years, amounted to something like thirty thousand pounds, most of which had been accumulated by a sheep-raising brother who had gone to and died in Australia. He put quite a bit of this into the business and became a partner, making himself doubly welcome to a family that had suffered considerably through competition in business and a complete lack of it in respect to the matrimonial possibilities of five fully matured daughters.

Mr. Cricklewick had the further good sense to marry the youngest, prettiest and most ambitious of the quintette, and thereby paved the way for satisfactory though wholly unexpected social achievements in the City of Now York. His wife, with the customary British scorn for Americans, developed snobbish tendencies that rather alarmed Mr. Cricklewick at the outset of his business career in New York, but which ultimately produced the most remarkable results.

Almost before he was safely out of the habit of saying "thank you" when it wasn't at all necessary to say it, his wife had him down at Hot Springs, Virginia, for a month in the fall season, where, because of his exceptionally mellifluous English accent and a stateliness he had never been able to overcome, he was looked upon by certain Anglo-maniacs as a real and unmistakable "toff."

Cricklewick had been brought up in, or on, the very best of society. From his earliest days as third groom in the Camelford ménage to the end of his reign as major-domo, he had been in a position to observe and assimilate the manners of the elect. No one knew better than he how to go about being a gentleman. He had had his lessons, not to say examples, from the first gentlemen of England. Having been brought up on dukes and earls,—and all that sort of thing,—to say nothing of quite a majority in the House of Lords, he was in a fair way of knowing "what's what," to use his own far from original expression.

You couldn't fool Cricklewick to save your life. The instant he looked upon you he could put you where you belonged, and, so far as he was concerned, that was where you would have to stay.

It is doubtful if there was ever a more discerning, more discriminating butler in all England. It was his rather astonishing contention that one could be quite at one's ease with dukes and duchesses and absolutely ill-at-ease with ordinary people. That was his way of making the distinction. It wasn't possible to be on terms of intimacy with the people who didn't belong. They never seemed to know their place.

The next thing he knew, after the Hot Springs visit, his name began to appear in the newspapers in columns next to advertising matter instead of the other way round. Up to this time it had been a struggle to get it in next to reading matter on account of the exorbitant rates demanded by the newspapers.

He protested to his wife. "Oh, I say, my dear, this is cutting it a bit thick, you know. You can't really be in earnest about it. I shouldn't know how to act sitting down at a dinner table like that, you know. I am informed that these people are regarded as real swells over 'ere,—here, I should say. You must sit down and drop 'em a line saying we can't come. Say we've suddenly been called out of town, or had bad news from home, or—"

"Rubbish! It will do them no end of good to see how you act at table. Haven't you had the very best of training? All you have to do—"

"But I had it standing, my dear."

"Just the same, I shall accept the invitation. They are very excellent people, and I see no reason why we shouldn't know the best while we're about it."

"But they've got millions," he expostulated.

"Well," said she, "you musn't believe everything you hear about people with millions. I must say that I've not seen anything especially vulgar about them. So don't let that stand in your way, old dear." It was unconscious irony.

"It hasn't been a great while since I was a butler, my love; don't forget that. A matter of a little over seven years."

"Pray do not forget," said she coldly, "that it hasn't been so very long since all these people over here were Indians."

Mr. Cricklewick, being more or less hazy concerning overseas history, took heart. They went to the dinner and he, remembering just how certain noblemen of his acquaintance deported themselves, got on famously. And although his wife never had seen a duchess eat, except by proxy in the theatre, she left nothing to be desired,—except, perhaps, in the way of food, of which she was so fond that it was rather a bore to nibble as duchesses do.

Being a sensible and far-seeing woman, she did not resent it when he mildly protested that Lady So-and-So wouldn't have done this, and the Duchess of You-Know wouldn't have done that. She looked upon him as a master in the School of Manners. It was not long before she was able not only to hold her own with the élite, but also to hold her lorgnette with them. If she did not care to see you in a crowd she could overlook you in the very smartest way.

And so, after twenty or twenty-five years, we find the Cricklewicks,—mother, father and daughter,—substantially settled in the City of Masks, occupying an enviable position in society, and seldom, if ever,—even in the bosom of the family,—referring to the days of long ago,—a precaution no doubt inspired by the fear that they might be overheard and misunderstood by their own well-trained and admirable butler, whose respect they could not afford to lose.

Once a week, on Wednesday nights, Mr. Cricklewick took off his mask. It was, in a sense, his way of going to confession. He told his wife, however, that he was going to the club.

He sighed a little more briskly as he turned away from the window and crossed over to the closet in which his fur-lined coat and silk hat were hanging. It had taken time and a great deal of persuasion on the part of his wife to prove to him that it wasn't quite the thing to wear a silk hat with a sack coat in New York; he had grudgingly compromised with the barbaric demands of fashion by dispensing with the sack coat in favour of a cutaway. The silk hat was a fixture.

"A lady asking to see you, sir," said his office-boy, after knocking on the door marked "Private."

"Hold my coat for me, Thomas," said Mr. Cricklewick.

"Yes, sir," said Thomas. "But she says you will see her, sir, just as soon as you gets a look at her."

"Obviously," said Mr. Cricklewick, shaking himself down into the great coat. "Don't rub it the wrong way, you simpleton. You should always brush a silk hat with the nap and not—"

"May I have a few words with you, Mr. Cricklewick?" inquired a sweet, clear voice from the doorway.

The head of the house opened his lips to say something sharp to the office-boy, but the words died as he obeyed a magnetic influence and hazarded a glance at the intruder's face.

"Bless my soul!" said he, staring. An instant later he had recovered himself. "Take my coat, Thomas. Come in, Lady—er—Miss Emsdale. Thank you. Run along, Thomas. This is—ah—a most unexpected pleasure." The door closed behind Thomas. "Pray have a chair, Miss Emsdale. Still quite cold, isn't it?"

"I sha'n't detain you for more than five or ten minutes," said Miss Emsdale, sinking into a chair.

"At your service,—quite at your service," said Mr. Cricklewick, dissolving in the presence of nobility. He could not have helped himself to save his life.

Miss Emsdale came to the point at once. To save her life she could not think of Cricklewick as anything but an upper servant.

"Please see if we are quite alone, Mr. Cricklewick," she said, laying aside her little fur neck-piece.

Mr. Cricklewick started. Like a flash there shot into his brain the voiceless groan: "It's always something." However, he made haste to assure her that they would not be disturbed. "It is closing time, you see," he concluded, not without hope.

"I could not get here any earlier," she explained. "I stopped in to ask a little favour of you, Mr. Cricklewick."

"You have only to mention it," said he, and then abruptly looked at his watch. The thought struck him that perhaps he did not have enough in his bill-folder; if not, it would be necessary to catch the cashier before the safe was closed for the day.

"Lord Temple is in trouble, Mr. Cricklewick," she said, a queer little catch in her voice.

"I—I am sorry to hear that," said he.

"And I do not know of any one who is in a better position to help him than you," she went on coolly.

"I shall be happy to be of service to Lord Temple," said Mr. Cricklewick, but not very heartily. Observation had taught him that young noblemen seldom if ever get into trouble half way; they make a practice of going in clean over their heads.

"Owing to an unpleasant misunderstanding with Mr. Stuyvesant Smith-Parvis, he has lost his situation as chauffeur for Mr. Carpenter," said she.

"I hope he has not—ahem!—thumped him," said Mr. Cricklewick, in such dismay that he allowed the extremely undignified word to slip out.

She smiled faintly. "I said unpleasant, Mr. Cricklewick,—not pleasant."

"Bless my soul," said Mr. Cricklewick, blinking.

"Mr. Smith-Parvis has prevailed upon Mr. Carpenter to dismiss him, and I fear, between them, they are planning to drive him out of the city in disgrace."

"Bless me! This is too bad."

Without divulging the cause of Smith-Parvis's animosity, she went briefly into the result thereof.

"It is really infamous," she concluded, her eyes flashing. "Don't you agree with me?"

Having it put to him so abruptly as that, Mr. Cricklewick agreed with her.

"Well, then, we must put our heads together, Mr. Cricklewick," she said, with decision.

"Quite so," said he, a little vaguely.

"He is not to be driven out of the city," said she. "Nor is he to be unjustly accused of—of wrongdoing. We must see to that."

Mr. Cricklewick cleared his throat. "He can avoid all that sort of thing, Lady—er—Miss Emsdale, by simply announcing that he is Lord Temple, heir to one of the—"

"Oh, he wouldn't think of doing such a thing," said she quickly.

"People would fall over themselves trying to put laurels on his head," he urged. "And, unless I am greatly mistaken, the first to rush up would be the—er—the Smith-Parvises, headed by Stuyvesant."

"No one knows the Smith-Parvises better than you, Mr. Cricklewick," she said, and for some reason he turned quite pink.

"Mrs. Cricklewick and I have seen a great deal of them in the past few years," he said, almost apologetically.

"And that encourages me to repeat that no one knows them better than you," she said coolly.

"We are to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Smith-Parvis tonight," said Mr. Cricklewick.

"Splendid!" she cried, eagerly. "That works in very nicely with the plan I have in mind. You must manage in some way to remark—quite casually, of course,—that you are very much interested in the affairs of a young fellow-countryman,—omitting the name, if you please,—who has been dismissed from service as a chauffeur, and who has been threatened—"

"But my dear Miss Emsdale, I—"

"—threatened with all sorts of things by his late employer. You may also add that you have communicated with our Ambassador at Washington, and that it is your intention to see your fellow-countryman through if it takes a—may I say leg, Mr. Cricklewick? Young Mr. Smith-Parvis will be there to hear you, so you may bluster as much as you please about Great Britain protecting her subjects to the very last shot. The entire machinery of the Foreign Office may be called into action, if necessary, to—but I leave all that to you. You might mention, modestly, that it's pretty ticklish business trying to twist the British lion's tail. Do you see what I mean?"

Mr. Cricklewick may have had an inward conviction that this was hardly what you would call asking a favour of a person, but if he had he kept it pretty well to himself. It did not occur to him that his present position in the world, as opposed to hers, justified a rather stiff reluctance on his part to take orders, or even suggestions, from this penniless young person,—especially in his own sacred lair. On the contrary, he was possessed by the instant and enduring realization that it was the last thing he could bring himself to the point of doing. His father, a butler before him, had gone to considerable pains to convince him, at the outset of his career, that insolence is by far the greatest of vices.

Still, in this emergency, he felt constrained to argue,—another vice sometimes modified by circumstances and the forbearance of one's betters.

"But I haven't communicated with our Ambassador at Washington," he said. "And as for the Foreign Office taking the matter up—"

"But, don't you see, they couldn't possibly know that, Mr. Cricklewick," she interrupted, frowning slightly.

"Quite true,—but I should be telling a falsehood if I said anything of the sort."

"Knowing you to be an absolutely truthful and reliable man, Mr. Cricklewick," she said mendaciously, "they would not even dream of questioning your veracity. They do not believe you capable of telling a falsehood. Can't you see how splendidly it would all work out?"

Mr. Cricklewick couldn't see, and said so.

"Besides," he went on, "suppose that it should get to the ears of the Ambassador."

"In that event, you could run over to Washington and tell him in private just who Thomas Trotter is, and then everything would be quite all right. You see," she went on earnestly, "all you have to do is to drop a few words for the benefit of young Mr. Smith-Parvis. He looks upon you as one of the most powerful and influential men in the city, and he wouldn't have you discover that he is in anyway connected with such a vile, underhanded—"

"How am I to lead up to the subject of chauffeurs?" broke in Mr. Cricklewick weakly. "I can hardly begin talking about chauffeurs—er—out of a clear sky, you might say."

"Don't begin by talking about chauffeurs," she counselled. "Lead up to the issue by speaking of the friendly relations that exist between England and America, and proceed with the hope that nothing may ever transpire to sever the bond of blood—and so on. You know what I mean. It is quite simple. And then look a little serious and distressed,—that ought to be easy, Mr. Cricklewick. You must see how naturally it all leads up to the unfortunate affair of your young countryman, whom you are bound to defend,—and we are bound to defend,—no matter what the consequences may be."

Two minutes later she arose triumphant, and put on her stole. Her eyes were sparkling.

"I knew you couldn't stand by and see this outrageous thing done to Eric Temple. Thank you. I—goodness gracious, I quite forgot a most important thing. In the event that our little scheme does not have the desired result, and they persist in persecuting him, we must have something to fall back upon. I know McFaddan very slightly. (She did not speak of the ex-footman as Mr. McFaddan, nor did Cricklewick take account of the omission). He is, I am informed, one of the most influential men in New York,—one of the political bosses, Mr. Smith-Parvis says. He says he is a most unprincipled person. Well, don't you see, he is just the sort of person to fall back upon if all honest measures fail?"

Mr. Cricklewick rather blankly murmured something about "honest measures," and then mopped his brow. Miss Emsdale's enthusiasm, while acutely ingenuous, had him "sweating blood," as he afterwards put it during a calm and lucid period of retrospection.

"I—I assure you I have no influence with McFaddan," he began, looking at his handkerchief,—and being relieved, no doubt, to find no crimson stains,—applied it to his neck with some confidence and vigour. "In fact, we differ vastly in—"

"McFaddan, being in a position to dictate to the police and, if it should come to the worst, to the magistrates, is a most valuable man to have on our side, Mr. Cricklewick. If you could see him tomorrow morning,—I suppose it is too late to see him this evening,—and tell him just what you want him to do, I'm sure—"

"But, Miss Emsdale, you must allow me to say that McFaddan will absolutely refuse to take orders from me. He is no longer what you might say—er—in a position to be—er—you see what I mean, I hope."

"Nonsense!" she said, dismissing his objection with a word. "McFaddan is an Irishman and therefore eternally committed to the under dog, right or wrong. When you explain the circumstances to him, he will come to our assistance like a flash. And don't, overlook the fact, Mr. Cricklewick, that McFaddan will never see the day when he can ignore a—a request from you." She had almost said command, but caught the word in time. "By the way, poor Trotter is out of a situation, and I may as well confess to you that he can ill afford to be without one. It has just occurred to me that you may know of some one among your wealthy friends, Mr. Cricklewick, who is in need of a good man. Please rack your brain. Some one to whom you can recommend him as a safe, skilful and competent chauffeur."

"I am glad you mention it," said he, brightening perceptibly in the light of something tangible. "This afternoon I was called up on the telephone by a party—by some one, I mean to say,—asking for information concerning Klausen, the man who used to drive for me. I was obliged to say that his habits were bad, and that I could not recommend him. It was Mrs. Ellicott Millidew who inquired."

"The young one or the old one?" inquired Miss Emsdale quickly.

"The elder Mrs. Millidew," said Mr. Cricklewick, in a tone that implied deference to a lady who was entitled to it, even when she was not within earshot. "Not the pretty young widow," he added, risking a smile.

"That's all right, then," said Miss Emsdale briskly. "I am sure it would be a most satisfactory place for him."

"But she is a very exacting old lady," said he, "and will require references."

"I am sure you can give him the very best of references," said she. "She couldn't ask for anything better than your word that he is a splendid man in every particular. Thank you so much, Mr. Cricklewick. And Lord Temple will be ever so grateful to you too, I'm sure. Oh, you cannot possibly imagine how relieved I am—about everything. We are very great friends, Lord Temple and I."

He watched the faint hint of the rose steal into her cheeks and a velvety softness come into her eyes.

"Nothing could be more perfect," he said, irrelevantly, but with real feeling, and the glow of the rose deepened.

"Thank you again,—and good-bye," she said, turning toward the door.

It was then that the punctilious Cricklewick forgot himself, and in his desire to be courteous, committed a most unpardonable offence.

"My motor is waiting, Lady Jane," he said, the words falling out unwittingly. "May I not drop you at Mr. Smith-Parvis's door?"

"No, thank you," she said graciously. "You are very good, but the stages go directly past the door."

As the door closed behind her, Mr. Cricklewick sat down rather suddenly, overcome by his presumption. Think of it! He had had the brass to invite Lady Jane Thorne to accept a ride in his automobile! He might just as well have had the effrontery to ask her to dine at his house!

CHAPTER IX

MR. TROTTER FALLS INTO A NEW POSITION

THE sagacity of M. Mirabeau went far toward nullifying the hastily laid plans of Stuyvesant Smith-Parvis. It was he who suggested a prompt effort to recover the two marked bills that Trotter had handed to his landlady earlier in the day.

Prince Waldemar de Bosky, with a brand new twenty-dollar bill in his possession,—(supplied by the excited Frenchman)—boarded a Lexington Avenue car and in due time mounted the steps leading to the front door of the lodging house kept by Mrs. Dulaney. Ostensibly he was in search of a room for a gentleman of refinement and culture; Mrs. Dulaney's house had been recommended to him as first class in every particular. The landlady herself showed him a room, fourth-floor front, just vacated (she said) by a most refined gentleman engaged in the phonograph business. It was her rule to demand references from prospective lodgers, but as she had been in the business a great many years it was now possible for her to distinguish a gentleman the instant she laid eyes on him, so it would only be necessary for the present applicant to pay the first week's rent in advance. He could then move in at once.

With considerable mortification, she declared that she wouldn't insist on the "advance,"—knowing gentlemen as perfectly as she did,—were it not for the fact that her rent was due and she was short exactly that amount,—having recently sent more than she could spare to a sick sister in Bridgeport.

De Bosky was very amiable about it,—and very courteous. He said that, so far as he knew, all gentlemen were prepared to pay five dollars in advance when they engaged lodgings by the week, and would she be so good as to take it out of the twenty-dollar bill?

Mrs. Dulaney was slightly chagrined. The sight of a twenty-dollar bill caused her to regret not having asked for two weeks down instead of one.

"If it does not inconvenience you, madam," said de Bosky, "I should like the change in new bills. You have no idea how it offends my artistic sense to—" He shuddered a little. "I make a point of never having filthy, germ-disseminating bank notes on my person."

"And you are quite right," said she feelingly. "I wish to God I could afford to be as particular. If there's anything I hate it's a dirty old bill. Any one could tell that you are a real gentleman, Mr.—Mr.—I didn't get the name, did I?"

"Drexel," he said.

"Excuse me," she said, and moved over a couple of paces in order to place the parlour table between herself and the prospective lodger. Using it as a screen, she fished a thin flat purse from her stocking, and opened it. "I wouldn't do this in the presence of any one but a gentleman," she explained, without embarrassment. As she was twice the size of Prince Waldemar and of a ruggedness that challenged offence, one might have been justified in crediting her with egotism instead of modesty.

Selecting the brightest and crispest from the layer of bank notes, she laid them on the table. De Bosky's eyes glistened.

"The city has recently been flooded with counterfeit fives and tens, madam," he said politely. This afforded an excuse for holding the bills to the light for examination.

"Now, don't tell me they're phoney," said Mrs. Dulaney, bristling. "I got 'em this morning from the squarest chap I've ever had in my—"

"I have every reason to believe they are genuine," said he, concealing his exultation behind a patronizing smile. He had discovered the tell-tale marks on both bills. Carefully folding them, he stuck them into his waistcoat pocket. "You may expect me tomorrow, madam,—unless, of course, destiny should shape another end for me in the meantime. One never can tell, you know. I may be dead, or your comfortable house may be burned to the ground. It is—"

"For the Lord's sake, don't make a crack like that," she cried vehemently. "It's bad luck to talk about fire."

"In any event," said he jauntily, "you have my five dollars. Au revoir, madam. Auf wiedersehn!" He buttoned Mr. Bramble's ulster close about his throat and gravely bowed himself out into the falling night.

In the meantime, Mr. Bramble had substituted two unmarked bills for those remaining in the possession of Thomas Trotter, and, with the return of Prince Waldemar, triumphant, M. Mirabeau arbitrarily confiscated the entire thirty dollars.

"These bills must be concealed at once," he explained. "Temporarily they are out of circulation. Do not give them another thought, my dear Trotter. And now, Monsieur Bookseller, we are in a proper frame of mind to discuss the beefsteak you have neglected to order."

"God bless my soul," cried Mr. Bramble in great dismay. His unceremonious departure an instant later was due to panic. Mrs. O'Leary had to be stopped before the tripe and tunny fish had gone too far. Moreover, he had forgotten to tell her that there would be two extra for dinner,—besides the extra sirloin.

On the following Monday, Thomas Trotter entered the service of Mrs. Millidew, and on the same day Stuyvesant Smith-Parvis returned to New York after a hasty and more or less unpremeditated visit to Atlantic City, where he experienced a trying half hour with the unreasonable Mr. Carpenter, who spoke feelingly of a personal loss and most unfeelingly of the British Foreign Office. Every nation in the world, he raged, has a foreign office; foreign offices are as plentiful as birds'-nests. But Tom Trotters were as scarce as hen's-teeth. He would never find another like him.

"And what's more," he interrupted himself to say, glowering at the shocked young man, "he's a gentleman, and that's something you ain't,—not in a million years."

"Ass!" said Mr. Smith-Parvis, under his breath.

"What's that?" roared the aggrieved one.

"Don't shout like that! People are beginning to stare at—"

"Thank the Lord I had sense enough to engage a private detective and not to call in the police, as you suggested. That would have been the limit. I've a notion to hunt that boy up and tell him the whole rotten story."

"Go ahead and do it," invited Stuyvie, his eyes narrowing, "and I will do a little telling myself. There is one thing in particular your wife would give her ears to hear about you. It will simplify matters tremendously. Go ahead and tell him."

Mr. Carpenter appeared to be reflecting. His inflamed sullen eyes assumed a misty, faraway expression.

"For two cents I'd tell you to go to hell," he said, after a long silence.

"Boy!" called Mr. Smith-Parvis loftily, signalling a passing bell-hop. "Go and get me some small change for this nickel."

Mr. Carpenter's face relaxed into a sickly grin. "Can't you take a joke?" he inquired peevishly.

"Never mind," said Stuyvie to the bell-boy. "I sha'n't need it after all."

"What I'd like to know," mused Mr. Carpenter, later on, "is how in thunder the New York police department got wind of all this."

Mr. Smith-Parvis, Junior, wiped a fine moisture from his brow, and said: "I forgot to mention that I had to give that plain-clothes man fifty dollars to keep him from going to old man Cricklewick with the whole blooming story. It seems that he got it from your bally private detective."

"Good!" said the other brightly. "You got off cheap," he added quickly, catching the look in Stuyvie's eye.

"I did it to spare Cricklewick a whole lot of embarrassment," said the younger man stiffly.

"I don't get you."

"He never could look me in the face again if he found out I was the man he was panning so unmercifully the other night at our own dinner table." He wiped his brow again. "'Gad, he'd never forgive himself."

Which goes to prove that Stuyvie was more considerate of the feelings of others than one might have credited him with being.

Mrs. Millidew was very particular about chauffeurs,—an idiosyncrasy, it may be said, that brought her into contact with a great many of them in the course of a twelvemonth. The last one to leave her without giving the customary week's notice had remained in her employ longer than any of his predecessors. A most astonishing discrepancy appeared in their statements as to the exact length of time he was in her service. Mrs. Millidew maintained that he was with her for exactly three weeks; the chauffeur swore to high heaven that it was three centuries.

She had Thomas Trotter up before her.

"You have been recommended to me by Mr. Cricklewick," she said, regarding him with a critical eye. "No other reference is necessary, so don't go fumbling in your pockets for a pack of filthy envelopes. What is your name?"

She was a fat little old woman with yellow hair and exceedingly black and carefully placed eyebrows.

"Thomas Trotter, madam."

"How tall are you?"

"Six feet."

"I am afraid you will not do," she said, taking another look at him.

Trotter stared. "I am sorry, madam."

"You are much too tall. Nothing will fit you."

"Are you speaking of livery, madam?"

"I'm speaking of a uniform," she said. "I can't be buying new uniforms every two weeks. I don't mind a cap once in awhile, but uniforms cost money. Mr. Cricklewick didn't tell me you were so tall. As a matter of fact, I think I neglected to say to him that you would have to be under five feet nine and fairly thin. You couldn't possibly squeeze into the uniform, my man. I am sorry. I have tried everything but an English chauffeur, and—you are English, aren't you?"

"Yes, madam. Permit me to solve the problem for you. I never, under any circumstances, wear livery,—I beg your pardon, I should say a uniform."

"You never what?" demanded Mrs. Millidew, blinking.

"Wear livery," said he, succinctly.

"That settles it," said she. "You'd have to if you worked for me. Now, see here, my man, it's possible you'll change your mind after you've seen the uniform I put on my chauffeurs. It's a sort of maroon—"

"I beg your pardon, madam," he interrupted politely, favouring her with his never-failing smile. Her gaze rested for a moment on his white, even teeth, and then went up to meet his deep grey eyes. "A cap is as far as I go. A sort of blue fatigue cap, you know."

"I like your face," said she regretfully. "You are quite a good-looking fellow. The last man I had looked like a street cleaner, even in his maroon coat and white pants. I—Don't you think you could be persuaded to put it on if I,—well, if I added five dollars a week to your wages? I like your looks. You look as if you might have been a soldier."

Trotter swallowed hard. "I shouldn't in the least object to wearing the uniform of a soldier, Mrs. Millidew. That's quite different, you see."

"Suppose I take you on trial for a couple of weeks," she ventured, surrendering to his smile and the light in his unservile eyes. Considering the matter settled, she went on brusquely: "How old are you, Trotter?"

"Thirty."

"Are you married? I never employ married men. Their wives are always having babies or operations or something disagreeable and unnecessary."

"I am not married, Mrs. Millidew."

"Who was your last employer in England?"

"His Majesty King George the Fifth," said Trotter calmly.

Her eyes bulged. "What?" she cried. Then her eyes narrowed. "And do you mean to tell me you didn't wear a uniform when you worked for him?"

"I wore a uniform, madam."

"Umph! America has spoiled you, I see. That's always the way. Independence is a curse. Have you ever been arrested? Wait! Don't answer. I withdraw the question. You would only lie, and that is a bad way to begin."

"I lie only when it is absolutely necessary, Mrs. Millidew. In police courts, for example."

"Good! Now, you are young, good looking and likely to be spoiled. It must be understood in the beginning, Trotter, that there is to be no foolishness with women." She regarded him severely.

"No foolishness whatsoever," said he humbly, raising his eyes to heaven.

"How long were you employed in your last job—ah, situation?"

"Not quite a twelve-month, madam."

"And now," she said, with a graciousness that surprised her, "perhaps you would like to put a few questions to me. The cooks always do."

He smiled more engagingly than ever. "As they say in the advertisements of lost jewellery, madam,—'no questions asked,'" he said.

"Eh? Oh, I see. Rather good. I hope you know your place, though," she added, narrowly. "I don't approve of freshness."

"No more do I," said he, agreeably.

"I suppose you are accustomed to driving in—er—in good society, Trotter. You know what I mean."

"Perfectly. I have driven in the very best, madam, if I do say it as shouldn't. Beg pardon, I daresay you mean smart society?" He appeared to be very much concerned, even going so far as to send an appraising eye around the room,—doubtless for the purpose of satisfying himself that she was quite up to the standard.

"Of course," she said hastily. Something told her that if she didn't nab him on the spot he would get away from her. "Can you start in at once, Trotter?"

"We have not agreed upon the wages, madam."

"I have never paid less than forty a week," she said stiffly. "Even for bad ones," she added.

He smiled, but said nothing, apparently waiting for her to proceed.

"Would fifty a week suit you?" she asked, after a long pause. She was a little helpless.

"Quite," said he.

"It's a lot of money," she murmured. "But I like the way you speak English. By the way, let me hear you say: 'It is half after four, madam. Are you going on to Mrs. Brown's.'"

Trotter laid himself out. He said "hawf-paast," and "fou-ah," and "Meddem," and "gehing," in a way that delighted her.

"I shall be going out at three o'clock, Trotter. Be on time. I insist on punctuality."

"Very good, madam," he said, and retreated in good order. She halted him at the door.

"Above all things you mustn't let any of these silly women make a fool of you, Trotter," she said, a troubled gleam in her eyes.

"I will do my best, madam," he assured her.

And that very afternoon she appeared in triumph at the home of her daughter-in-law (the young Mrs. Millidew) and invited that widowed siren to go out for a spin with her "behind the stunningest creature you ever laid your eyes on."

"Where did you get him?" inquired the beautiful daughter-in-law, later on, in a voice perfectly audible to the man at the wheel. "He's the best looking thing in town. Don't be surprised if I steal him inside of a week." She might as well have been at the zoo, discussing impervious captives.

"Now, don't try anything like that," cried Mrs. Millidew the elder, glaring fiercely.

"I like the way his hair kinks in the back,—and just above his ears," said the other. "And his skin is as smooth and as clear—"

"Is there any drive in particular you would like to take, madam?" broke in Trotter, turning in the seat.

"Up—up and down Fifth Avenue," said Mrs. Millidew promptly.

"Did you ever see such teeth?" cried Mrs. Millidew, the younger, delightedly.

Trotter's ears were noticeable on account of their colour.

CHAPTER X

PUTTING THEIR HEADS—AND HEARTS—TOGETHER

"FOR every caress," philosophized the Marchioness, "there is a pinch. Somehow they manage to keep on pretty even terms. One receives the caresses fairly early in life, the pinches later on. You shouldn't be complaining at your time of life, my friend."

She was speaking to Lord Temple, who had presented himself a full thirty minutes ahead of other expected guests at the Wednesday evening salon. He explained that he came early because he had to leave early. Mrs. Millidew was at the theatre. She was giving a box party. He had been directed to return to the theatre before the end of the second act. Mrs. Millidew, it appears, was in the habit of "walking out" on every play she attended, sometimes at the end of an act but more frequently in the middle of it, greatly to the relief of actors and audience.

("Tell me something good to read," said one of her guests, in the middle of the first act, addressing no one in particular, the audience being a very large one. "Is there anything new that's worth while?"

"The Three Musketeers is a corker," said the man next her. "Awfully exciting."

"Write it down for me, dear boy. I will order it sent up tomorrow. One has so little time to read, you know. Anything else?"

"You must read Trilby," cried one of the other women, frowning slightly in the direction of the stage, where an actor was doing his best to break into the general conversation. "It's perfectly ripping, I hear. And there is another book called Three Men in a Yacht, or something like that. Have you had it?"

"No. Good Lord, what a noisy person he is! One can't hear oneself think, the way he's roaring. Three Men in a Yacht. Put that down, too, Bertie. Dear me, how do you find the time to keep up with your reading, my dear? It's absolutely impossible for me. I'm always six months or a year behind—"

"Have you read Brewster's Millions, Mrs. Corkwright?" timidly inquired a rather up-to-date gentleman.

"That isn't a book. It's a play," said Mrs. Millidew. "I saw it ten years ago. There is a ship in it.")

"I'm not complaining," remarked Lord Temple, smiling down upon the Marchioness, who was seated in front of the fireplace. "I merely announced that the world is getting to be a dreary old place,—and that's all."

"Ah, but you made the announcement after a silence of five minutes following my remark that Lady Jane Thorne finds it impossible to be with us tonight."

He blushed. "Did it seem as long as that?" he said, penitently. "I'm sorry."

"How do you like your new situation?" she inquired, changing the subject abruptly.

He gave a slight start. It was an unwritten law that one's daily occupation should not be discussed at the weekly drawing-rooms. For example, it is easy to conceive that one could not be forgiven for asking the Count Pietro Poloni how many nickels he had taken in during the day as Humpy the Organ-grinder.

Lord Temple also stared. Was it possible that she was forgetting that Thomas Trotter, the chauffeur, was hanging over the back of a chair in the locker room down-stairs,—where he had been left by a hurried and somewhat untidy Lord Temple?

"As well as could be expected," he replied, after a moment.

"Mrs. Millidew came in to see me today. She informed me that she had put in her thumb and pulled out a plum. Meaning you, of course."

"How utterly English you are, my dear Marchioness. She mentioned a fruit of some kind, and you missed the point altogether. 'Peach' is the word she's been using for the past two days, just plain, ordinary 'peach.' A dozen times a day she sticks a finger almost up against my manly back, and says proudly: 'See my new chauffeur. Isn't he a peach?' I can't see how you make plum out of it."

The Marchioness laughed. "It doesn't matter. She dragged me to the window this afternoon and pointed down at you sitting alone in all your splendour. I am afraid I gasped. I couldn't believe my eyes. You won't last long, dear boy. She's a dreadful woman."

"I'm not worrying. I shouldn't be out of a situation long. Do you happen to know her daughter-in-law?"

"I do," said the Marchioness, frowning.

"She told me this morning that the instant I felt I couldn't stand the old lady any longer, she'd give me a job on the spot. As a matter-of-fact, she went so far as to say she'd be willing to pay me more money if I felt the slightest inclination to leave my present position at once."

The Marchioness smiled faintly. "No other recommendation necessary, eh?"

"Beg pardon?"

"In other words, she is willing to accept you at your face value."

"I daresay I have a competent face," he acknowledged, his smile broadening into a grin.

"Designed especially for women," said she.

He coloured. "Oh, I say, that's a bit rough."

"And thoroughly approved by men," she added.

"That's better," he said. "I'm not a ladies' man, you know,—thank God." His face clouded. "Is Lady Jane ill?"

"Apparently not. She merely telephoned to say it would be impossible to come." She eyed him shrewdly. "Do you know anything about it, young man?"

"Have you seen her,—lately?" he parried.

"Yesterday afternoon," she answered, keeping her eyes upon his half-averted face. "See here, Eric Temple," she broke out suddenly, "she is unhappy—most unhappy. I am not sure that I ought to tell you—and yet, you are in love with her, so you should know. Now, don't say you are not in love with her! Save your breath. The trouble is, you are not the only man who is in that peculiar fix."

"I know," he said, frowning darkly. "She's being annoyed by that infernal blighter."

"Oho, so you do know, then?" she cried. "She was very careful to leave you out of the story altogether. Well, I'm glad you know. What are you going to do about it?"

"I? Why,—why, what can I do?"

"There is a great deal you can do."

"But she has laid down the law, hard and fast. She won't let me," he groaned.

The Marchioness blinked rapidly. "Well, of all the stupid,—Say that again, please."

"She won't let me. I would in a second, you know,—no matter if it did land me in jail for—"

"What are you talking about?" she gasped.

"Punching his bally head till he wouldn't know it himself in the mirror," he grated, looking at his fist almost tearfully.

The Marchioness opened her lips to say something, thought better of it, and turned her head to smile.

"Moreover," he went on, "she's right. Might get her into no end of a mess with those people, you see. It breaks my heart to think of her—"

"He wants her to run away with him and be married," she broke in.

"What!" he almost shouted, glaring at her as if she were the real offender. "You—did she tell you that?"

"Yes. He rather favours San Francisco. He wants her to go out there with him and be married by a chap to whom he promised the distinction while they were still in their teens."

"The cur! That's his game, is it? Why, that's the foulest trick known to—"

"But she isn't going, my friend,—so possess yourself in peace. That's why he is turning off so nasty. He is making things most unpleasant for her."

He wondered how far Jane had gone in her confidences. Had she told the Marchioness everything?

"Why doesn't she leave the place?" he demanded, as a feeler.

Lady Jane had told the Marchioness everything, and a great deal more besides, including, it may be said, something touching upon her own feelings toward Lord Temple. But the Marchioness was under imperative orders. Not for the world, was Thomas Trotter to know that Miss Emsdale, among others, was a perfect fool about him.

"She must have her bread and butter, you know," said she severely.

"But she can get that elsewhere, can't she?"

"Certainly. She can get it by marrying some decent, respectable fellow and all that sort of thing, but she can't get another place in New York as governess if the Smith-Parvis establishment turns her out with a bad name."

He swallowed hard, and went a little pale. "Of course, she isn't thinking of—of getting married."

"Yes, she is," said the Marchioness flatly.

"Has—has she told you that in so many words, Marchioness?" he asked, his heart going to his boots.

"Is it fair to ask that question, Lord Temple?"

"No. It isn't fair. I have no right to pry into her affairs. I'm—I'm desperately concerned, that's all. It's my only excuse."

"It isn't strange that she should be in love, is it?"

"But I—I don't see who the deuce she can have found over here to—to fall in love with," he floundered.

"There are millions of good, fine Americans, my friend. Young Smith-Parvis is one of the exceptions."

"He isn't an American," said Lord Temple, savagely. "Don't insult America by mentioning his name in—"

"Please, please! Be careful not to knock over the lamp, dear boy. It's Florentine, and Count Antonio says it came from some dreadful sixteenth-century woman's bedroom, price two hundred guineas net. She's afraid she's being watched."

"She? Oh, you mean Lady Jane?"

"Certainly. The other woman has been dead for centuries. Jane thinks it isn't safe for her to come here for a little while. There's no telling what the wretch may stoop to, you see."

Lord Temple squared his shoulders. "I don't see how you can be so cheerful about it," he said icily. "I fear it isn't worth while to ask the favour I came to—er—to ask of you tonight."

"Don't be silly. Tell me what I can do for you."

"It isn't for me. It's for her. I came early tonight so that we could talk it all over before any one else arrived. I've slept precious little the last few nights, Marchioness." His brow was furrowed as with pain. "In the first place, you will agree that she cannot remain in that house up there. That's settled." As she did not offer any audible support, he demanded, after a pause: "Isn't it?"

"I daresay she will have something to say about that," she said, temporizing. "She is her own mistress, you know."

"But the poor girl doesn't know where to turn," he protested. "She'd chuck it in a second if something else turned up."

"I spoke of marriage, you will remember," she remarked, drily.

"I—I know," he gulped. "But we've just got to tide her over the rough going until she's—until she's ready, you see." He could not force the miserable word out of his mouth. "Now, I have a plan. Are you prepared to back me up in it?"

"How can I answer that question?"

"Well, I'll explain," he went on rapidly, eagerly. "We've got to make a new position for her. I can't do it without your help, of course, so we'll have to combine forces. Now, here's the scheme I've worked out. You are to give her a place here,—not downstairs in the shop, mind you,—but upstairs in your own, private apartment. You—"

"Good heavens, man! What are you saying? Would you have Lady Jane Thorne go into service? Do you dare suggest that she should put on a cap and apron and—"

"Not at all," he interrupted. "I want you to engage her as your private secretary, at a salary of one hundred dollars a month. She's receiving that amount from the Smith-Parvises. I don't see how she can get along on less, so—"

"My dear man!" cried the Marchioness, in amazement. "What are you talking about? In the first place, I haven't the slightest use for a private secretary. In the second place, I can't afford to pay one hundred—"

"You haven't heard all I have to say—"

"And in the third place, Lady Jane wouldn't consider it in the first place. Bless my soul, you do need sleep. You are losing your—"

"She sends nearly all of her salary over to the boy at home," he went on earnestly. "It will have to be one hundred dollars, at the very lowest. Now, here's my proposition. I am getting two hundred a month. It's just twice as much as I'm worth,—or any other chauffeur, for that matter. Well, now what's the matter with me taking just what I'm worth and giving her the other half? See what I mean?"

He was standing before her, his eyes glowing, his voice full of boyish eagerness. As she looked up into his shining eyes, a tender smile came and played about her lips.

"I see," she said softly.

"Well?" he demanded anxiously, after a moment.

"Do sit down," she said. "You appear to have grown prodigiously tall in the last few minutes. I shall have a dreadful crick in my neck, I'm afraid."

He pulled up a chair and sat down.

"I can get along like a breeze on a hundred dollars a month," he pursued. "I've worked it all out,—just how much I can save by moving into cheaper lodgings, and cutting out expensive cigarettes, and going on the water-wagon entirely,—although I rarely take a drink as it is,—and getting my clothes at a department store instead of having them sent out from London,—I'd be easy to fit, you see, even with hand-me-downs,—and in a lot of other ways. Besides, it would be a splendid idea for me to practise economy. I've never—"

"You dear old goose," broke in the Marchioness, delightedly; "do you think for an instant that I will allow you to pay the salary of my private secretary,—if I should conclude to employ one?"

"But you say you can't afford to employ one," he protested. "Besides, I shouldn't want her to be a real secretary. The work would be too hard and too confining. Old Bramble was my grandfather's secretary. He worked sixteen hours a day and never had a holiday. She must have plenty of fresh air and outdoor exercise and—and time to read and do all sorts of agreeable things. I couldn't think of allowing her to learn how to use a typing machine, or to write shorthand, or to get pains in her back bending over a desk for hours at a time. That isn't my scheme, at all. She mustn't do any of those stupid things. Naturally, if you were to pay her out of your own pocket, you'd be justified in demanding a lot of hard, exacting work—"

"Just a moment, please. Let's be serious," said the Marchioness, pursing her lips.

"Suffering—" he began, staring at her in astonishment.

"I mean, let's seriously consider your scheme," she hastened to amend. "You are assuming, of course, that she will accept a position such as you suggest. Suppose she says no,—what then?"

"I leave that entirely to you," said he, composedly. "You can persuade her, I'm sure."

"She is no fool. She is perfectly well aware that I don't require the services of a secretary, that I am quite able to manage my private affairs myself. She would see through me in a second. She is as proud as Lucifer. I don't like to think of what she would say to me. And if I were to offer to pay her one hundred dollars a month, she would—well, she would think I was losing my mind. She knows I—"

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, slapping his knee, his face beaming. "That's the ticket! That simplifies everything. Let her think you are losing your mind. From worry and overwork—and all that sort of thing. It's the very thing, Marchioness. She would drop everything to help you in a case like that."

"Well, of all the—" began the Marchioness, aghast.

"You can put it up to her something like this," he went on, enthusiastically. "Tell her you are on the point of having a nervous breakdown,—a sort of collapse, you know. You know how to put it, better than I do. You—"

"I certainly do not know how to put it better than you do," she cried, sitting up very straight.

"Tell her you are dreadfully worried over not being able to remember things,—mental strain, and all that sort of thing. May have to give up business altogether unless you can—Is it a laughing matter, Marchioness?" he broke off, reddening to the roots of his hair.

"You are delicious!" she cried, dabbing her eyes with a bit of a lace handkerchief. "I haven't laughed so heartily in months. Bless my soul, you'll have me telling her there is insanity in my family before you're through with it."

"Not at all," he said severely. "People never admit that sort of thing, you know. But certainly it isn't asking too much of you to act tired and listless, and a little distracted, is it? She'll ask what's the matter, and you simply say you're afraid you're going to have a nervous breakdown or—or—"

"Or paresis," she supplied.

"Whatever you like," he said promptly. "Now you will do this for me, won't you? You don't know what it will mean to me to feel that she is safe here with you."

"I will do my best," she said, for she loved him dearly—and the girl that he loved dearly too.

"Hurray!" he shouted,—and kissed her!

"Don't be foolish," she cried out. "You've tumbled my hair, and Julia had a terrible time with it tonight."

"When will you tackle—see her, I mean?" he asked, sitting down abruptly and drawing his chair a little closer.

"The first time she comes in to see me," she replied firmly, "and not before. You must not demand too much of a sick, collapsible old lady, you know. Give me time,—and a chance to get my bearings."

He drew a long breath. "I seem to be getting my own for the first time in days."

She hesitated. "Of course, it is all very quixotic,—and most unselfish of you, Lord Temple. Not every man would do as much for a girl who—well, I'll not say a girl who is going to be married before long, because I'd only be speculating,—but for a girl, at any rate, who can never be expected to repay. I take it, of course, that Lady Jane is never, under any circumstances to know that you are the real paymaster."

"She must never know," he gasped, turning a shade paler. "She would hate me, and—well, I couldn't stand that, you know."

"And you will not repent when the time comes for her to marry?"

"I'll—I'll be miserably unhappy, but—but, you will not hear a whimper out of me," he said, his face very long.

"Spoken like a hero," she said, and again she laughed, apparently without reason. "Some one is coming. Will you stay?"

"No; I'll be off, Marchioness. You don't know how relieved I am. I'll drop in tomorrow some time to see what she says,—and to arrange with you about the money. Good night!" He kissed her hand, and turned to McFaddan, who had entered the room. "Call a taxi for me, McFaddan."

"Very good, sir."

"Wait! Never mind. I'll walk or take a street car." To the Marchioness: "I'm beginning right now," he said, with his gayest smile.

In the foyer he encountered Cricklewick.

"Pleasant evening, Cricklewick," he said.

"It is, your lordship. Most agreeable change, sir."

"A bit soft under foot."

"Slushy, sir," said Cricklewick, obsequiously.

CHAPTER XI

WINNING BY A NOSE

MRS. SMITH-PARVIS, having received the annual spring announcement from Juneo & Co., repaired, on an empty Thursday, to the show-rooms and galleries of the little Italian dealer in antiques.

Twice a year she disdainfully,—and somewhat hastily,—went through his stock, always proclaiming at the outset that she was merely "looking around"; she'd come in later if she saw anything really worth having. It was her habit to demand the services of Mr. Juneo himself on these profitless visits to his establishment. She looked holes through the presumptuous underlings who politely adventured to inquire if she was looking for anything in particular. It would seem that the only thing in particular that she was looking for was the head of the house, and if he happened to be out she made it very plain that she didn't see how he ever did any business if he wasn't there to look after it.

And if little Mr. Juneo was in, she swiftly conducted him through the various departments of his own shop, questioning the genuineness of everything, denouncing his prices, and departing at last with the announcement that she could always find what she wanted at Pickett's.

At Pickett's she invariably encountered coldly punctilious gentlemen in "frockaway" coats, who were never quite sure, without inquiring, whether Mr. Moody was at liberty. Would she kindly take a seat and wait, or would she prefer to have a look about the galleries while some one went off to see if he could see her at once or a little later on? She liked all this. And she would wander about the luxurious rooms of the establishment of Pickett, Inc., content to stare languidly at other and less influential patrons who had to be satisfied with the smug attentions of ordinary salesmen.

And Moody, being acutely English, laid it on very thick when it came to dealing with persons of the type of Mrs. Smith-Parvis. Somehow he had learned that in dealing with snobs one must transcend even in snobbishness. The only way to command the respect of a snob is to go him a little better,—indeed, according to Moody, it isn't altogether out of place to go him a great deal better. The loftier the snob, the higher you must shoot to get over his head (to quote Moody, whose training as a footman in one of the oldest houses in England had prepared him against almost any emergency). He assumed on occasion a polite, bored indifference that seldom failed to have the desired effect. In fact, he frequently went so far as to pretend to stifle a yawn while face to face with the most exalted of patrons,—a revelation of courage which, being carefully timed, usually put the patron in a corner from which she could escape only by paying a heavy ransom.

He sometimes had a way of implying,—by his manner, of course,—that he would rather not sell the treasure at all than to have it go into your mansion, where it would be manifestly alone in its splendour, notwithstanding the priceless articles you had picked up elsewhere in previous efforts to inhabit the place with glory. On the other hand, if you happened to be nobody at all and therefore likely to resent being squelched, he could sell you a ten-dollar candlestick quite as amiably as the humblest clerk in the place. Indeed, he was quite capable of giving it to you for nine dollars if he found he had not quite correctly sized you up in the beginning.

As he never erred in sizing up people of the Smith-Parvis ilk, however, his profits were sublime. Accident, and nothing less, brought him into contact with the common people looking for bargains: such as the faulty adjustment of his monocle, or a similarity in backs, or the perverseness of the telephone, or a sudden shower. Sudden showers always remind pedestrians without umbrellas that they've been meaning for a long time to stop in and price things, and they clutter up the place so.

Mrs. Smith-Parvis was bent on discovering something cheap and unusual for the twins, whose joint birthday anniversary was but two days off. It occurred to her that it would be wise to give them another heirloom apiece. Something English, of course, in view of the fact that her husband's forebears had come over from England with the twenty or thirty thousand voyagers who stuffed the Mayflower from stem to stern on her historic maiden trip across the Atlantic.

Secretly, she had never got over being annoyed with the twins for having come regardless, so to speak. She had prayed for another boy like Stuyvesant, and along came the twins—no doubt as a sort of sop in the form of good measure. If there had to be twins, why under heaven couldn't she have been blessed with them on Stuyvesant's natal day? She couldn't have had too many Stuyvesants.

Still, she considered it her duty to be as nice as possible to the twins, now that she had them; and besides, they were growing up to be surprisingly pretty girls, with a pleasantly increasing resemblance to Stuyvesant.

Always, a day or two prior to the anniversary, she went surreptitiously into the antique shops and picked out for each of them a piece of jewellery, or a bit of china, or a strip of lace, or anything else that bore evidence of having once been in a very nice sort of family. On the glad morning she delivered her gifts, with sweet impressiveness, into the keeping of these remote little descendants of her beloved ancestors! Invariably something English, heirlooms that she had kept under lock and key since the day they came to Mr. Smith-Parvis under the terms of his great-grandmother's will. Up to the time Stuyvesant was sixteen he had been getting heirlooms from a long-departed great-grandfather, but on reaching that vital age, he declared that he preferred cash.

The twins had a rare assortment of family heirlooms in the little glass cabinets upstairs.

"You must cherish them for ever," said their mother, without compunction. "They represent a great deal more than mere money, my dears. They are the intrinsic bonds that connect you with a glorious past."

When they were ten she gave them a pair of beautiful miniatures,—a most alluring and imperial looking young lady with powdered hair, and a gallant young gentleman with orders pinned all over his bright red coat. It appears that the lady of the miniature was a great personage at court a great many years before the misguided Colonists revolted against King George the Third, and they—her darling twins—were directly descended from her. The gentleman was her husband.

"He was awfully handsome," one of the twins had said, being romantic. "Are we descended from him too, mamma?" she inquired innocently.

"Certainly," said Mrs. Smith-Parvis severely.

A predecessor of Miss Emsdale's got her walking papers for putting nonsense (as well as the truth) into the heads of the children. At least, she told them something that paved the way for a most embarrassing disclosure by one of the twins when a visitor was complimenting them on being such nice, lovely little ladies.

"We ought to be," said Eudora proudly. "We are descended from Madam du Barry. We've got her picture upstairs."

Mrs. Smith-Parvis took Miss Emsdale with her on this particular Thursday afternoon. This was at the suggestion of Stuyvesant, who held forth that an English governess was in every way qualified to pass upon English wares, new or old, and there wasn't any sense in getting "stung" when there was a way to protect oneself, and all that sort of thing.

Stuyvesant also joined the hunt.

"Rather a lark, eh, what?" he whispered in Miss Emsdale's ear as they followed his stately mother into the shop of Juneo & Co. She jerked her arm away.

The proprietor was haled forth. Courteous, suave and polished though he was, Signor Juneo had the misfortune to be a trifle shabby, and sartorially remiss. Mrs. Smith-Parvis eyed him from a peak,—a very lofty peak.

Ten minutes sufficed to convince her that he had nothing in his place that she could think of buying.

"My dear sir," she said haughtily, "I know just what I want, so don't try to palm off any of this jewellery on me. Miss Emsdale knows the Queen Anne period quite as well as I do, I've no doubt. Queen Anne never laid eyes on that wristlet, Mr. Juneo."