Part 30 (2/2)

Viola resented the implied doubt of their own acceptance. ”I am going, anyhow. I will not be shut up here any longer like a convict. I like Mrs. Rice very much, and I want to see her house. I know it will be just as nice as she is.”

”But we can't go without Anthony, my dear.”

Clarke came to the door a little later to say that he had received Mrs. Rice's invitation, but that he did not care to feed the curiosity of such people. ”You would better plead a previous engagement,” he added to Viola.

”I'll do nothing of the sort,” she indignantly answered. ”Indeed, I've already accepted. You needn't look black--I'm going,” she added, in pouting defiance.

Something in her look as well as in her tone convinced him that wisdom lay in not attempting to restrain her, therefore he gave a.s.sent, gloomily and with a sense of loss. ”I don't know how Pratt will feel about it. He don't like those people, and, besides, he has invited some friends in to see you this evening.”

”He said nothing to me about it,” Viola responded, curtly, ”and, besides, how can he expect me to be always at his command? He is not my jailer. I'm tired of his demands, they are so unreasonable.”

Mrs. Lambert, as usual, entered to soothe and heal. ”Viola's been very good about meeting Mr. Pratt's friends, Tony. We've hardly been out to dinner since we came here, and it really seems to me as if we had the right to go out to-night.”

”We ought to have Thursdays, anyway,” the girl scornfully added. ”We have less liberty than our maids. The whole situation is becoming intolerable.”

Clarke acknowledged that Pratt demanded a good deal, and was gracious enough to say: ”It won't be necessary much longer. I'll go down and try to arrange the matter, and report what he says.”

”I don't care what he says, I'm going,” Viola repeated. ”I'm going if he locks us out. I wish he would.”

Pratt was resentful at once. ”I don't want her to go to-night. I have some people coming in to see her. I don't want them disappointed; she must remain.”

”She feels aggrieved because she has been kept so close here, and I must say--”

”I don't see why she feels that way, she has every luxury. She goes for a drive every afternoon, and there is hardly a night that I don't bring home somebody to dinner. It seems to me she's seeing all the people she ought to see. I don't believe in having her mix with those sceptics too freely.”

He went up-stairs sulkily, quite in the mood to bully, but Mrs.

Lambert turned away his wrath with a smile and several soft words, and Viola did not see him till she was on her way to the carriage. He was lurking in the hall below, waiting for her surly and sour and insulting.

Viola, perceiving his humor, said to herself: ”I will not let you spoil my evening by making me angry. I will not listen to you,” and she didn't, though she could not help hearing his warning growl.

”I'll expect you home early.”

Once safely out of the house she said to Clarke: ”This really is too much, Anthony. He is insufferable. If you don't tell him so, and teach him better manners, I will leave the house. But there! I said I wouldn't let him spoil our evening, and I won't--I won't even think of him again.”

Serviss expected her to show some signs of the deep emotional stress of his former interview, but in this he was most pleasurably surprised. He marvelled at the height of her rebound from the wan helplessness of her mood upon the stairs. She was, indeed, a totally different being--a radiant, blooming creature belonging wholly to the world of youth--and he was scarcely able to relate the two scenes to the same girl, and again he exclaimed, ”What an actress--if she is an actress!” She was very simply attired in pale blue with but few ornaments, but she bore herself like a queen demanding homage--and he gave it. He was all the lover and nothing of the scientist as he stood to greet her.

She, on her part, behind her proud mask, was breathing quick with pleasure. To meet Professor Serviss in dinner-dress, in his own home, exalted her above the pupil and transformed him into something more intimate than the master--something more dangerously compelling than friend.

Kate, quite carried away by her enthusiasm, caught the girl again in her arms. ”You dear, sweet thing! I wish I had made a big party for you; you're too fine to be wasted on three cranky old scientists.”

Serviss met Clarke with less of repulsion than he had antic.i.p.ated, for, notwithstanding the preacher's haggard cheeks and a certain set glare which came into his eyes occasionally, he was a handsome figure.

He was plainly on guard, however, and extremely ill at ease, and his eyes kept furtive watch on Viola's every movement.

Kate at once engaged him in conversation in order that he and Morton might not fall into argument, and with the further purpose of permitting her young people a little time for mutual explanation. She was glad when Weissmann came in, brisk as a boy, his keen eyes peering alertly through his horn-bowed gla.s.ses; he not merely proved a diversion, he completed her party. The great man was as animated as a cricket (this was his society manner), and upon being presented to Viola began paying her the most marked and absorbed attention, hopping briskly from one heavy German compliment to another, quite unaware, apparently, that she was anything more than a very pretty girl.

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