Part 16 (1/2)

”The dampness of the day has nothing at all to do with it,” she kept on with frozen evenness. ”I suggested it because a fire is a safe place for a girl to look into while her profile is being studied.”

”Mother!”

Her sense of outraged propriety suddenly slipped its leash.

”It keeps her eyes looking earnest, instead of _eager_,” she burst out. ”And any girl who'd let a man--allow a man--to run away from a party whose very magnificence was induced on his account, and take her off to tea in a public place, and come to see her the very next afternoon--a stranger, and a foreigner at that--is--is playing with fire!”

”You mean she'd better be playing with fire while he's calling?” I asked quietly. ”We must remember to have the old andirons polished, then.”

She stopped in her task of dusting the parlor--whose recesses without the s.h.i.+ning new player-piano suddenly looked as bare and empty as a shop-window just after the holidays.

”You wilfully ignore my warning,” she declared. ”If this man left that party yesterday and comes calling to-day, of course he's impressed!

And if you let him, of course _you're_ impressed. This much goes without saying; but I beg you to be careful, Grace! You happen to have those very serious, _betraying_ eyes, and I want you to guard them while he's here!”

”By keeping my hands busy, eh?” I laughed. ”Well, I'll promise, mother, if that'll be any relief to you.”

So the fire was kindled, as a preventative measure; and at four o'clock he came--not on the stroke, but ten minutes after. I was glad that he had patronized the street railway service for this call, and left the limousine in its own boudoir--you couldn't imagine anything so exquisite being kept in a lesser place--or I'm afraid that our little white-capped maid would have mistaken it for an ambulance and a.s.sured him that n.o.body was sick. Gleaming blue limousines were scarce in that section.

”Am I early?” he asked, after we had shaken hands and he had glanced toward the fire with a little surprised, gratified expression. ”I wasted a quarter of an hour waiting for this car.”

Now, a woman can always forgive a man for being late, if she knows he started on time, so with this rea.s.surance I began to feel at home with him. I leaned over and stirred the fire hospitably--to keep my eyes from showing just how thoroughly at home I felt.

”No--you are not early. I was expecting you at four, and--and mother will be down presently.”

He studied my profile.

”I was out at the golf club dance last night,” he said, after a pause, with a certain abruptness which I had found characterized his more important parts of speech. I stood the tongs against the marble mantlepiece and drew back from the flame.

”Was it--enjoyable?” I asked politely.

”Extremely. Mrs. Walker was there, and she had very kindly forgiven me for my defection of the afternoon. In fact, she was distinctly cordial. She talked to me a great deal of you and your mother.”

My heart sank. It always does when I find that my women friends have been talking a great deal about me.

”Oh, did she?”

”She is very fond of you, it seems--and very puzzled by you.”

”Puzzled because I work for the _Herald_?”

I spoke breathlessly, for I wondered if Mrs. Walker had told of the Guilford Blake puzzle, as well; but after one look into the candid half-amused eyes I knew that this information had been withheld.

”Well, yes. She touched upon that, among other things.”

”But what things?” I asked impatiently. At the door I heard the maid with the tea tray. ”I suppose, however, just the usual things that people tell about us. That we have been homeless and penniless--except for this old barn--since I was a baby, and that, one by one, the pomps of power have been stripped from us?”

He looked at me soberly for a moment.

”Yes, she told me all this,” he said.