Part 7 (2/2)

”Why, Nelly,” her visitor said, ”you look younger every time I see you.”

She swept him a great courtesy, making her dress balloon out about her; then she clasped her hands at her throat, her chin resting on the fluff of her white undersleeves, and looked up at him with a delighted laugh. ”We are not very old, either of us; I am thirty-three and you are only forty-six--I call that young. Oh, Lloyd, I was so low- spirited this morning; and now--you are here!” She pirouetted about the room in a burst of gayety.

As he watched her through half-shut eyes, the bored good humor in his face sharpened into something keener; he caught her hand as she whirled past, drawing her close to him with a murmured caress. She, pausing in her joy, looked at him with sudden intentness.

”Have you heard anything of--_Frederick?_”

At which he let her go again and answered curtly: ”No; nothing.

Perfectly well, the last I heard. In Paris, and enjoying himself in his own peculiar fas.h.i.+on.”

She drew in her breath and turned her face away; they were both silent. Then she said, dully, that she never heard any news. ”Mr.

Raynor sends me my accounts every three months, but he never says anything about--Frederick.”

”I suppose there isn't anything to say. Look here, Nelly, hasn't that stage-driver brought the hamper yet? When are we going to have something to eat?”

”Oh, pretty soon,” she said impatiently.

They were standing at one of the long windows in the parlor; through the tilted slats of the Venetian blinds the April suns.h.i.+ne fell in pale bars across her hair and dress, across the old Turkey carpet on the floor, across the high white wainscoting and half-way up the landscape-papered walls. The room was full of cheerful dignity; the heavy, old-fas.h.i.+oned furniture of the Stuffed Animal House was unchanged, even the pictures, hanging rather near the ceiling, had not been removed--steel-engravings of Landseer's dogs, and old and very good colored prints of Audubon's birds. The mantel-piece of black marble veined with yellow was supported by fluted columns; on it were two blown-gla.s.s vases of decalcomania decoration, then two gilt l.u.s.tres with prisms, then two hand-screens of woolwork, and in the middle an ormolu clock--”Iphigenia in Aulis”--under a gla.s.s shade. In the recess at one side of the fireplace was a tall bookcase with closed doors, but a claw-footed sofa stood out from the wall at an angle that prevented any access to the books. ”I can't read Stuffed Animal books,” Helena had long ago confided to Lloyd Pryor. ”The British Cla.s.sics, if you please! and Baxter's _Saint's Rest_, and _The Lady of the Manor_.” So Mr. Pryor made a point of providing her with light literature. He pulled a paper-covered volume out of his pocket now, and handed it to her.

”Not improving, Nelly, I a.s.sure you; and there is a box of candy in the hamper.”

She thanked him, but put the book down. ”Talk to me, Lloyd. Tell me-- everything! How are you? How is Alice? Are you very busy with politics and things? Talk to me.”

”Well,” he said good naturedly, ”where am I to begin? Yes: I'm very well. And very busy. And unusually poor. Isn't that interesting?”

”Oh, Lloyd! Are you in earnest? Lloyd, you know I have a lot of money, and of course, if you want it, it is yours.”

He was lounging lazily on the sofa, and drew her down beside him, smiling at her through his curling lashes. ”It isn't as bad as that.

It is only that I have shouldered the debts of the old Pryor-Barr Co., Limited. You know my grandfather organized it, and my father was president of it, and I served my 'prentices.h.i.+p to business in it.”

”But I thought,” she said, puzzled, ”you went out of it long ago, before--before--”

”The flood? Yes, my dear, I did. I've only been a silent partner for years--and that in a very small way. But I regret to say that the young a.s.ses who have been running it have got into trouble. And they propose going into bankruptcy, confound them! It is very annoying,”

Lloyd Pryor ended calmly,

”But I don't understand,” she said; ”what have you to do with it?”

”Well, I've got to turn to and pay their d.a.m.ned debts.”

”Pay their debts? But why? Does the law make you?”

”The law?” he said, looking at her with cold eyes. ”I suppose you mean statute law? No, my dear, it doesn't.”

”Then I can't understand it,” she declared laughing.

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