Part 19 (2/2)

said Monty sorrowfully. He was not sure that he would ever see Steven again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Michael Harrington walked up and down the big hall of his Long Island home looking at the clock and his own watch as if to detect them in the act of refusing to register the correct time of day. Although it was probable his wife, Monty and the guest of whose coming a wireless message had apprised him, would not be home for another hour, he was always anxious at such a moment.

He was a man of fifty-eight, exceedingly good-tempered, and very much in love with his wife. When Alice had married a man twenty-four years her senior there had been prophecies that it would not last long. But the two Harringtons had confounded such dismal predictions and lived--to their own vast amus.e.m.e.nt--to be held up as exemplars of matrimonial felicity in a set where such a state was not too frequent.

His perambulations were interrupted by the entrance of Lambart, a butler with a genius for his service, who bore on a silver tray a siphon of seltzer water, a decanter of Scotch whiskey and a pint bottle of fine champagne.

Lambart had, previously to his importation, valeted the late lamented Marquis of St. Mervyn, an eccentric peer who had broken his n.o.ble neck in a steeplechase. Like most English house-servants he was profoundly conservative; and after two positions which he had left because his employers treated him almost as an equal, he had come to the Harringtons and taken a warm but perfectly respectful liking to his millionaire employer. Lambart was a remarkably useful person and it was his proud boast that none had ever beheld him slumbering. Certain it was that a bell summoned him at any hour of the day or night, and he had never grumbled at such calls.

Harrington looked at the refreshment inquiringly. ”Did I order this?” he demanded.

”No, sir,” Lambart answered, ”but my late employer Lord St. Mervyn always said that when he was waiting like you are, sir, it steadied his nerves to have a little refreshment.”

”I should have liked the Marquis if I'd known him,” Michael Harrington observed when his thirst was quenched. ”I think I could have paid him no prettier compliment than to have named a Rocksand colt after him, Lambart. The colt won at Deauville last week, by the way.”

”Yes, sir,” Lambart returned, ”I took the liberty of putting a bit on him; I won, too.”

”Good,” said his employer, ”I'm glad. He ought to have a good season in France. I like France for two things--racing and what they call the _heure de l'aperitif_. When I go to Rome I do as the Romans do, and I have the pleasantest recollections of my afternoons in France.”

He noticed that Lambart, bringing over to him a box of cigars, turned his head as though to listen. ”I believe, sir,” said the butler, ”that the car is coming up the drive.”

He hurried to the open French window and looked out. ”Yes, sir,” he cried, ”it is one of our cars and Mrs. Harrington is in it.”

Michael Harrington rose hastily to his feet. ”Great Scott, my wife! The boat must have docked early.” He pointed to the whiskey and champagne.

”Get rid of these; and not a word, Lambart, not a word.”

”Certainly not, sir,” Lambart answered; ”I couldn't make a mistake of that sort after being with the Marquis of St. Mervyn for seven years.”

He took up the tray quickly and carried it off as Nora Rutledge--the girl for whose sake poor Monty had pa.s.sed hours of alternate misery and hope--came in to tell her host the news.

”Alice is here,” she cried, ”and Monty Vaughan with her.”

Nora was a pretty, clever girl of two and twenty with the up-to-date habit of slangy smartness fully developed and the customary lack of reticence over her love-affairs or those of anyone else in whom she was interested. But for all her pert sayings few girls were more generally liked than she, for the reason that she was genuine and wholesome.

”Fine,” Michael said heartily. ”Where are they? How is she? Was it a good voyage?”

A moment later his wife had rushed into his arms.

”You dear old thing,” she exclaimed affectionately.

”By George! I'm glad to see you,” he said, ”you've been away for ages.”

”You seem to have survived it well enough,” she laughed.

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