Part 46 (2/2)

I have known few happier moments in my life than that. Perhaps, after all, I caught something of the speech between their eyes. Perhaps not all cheap and cynical maxims are true, at least when applied to n.o.ble women.

Elisabeth regained her wonted color and more.

”I was very wrong in many ways,” I heard her whisper. For almost the first time I saw her perturbed. Helena von Ritz stepped close to her.

Amid the crash of the reeds and bra.s.ses, amid all the broken conversation which swept around us, I knew what she said. Low down in the flounces of the wide embroidered silks, I saw their two hands meet, silently, and cling. This made me happy.

Of course it was Jack Dandridge who broke in between us. ”Ah!” said he, ”you jealous beggar, could you not leave me to be happy for one minute?

Here you come back, a mere heathen, and proceed to monopolize all our ladies. I have been making the most of my time, you see. I have proposed half a dozen times more to Miss Elisabeth, have I not?”

”Has she given you any answer?” I asked him, smiling.

”The same answer!”

”Jack,” said I, ”I ought to call you out.”

”Don't,” said he. ”I don't want to be called out. I am getting found out. That's worse. Well--Miss Elisabeth, may I be the first to congratulate?”

”I am glad,” said I, with just a slight trace of severity, ”that you have managed again to get into the good graces of Elmhurst. When I last saw you, I was not sure that either of us would ever be invited there again.”

”Been there every Sunday regularly since you went away,” said Jack. ”I am not one of the family in one way, and in another way I am. Honestly, I have tried my best to cut you out. Not that you have not played your game well enough, but there never was a game played so well that some other fellow could not win by coppering it. So I coppered everything you did--played it for just the reverse. No go--lost even that way. And I thought _you_ were the most perennial fool of your age and generation.”

I checked as gently as I could a joviality which I thought unsuited to the time. ”Mr. Dandridge,” said I to him, ”you know the Baroness von Ritz?”

”Certainly! The _particeps criminis_ of our bungled wedding--of course I know her!”

”I only want to say,” I remarked, ”that the Baroness von Ritz has that little sh.e.l.l clasp now all for her own, and that I have her slipper again, all for my own. So now, we three--no, four--at last understand one another, do we not? Jack, will you do two things for me?”

”All of them but two.”

”When the Baroness von Ritz insists on her intention of leaving us--just at the height of all our happiness--I want you to hand her to her carriage. In the second place, I may need you again--”

”Well, what would any one think of that!” said Jack Dandridge.

I never knew when these two left us in the crowd. I never said good-by to Helena von Ritz. I did not catch that last look of her eye. I remember her as she stood there that night, grave, sweet and sad.

I turned to Elisabeth. There in the crash of the reeds and bra.s.ses, the rise and fall of the sweet and bitter conversation all around us, was the comedy and the tragedy of life.

”Elisabeth,” I said to her, ”are you not ashamed?”

She looked me full in the eye. ”No!” she said, and smiled.

I have never seen a smile like Elisabeth's.

THE END

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