Part 12 (2/2)

”Why, I should love that!” Flora frankly confessed, and gave a wistful glance at the walls around her, wondering how long before the soft, dark bloom of time, of use and wont, should descend on their crude faces.

”Well,” Clara conceded, ”at any rate we know it's genuine, and that's a consolation. The number of imitations going about and the way people pick them up is appalling! While I was getting that rug for you at Vigo's yesterday, Ella Buller came in and bought three imitation Bokharas, with the greatest enthusiasm. She buys quant.i.ties, and she's always taken in. It is enough to make one nervous about the people one sits next to at dinner there. One can not help suspecting them of being some of Ella's bargains. I wonder, now, where she picked up that Kerr.”

This finale failed to take Flora off her guard. ”At any rate, he is odd enough to be genuine,” she said with a gleam of malice.

”Oh, no doubt of that,” Clara mildly a.s.sented, ”but genuine what?”

”Why, gentleman at large,” said Flora, and quickly wanted to recall it, for Clara's glance seemed to give it a double significance. ”I mean,”

she added, ”just one of those chronic travelers who have nothing else to do, and whose way must be paved with letters of introduction”--she floundered. ”At least, that was the idea he gave of himself.” She broke off, doubly angry that she had tried to explain Kerr, and tried to explain herself, when the circ.u.mstances required nothing of the sort.

She was sure Clara had not missed her nervousness, though Clara made no sign. Her eyes only traveled a second time to Flora's hands, as if among the flare of red and white jewels she was expecting to see another color. To Flora's palpitating consciousness this look made a perfect connection with Clara's next remark.

”At least his manners are odd enough! There was a minute last night when he was really quite startling.”

Flora felt a small, warm spot of color increasing in the middle of each cheek. She drew a long breath, as if to draw in courage. Then Clara had really seen! That smooth, blindish look of hers, last night, had seen everything! And here she was owning up to it, and affably offering herself as a confidante; and for what reason under the sun unless to find out what it was that had so startled Kerr? Flora felt like crying out, ”If you only knew what that thing may be, you would never want to come nearer to it!”

”I am afraid he annoyed you, Flora.”

The girl looked into the kindly solicitude of Clara's face with a hard, almost pa.s.sionate incredulity. Was that really all Clara had supposed?

”These Continentals,” she went on, now lightly swaying to and fro in her chair, ”have singular notions of American women. They take us for savages, my dear.”

”Then isn't it for us to show them that we are more than usually civilized? I can't run away from him like a frightened little native.”

”Of course not; but that is where I come in; it's what I'm for--to get rid of such things for you.” That small, cool smile made Flora feel more than ever the immature barbarian of her simile. Clara sat throwing the protection of her superior knowledge and capability around her, like a missionary garment; but Flora could have laughed with relief. Then Clara merely supposed Kerr had been impertinent. Her little invasion had been really nothing but pure kindness and protection; and Flora couldn't but feel grateful for it. Last night she had thought herself so absolutely alone; and here was a friend coming forward again, and stepping between her and the thing above all others she was helpless about--the real world.

Clara had risen, and stood considering a moment with that same sweet, impersonal eye which Flora found it hardest to comprehend.

”What I mean,” she explicitly stated, ”is that if he should undertake to carry out his preposterous suggestion, and call this afternoon, I am quite ready, if you wish, to take him off your hands.”

This last took Flora's breath away. It had not occurred to her that Clara had overheard. It shocked her, frightened her; and yet Clara's way of stating the fact, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, made Flora feel that she herself was in the wrong to feel thus. For, after all, Clara had been most tactful, most considerate and delicate in conveying her knowledge, not hinting that Flora could have been in the slightest degree responsible for Kerr's behavior; but simply sweetly taking it for granted that they, of course, were banded together to exclude this outlander. Under her sense of obligation, and what she felt ought to be grat.i.tude, Flora floundered for words.

”You're very kind,” she managed to get out; and that seemed to leave her committed to hand Kerr over, tied hand and foot, when she wasn't at all sure she wanted to.

”Then shall I tell Mrs. Herrick that you will consider the house?” said Clara, already in the act of departure. ”She is to call to-day to go into it with me more thoroughly. Thus far we've only played about the edges.”

Her eyes strayed toward the dressing-table as she pa.s.sed it, and as she reached the door she glanced over the chiffonier. It was on the tip of Flora's tongue to ask if she had mislaid something, when Clara turned and smiled her small, tight-curled smile, as if she were offering it as a symbol of mutual understanding. Curiously enough, it checked Flora's query about the straying glances, and made her wonder that this was the first time in their relation that she had thought Clara sweet.

But there was another quality in Clara she did not lose sight of, and she waited for the closing of a door further down the hall before she drew the sapphire from under her pillow.

With the knocking at the door her first act had been to thrust it there.

The feeling that it was going to be hard to hide was still her strongest instinct about it; but the morning had dissipated the element of the supernatural and the horrid that it had shown her the night before. It seemed to have a clearer and a simpler beauty; and the hope revived in her that its beauty, after all, was the only remarkable thing about it.

Her conviction of the night before had sunk to a shadowy hypothesis. She knew nothing--nothing that would justify her in taking any step; and her only chance of knowing more lay in what she would get out of Kerr; for that he knew more about her ring than she, she was convinced. She was afraid of him, yet, in spite of her fear, she had no intention of handing him over to Clara. For on reflection she knew that Clara's offer must have a deeper motive than mere kindness, and she had a most unreasonable feeling that it would not be safe. She felt a little guilty to have seemed to take her companion's help, while she left her so much at sea as to the real facts. But, after all, it was Clara who had forced the issue.

She thought a good deal about Clara while she was dressing. A good many times lately she had looked forward to the fall, the time of her marriage, when their rather tense relations.h.i.+p would be ended. This house in the country, which was to be her last little bachelor fling, was to be Clara's last commission for her.

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