Part 19 (2/2)

”Forgive me. I followed you,” he began. Then he saw Harry.

”I--ha--ha--I've been hunting for you, Cressy, all the evening!”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”FORGIVE ME, I FOLLOWED YOU.”]

Harry accepted the statement with a cynical smile. It was too evidently not for him Kerr had been hunting, and after the first stammer of embarra.s.sment, the Englishman made no attempt to conceal his real intentions. His words merely served him as an excuse not to retreat.

”This is a good place to sit,” he said, pus.h.i.+ng forward a chair for Flora. She sank into it, wondering weakly what daring or what danger had brought him into a house where he was not known, to seek her. He sat down in the compartment of a double settee near her. Harry still stood with a dubious smile on his face. The look the two men exchanged appeared to her a prolongment of their earnest interrogation in the picture gallery; but this time it struck her that both carried it off less well. Harry, especially, bore it badly.

”Did you say you were looking for me?” he remarked. ”Well, Buller's been looking for _you_. He wants to know about some Englishman that they're trying to put up at the club.”

”How's that? Oh, yes! I remember.” Kerr shrugged. ”Never heard of him at home, and can't vouch for every fellow who comes along, just because he is English.”

”Quite so!” said Harry, with a straight look at Kerr that made Flora uncomfortable.

”But Judge Buller has already vouched for that man,” she said quickly, ”so he must be all right.”

Kerr inclined his head to her with a smile.

”Buller is easily taken in,” said Harry calmly. Under the direct, the insolent meaning of his look Flora felt her face grow hot--her hands cold. Harry could sit there taunting this man, hitting him over another man's back, and Kerr could not resent it. He could only sit--his head a little canted forward--looking at Harry with the traces of a dry smile upon his lips.

She thought the next moment everything would be declared. She sprang up, and, with an impulse for rescue, went to the door of the smoking-room.

”Judge Buller,” she called.

There was a sudden cessation of talk; a movement of forms dimly seen in the thick blue element; and then through wreaths of smoke, the judge's face dawned upon her like a sun through fog.

”Well, well, Miss Flora,” he wanted to know, ”to what bad action of mine do I owe this good fortune?”

She retreated, beckoning him to the middle of the room. ”You owe it to the bad action of another,” she said gaily. ”Your friends are being slandered.”

Harry made a movement as if he would have stopped her, and the expression of his face, in its alarm, was comic. But she paid no heed.

She laid her hand on Harry's arm. ”Mr. Kerr is just about to accuse us of being impostors,” she announced. She had robbed the situation of its peril by gaily turning it exactly inside out.

The judge blinked, puzzled at this extraordinary statement. Harry was disconcerted; but Kerr showed an astonishment that amazed her--a concern that she could not understand. He stared at her. Then he laughed rather shakily as he turned to her with a mock gallant bow.

”All women impose upon us, madam. And as for Mr. Cressy”--he fixed Harry with a look--”I could not accuse him of being an impostor since we have met in the sacred limits of of St. James'.”

The two glances that crossed before Flora's watchful eyes were keen as thrust and parry of rapiers. Harry bowed stiffly.

”I believe, for a fact, we did _not_ meet, but I think I saw you there once--at some Emba.s.sy ball.”

The words rang, to Flora's ears, as if they had been shouted from the housetops. In the speaking pause that followed there was audible an unknown hortatory voice from the smoking-room.

”I tell you it's a d.a.m.n-fool way to manage it! What's the good of twenty thousand dollars' reward?” Flora clutched nervously at the back of her chair. She seemed to see the danger of discovery piling up above Kerr like a mountain.

The judge chuckled. ”You see what you saved me from. They've been at it hammer and tongs all the evening. Every man in town has his idea on that subject.”

”For instance, what is that one?” Kerr's casual voice was in contrast to his guarded eyes.

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