MARCH

PRESS OF

BRAUNWORTH & CO.

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

*INFATUATION*

*CHAPTER I*

Phyllis Ladd lost her mother at twelve; and this bereavement, especially

terrible to an only child, brought with it two consequences that had a

far-reaching effect on her character. An ardent, high-strung nature,

acquainted so early with a poignant sorrow, gets an outlook on the world

that is so just and true as to constitute a misfortune in itself. A

child ought not to think; ought not to suffer; ought not to understand.

Individuality, sympathy, sensibility awaken--qualities that go to make a

charming human being--but which have to be paid for in the incessant

balance of our complex existence. Phyllis' school-fellows were no

longer the same to her; she felt herself a person apart; though she

played as gaily as any of them, and chattered her head off, and tripped

blithely along Chestnut Avenue entwined in the arms of her companions,

she was aware, down in her secret heart, that she was "different."

At twelve, then, her path diverged from the commonplace, in which, as we

all have to admit, however reluctantly, the chances for a happy life are

best.

The second consequence of her mother's death was to bring her into

contact with a scarcely known individual--her father. This grave,

handsome man, who sat behind a newspaper at breakfast, and who was not

seen again till dinner time; who drove away every morning behind a

liveried coachman and a pair of shining bays to a region called "the

office"; whose smile and voice were always a shy delight to her--this

demigod, admired, unknown, from whom there emanated a delicious sense of

security and strength, now suddenly drew her to his heart, and became

her world, her all.

Robert T. R. Ladd was the president of the K. B. and O. Railway. Rich

himself, and the son of a rich man, his interests in Carthage were

varied and many, engaging his activities far beyond the great road that

was associated with his name. Carthage was an old-fashioned city; and

the boys who had grown up together and succeeded their fathers were

clannish to a degree little known in the newer parts of this country.

Joe, who was prominent in electricity and gas, might want to consolidate

a number of scattered plants, and to that end would seek the assistance

of Tom and Harry and Bob. George, perhaps, in forecasting the growth of

Carthage a little too generously, was in temporary straits with his

land-scheme--well, he would ask Tom and Bob to tide him over, making a

company of himself, and taking them in. Frank and his brother, in

converting their private bank into the Fifth National--induced as much

as anything by the vanity of seeing their own names on their own

greenbacks--would feel the need of a strong local man on the new

directorate. Would Bob oblige them? "Why, with pleasure, though if

somebody else would do as well--" "Oh, we must have _you_, old fellow."

Such was Carthage--at least the Carthage of Chestnut Avenue, of the long

lines of stately and beautiful mansions on what was called the West

Side, the Carthage that supported the Symphony Orchestra, owned the

parterre boxes at the opera, dined, drove, danced, and did business

together--as compact and jealous a little aristocracy as any in Hungary

or Silesia. Of course there was another Carthage--several other

Carthages--one a teeming riverside quarter where English was an unknown

tongue, a place black with factory chimneys, full of noise and refuse,

dirt and ugliness, where forty thousand nondescript foreigners pigged

together, and contributed forty thousand pairs of very grimy and

unwilling hands to the material advancement of the city and state.

There was a business Carthage, with banks and sky-scrapers, and vast

webs of wires that darkened the sky. There was a pleasure Carthage that

awoke only at night, blazing out with a myriad lights, and a myriad

enticements. There was a middle-class residence Carthage; a

second-class residence Carthage; an immense, poor, semi-disreputable,

altogether dreary Carthage that was popularly alluded to as "South of

the slot," the name dating from the time of the first cable-car line,

now long since discarded.

But to return to Phyllis Ladd.

In losing her mother, it might be said she had discovered her father.

At first perhaps it was pity, loneliness, almost terror that caused Mr.

Ladd to take this little creature in his arms, and hold her as he might

a shield. He had idolized his wife; he hardly knew how to go on living

without her; one day, in his office, as his old friend Latham was

leaving him, he had pulled open a drawer, and taken a loaded revolver

from it. "Latham," he said, with a very slight tremor in his voice,

"would you mind putting this damned thing in your pocket--I--I--find it

tempts me."

Yes, his little daughter was a shield; he held her slim body between

himself and despair; he told her this again and again, as he sat with

bowed head and suffusing eyes in the shadow of an irrevocable happiness.

And she in whom there stirred, mysteriously, dimly, the tenderness of

the sublime love that had called her into being--she, even while she

mingled her tears with his, felt within herself the welling of an

exquisite joy. To love, to solace, to protect, here again instincts

were prematurely awakened; here again her little feet departed from the

commonplace to carry her far afield.

In time, as weeks and months rolled on, the blow, so unendurable at

first, so crushing and terrible, softened, as such things will, and a

busy world again engrossed a busy man. But the intimacy between father

and daughter remained, and continued unimpaired. Indeed, it grew even

closer, for now laughter came into it, and gay bubbling little

confidences, and a delightful hour before bedtime, full of eagerness and

zest. Mr. Ladd, cigar in mouth, and his keen handsome face as

deferential as any courtier's, listened to the interminable doings of

Satty and Nelly and Jessie, with an enjoyment that never seemed to tire.

He, too, had his budget of the day, which, often begun whimsically, not

seldom ended in a serious exposition of his difficulties and problems.

It amused him to state such complexities in simple language; to bring

them down, by some homely metaphor, to the comprehension of this

adorable little coquette, who tried with so many childish arts to dazzle

and ensnare him. Even at thirteen she was learning the value of drawing

out a man about himself; she was quite willing to understand the

Interstate Commerce Law, and become pink and indignant over a new

classification of "Coal at the pit's mouth"--if it meant her father

would hold her a little tighter, and give her one of those sudden

glances of approval.

Such intercourse with a shrewd, strong, brilliant mind--to a child

naturally precocious and adaptive--could not fail to have far-reaching

consequences on her development. She caught something of her father's

independence; of his lofty and yet indulgent outlook on a universe made

up so largely of fools and knaves; learned the greatest and rarest of

all imaginative processes--to put oneself in the other fellow's shoes.

When Joe Howard turned traitor at the state legislature, and sold out

the K. B. and O. on the new mileage bill, her wrath at his duplicity

rose to fever. "Well, there's his side to it," said Mr. Ladd, with

unexpected serenity. "He hasn't a cent; he's mortgaged up to the ears;

and has a sick daughter dying of consumption. He's a well-meaning man,

and I suppose would be honest if he could. But if I were in his place,

and your life was at stake, and the doctor ordered you to some

ten-dollar-a-minute place in Colorado or somewhere, I guess I'd sell out

the K. B. and O. too!"

And for that he got a hug that nearly choked him.

"Money and love, my lamb," he said to her once, "those are the wheels

the old wagon runs on. Miss Simpkins will fluff you up with a whole lot

of fancy fixings--but I tell you, it boils right down to that."

"Papa," she asked him on another occasion, with round wondering eyes,

"if it's all like that, why are you honorable and noble and splendid?"

"I don't know," he answered, smiling. "I guess it's pride more than

anything else. Theoretically the man with the fewest scruples gets

farthest in the race; but thank the Lord, most of us are handicapped

with some good qualities that stick to us like poor relations."

"But Miss Simpkins says that anybody who is bad gets punished for it

sooner or later. She says that was why her brother-in-law's house

burned down; because he was so uncharitable."

"It may be so with the people Miss Simpkins is acquainted with," said

Mr. Ladd, "but it doesn't hold in the railroad business, nor anywhere

else that I have seen, and I can't help thinking she's a trifle more

hopeful than the traffic can bear!"

This philosophy, so picturesquely expressed, so genial, so amiably

cynical, was not perhaps the best training for an unusually

impressionable mind. Miss Simpkins learned to dread Phyllis' preface:

"But Papa says--" What Papa said was often a bombshell that blew shams

to pieces; tore down the pretty pink scenery of conventional illusions;

and drove cobble-stones through the gauze that separated Miss Simpkins

and her kind from the real world beyond. It was a harsh process, and

bad for gauze.

At first, not knowing how else to maintain a fairly large establishment,

Mr. Ladd had sought the services of a "managing housekeeper." But the

trouble with her--or rather with them, for he had a succession--was that

the "managing" was considerably overdone. They were discharged, the one

after the other, without having "managed" to achieve their one consuming

ambition, which was to capture the rich widower, and lead him to the

altar. After a while, growing weary of being hunted, and altogether at

his wits' end, he invited his unmarried sister, Henrietta Ladd, to take

the foot of his table, and a place at his hearth.

She was a thin, plain, elderly woman, with a very low voice and a

deceptive appearance of meekness. The casual guest at Mr. Ladd's board

might have taken her for a silent saint, who, unwillingly sojourning in

this vale of tears, was waiting with ladylike impatience for a heavenly

crown. In some ways this description would have fitted Aunt Henrietta

well enough, though it took no account of a perverse and interfering

nature that was more than trying to live with. The silent saint

attempted to rule her brother and her niece with a rod of iron, and so

far succeeded that her two years "tenure of the gubernatorial chair" (as

Mr. Ladd bitterly called it), was fraught with quarrels and unhappiness.

Her tyranny, like all tyrannies, ended in a revolution. Mr. Ladd

brought his "unmarried misery"--also his own phrase--to a sharp

conclusion, and Henrietta departed with a large check and a still larger

ill-will.

"Phyllis," he said, "I guess we'll just have to rustle along by our poor

little selves. The people who take charge of us seem to take charge too

hard. They mean well, but why should they stamp on us?--Yes, let's try

it ourselves."

And Phyllis, not quite fifteen years old, became the acknowledged

mistress of the big house.

In her demure head she knew that to fail would be to incur a danger that

was almost too terrible to contemplate. Her father might be persuaded

into marrying again, and the thought of such a catastrophe sobered and

restrained her. She was on her mettle, and was determined to succeed.

She had her check-book, her desk, her receipted bills. She had her

morning interviews with the cook; sent curtains to the cleaners; rang up

various tradespeople on the telephone; gently criticized Mary's

window-cleaning, and George's nails, and busied herself with these, and

innumerable other little cares, while Miss Simpkins waited in the study,

restlessly drumming her long, lean fingers on a French grammar.

Of course, she did several foolish, impulsive things, but no more than

some little bride might have done in the first novelty of controlling a

large household. She gave a tramp one of her father's best suits of

clothes; she was prevailed upon by the servants to buy many things that

neither they nor anybody else could possibly need--including an

electrically driven knife-cleaner, and a cook's table, so compact and

ingenious, that it would have been priceless on an airship, though in

her own spacious kitchen it was decidedly out of place; and it took her

several months to discover that James was apparently feeding five

elephants instead of five horses.

But she was quick to learn better; and with the innate capacity she

inherited from her father, she soon had everything running on oiled

wheels. And all this, if you please, at fifteen, with quite a bit of

stocking between her dress and her trimly-shod feet.

It was seldom that her father ever ventured into the realm of criticism;

but once or twice, in his smiling, easy-going way, he gently pulled her

up.

"I don't know much about these things," he remarked once, "but don't

there seem to be a lot of new dresses in this family?"

"One can't go naked, Papa."

"Admitting that, my dear, which with people of our position would

certainly give rise to comment--couldn't we compromise on--well--going

_half_-naked, and perhaps show a more Spartan spirit, besides, in regard

to our hats?"

Phyllis' eyes filled with tears; and flushing with shame, she pressed

her hot cheek against the back of the chair she was sitting in, and felt

herself the most miserable, disgraced, unworthy little creature in the

whole world.

Mr. Ladd's voice deepened, as it always did when he was moved.

"My darling," he said, "don't feel badly about it, because it is only a

trifle. But it is not kind to your companions to dress better than they

do, and I am sure you do not wish them to feel envious or resentful. I

just ask you to bear it in mind, that's all, and be somewhat on your

guard."

"I will, Papa."

"Now come and kiss your daddy, and tell him you're not cross with him

for being such an old fuss-cat."

"Y-y-ou are n-not an old fu-u-uss-cat, but the dearest, darlingest,

bestest--"

"Do you think it's right to bite a railroad president's ear?"

"Yes, if you love him!"

"Or muss up the only hair he has, which isn't very much?"

"Yes, if it helps you to think."

"What's that--_thinking_?"

"Yes, Papa."

"It worries me, dearest, to have you doing anything as serious as that."

"Papa, it is serious. Listen!"

"I'm listening,"

"I've a wonderful idea--I'm going to give a party!"

"Splendid--hope you'll ask me!"

"And I'm going to invite Satty Morrison, and Julia Grant, and Hetty Van

Buren, and Maisie Smith, and the two Patterson girls, and perhaps Alicia

Stewart--and we are going to have ice-cream, and lady's-fingers, and

chocolate-cake, and Christmas crackers, if I can buy them this time of

year--and, Papa, it's going to be a _hat_-party."

"Oh, a hat-party, goodness me, what's that?"

"To give away all the silly, extravagant hats I've bought--though I'll

have to get two new ones to make them go round--but you won't mind that,

will you?"

"No, indeed--not for a hat-party."

And next day the invitations were out.

This scandalous way of bringing up an only daughter caused many people

to shake their heads.

"It'll end in a peck of trouble for Mr. Ladd some day," said the old

cats, with which Carthage was as liberally stocked as any other great

and flourishing American city. "Mark my words, my dear, no good can

come of bringing up a girl like a wild Indian, and he'll have nobody to

blame but himself if she goes headlong to the bad."

*CHAPTER II*

At twenty, Phyllis Ladd was one of the prettiest girls in Carthage. A

little above medium height, slim, dark, and glowing like a rose, she

moved with that charming consciousness of beauty that is in itself

almost a distinction. The French and Spanish in her mother's southern

blood showed itself in her slender feet and hands, in her grace, her

voice, her gentle, gracious, and engaging manners. One could not long

talk to her without realizing that behind those sparkling eyes there was

a fine and highly-sensitive nature, whimsical, original and intrepid;

and to know her well was to perceive that she was one of those women who

would love with rare intensity; and whose future, for good or evil, for

happiness or disaster, was irretrievably dependent on the heart.

In a dim sort of way she had the consciousness of this herself; her

flirtations went no further than to dance with the same partner three or

four times in the course of the same evening; and Carthage, which gave

its young people a great deal of innocent liberty--and which its young

people took with the greediness of children--in time got to consider

her, in spite of deceptive appearances, as being cold, proud, and

"exclusive." Certainly her exclusiveness drew the line at being kissed

by boisterous young men, and though their company pleased and amused

her, she refused to single out one of them for any special favor.

"They are all such idiots, Papa," she said plaintively. "Aren't there

any real men anywhere--real men that a girl _could_ love?"

"I'm sure I don't know," returned Mr. Ladd. "I haven't come across one

I'd trust a yellow dog to, let alone my daughter. But, frankly, I'm

prejudiced on the young-man question--anybody would be who has to run a

railroad with them!"

"Papa," she cried, throwing her arms around his neck, and her mood

changing to one of her gayest phantasies, "let's go away together, you

and I, and see if we can't find him. The Quest of the Golden Young Man!

There must be one somewhere, and we'll look for him in every hidy-hole

in the world--in street-cars and banks, and ice-cream places, and

cellars, and factories, and mountains, and ships--just you and me, with

a little steamer-trunk--and we'll run across him in the unlikeliest

spot--and he may be a bandit in a cave, or a wild, roystering cow-boy

shooting up one of those awful little western towns--but we'll know

right off that he's our Golden Young Man--and we'll take him, and put

him in a crate, and bring him home in the baggage-car, and poke him with

a long sharp stick till he's willing to marry me!"

The Quest of the Golden Young Man! It began sooner than Phyllis could

ever have believed possible, and with a companion she would have been

the last to dream of. Mr. Ladd had a married sister in Washington, the

wife of a highly-placed treasury official. Mrs. Sam Fensham was a very

fashionable, energetic, pushing woman, wholly absorbed in the task of

pulling competitors off the social ladder, and planting her own

faultless French shoes on the empty rung. Brother and sister had about

as much in common as you could spread on a dime; but Robert Ladd had all

the American's admiration of ability, no matter in what direction it was

exercised; and Sally Fensham dearly loved her fraternal relationship to

the K. B. and O.

This social strategist had volunteered one of her rare visits to

Carthage under the stress of bad financial weather. Brother Bob, who

regularly brightened her Christmas with a check in four figures, had

some peculiarities of purse and heart that Mrs. Fensham was well

acquainted with. You might dash him off a letter, slashed with

underlining, and piteous in the extremity of its _cri de coeur_, and get

nothing in reply but two pages of humorous typewriting, wanting to know

why two people, without children, could not manage to scrape along in

Washington on sixteen thousand dollars a year?

But Brother Bob, face to face, was a very different person. If you sat

on the arm of his chair, and talked of pa and ma and the old days, and

perhaps cried a little, not altogether insincerely, over faces and

things long since vanished--if, indeed, under the spell of that grave,

kindly brother, you somehow shed your cares into an infinite tenderness,

and forgot everything save that you loved him best of any one on

earth--if--but it always happened--you did not need to give another

thought, to what, after all, was the real object of your visit.

In a day or two, Brother Bob would say; "Sally, just how many dollars

would make you feel eighteen again, and as though you were waiting for

Elmer Boyd to take you out sleighing?"

You could answer thirty-seven hundred, and get it as readily as a

postage stamp; and with it a look of such honest affection, such a

glisten in those fine eyes, that your words of thanks stammered a little

on your tongue.

Well, here was Aunt Sally again--arm-chair--pa and ma--the old

days--check--and in her restless, scheming eyes the birth of a vague

idea that grew ever more and more alluring,--nothing else than to take

this very pretty niece of hers back to Washington, and enhance the

Fensham position by a splendid marriage. She had a vision of balls and

dinner-parties, all paid for by her millionaire brother; a showy French

limousine; unlimited boxes at the theater and opera; and a powerful

nephew-to-be, with a name to hoist the portcullis of many a proud social

stronghold, and allow the wife of a highly-placed treasury official to

squeeze in. The Motts, the Glendennings, the Pastors, the Van

Schaicks--the Port Arthurs of Washington society--Sarah Fensham would

assail all of them, holding before her one of their cherished sons, and

defying them to shoot. A fascinating prospect indeed, and one not

beyond realization, considering the girl's beauty, and her father's

money.

On the subject being broached to Brother Bob, it was met with a

hostility only comparable to a Polar bear being robbed of its cub. The

whole marriage-market business nauseated him, he declared; his daughter

should never be set up on the counter to be priced and pawed over; not

only would her natural refinement revolt at it, but he inconsistently

and with much warmth announced that Carthage was full of splendid young

men, the sons of his old associates, amongst whom Phyllis should find

her husband when the time came, and a fellow worth fifty of those

Washington dudes and dough-heads.

"It's all very well for you to talk," said Sally coldly, "but I should

say it was more for Phyllis to decide than for you."

"She wouldn't hear of such a thing," protested Mr. Ladd heatedly. "She

is a quiet, home-loving girl, and wouldn't put herself in a show-window

for anything on earth."

"My house is not a show-window; and what is there immodest or wrong in

her meeting the nicest men in America?"

"Besides, she wouldn't care to leave me."

Angry as she was, there was something in this remark that suddenly

touched Sally Fensham. She was hard and aggressive, but her heart was

not altogether withered, and under extraordinary circumstances could

even be moved.

"My poor Bob," she said, holding the lapels of his coat, and looking up

at him; "do you not know that Phyllis may meet a man to-day at dinner,

and to-morrow at tea, and the day after drive with him for an hour in

the Park--and then what's father or mother or anything in the world if

she loves him? Bob, dear, just get it out of your head that you are

going to keep Phyllis. When the right man comes you will no more count

to her than--than that chair!--Oh, yes, of course, every girl loves her

father in a way--but you have only been keeping her heart warm--and once

it's set on fire--good-by! And, Bob, dear, listen, is it not common

sense to let her see the right kind of young men; to sift them and weigh

them a bit? Is it a marriage-market to admit none but those who are

presentable and well-bred and come of nice people? Is that a

show-window? No, it's giving a girl a chance to choose--the chance I

wish to Heaven I'd had. We simply try to get the nicest man there is,

and you are more apt to get a prize from a hundred than from six!"

"That applies just as much to Carthage as to Washington."

"Bob, you don't know what you've been risking. Your whole way of living

is utterly crazy. Why, anybody--_anybody_ could come here, and make

love to her, and carry her off under your nose--some awful commercial

traveler or cheap pianist with frowzy hair--Oh, Bob, girls are such

fools--such crazy, crazy fools!"

"Phyllis isn't."

"Was I?"

"No, I don't think you were."

"But didn't I marry Sam Fensham?"

"I don't see that that--"

Sally laughed; and it was not a pleasant laugh to hear in its

self-revelation. Sam was notoriously more successful as a treasury

official than as a husband.

"Bob, she has to go to Washington with me, and you must put your hand in

your pocket, and do things handsomely."

"Against her will?"

Again Sally laughed, more harshly and cynically than before.

"Just you ask her," she said.

That night Mr. Ladd did so, and saw with a sinking heart the

electrifying effect it had on her.

Go! Why, she'd jump out of her shoes to go, and wasn't daddy the

dearest, darlingest, adorablest person in the world to propose it! And

Aunt Sally's kindness--wasn't it wonderful! She would meet senators and

ambassadors, and dance in the White House with lovely barons and counts,

and try out her French on a real Frenchman and see if he could

understand it!--A winter in Washington! What could be more exciting,

more delirious!

Mr. Ladd affected to share her delight, and manfully concealed his true

feelings, which were altogether bitter and sad. But he was a brave old

fellow, and knew how to take his disappointments smilingly. Besides,

what claim had he to resist the inevitable? What right? What

justification? He would have bitten his tongue out before he would have

reproached her, or marred, by the slightest word, her overflowing and

girlish exuberance. It was only as they kissed each other good night

that the pent-up appeal came.

"Don't forget your old dad in the shuffle," he said. "It's--it's going

to be very hard for him without you, Phyllis."

Her instant contrition was very sweet to him, very comforting and dear.

In fact, he had to struggle pretty desperately to allay the storm of

tenderness he evoked.--No, no, he wanted her to go to Washington. It

was the right thing to do--the only thing to do. A girl ought to see

something of the big world before she married and settled down.--Oh,

every girl said that to herself, but you couldn't get away from the fact

that they were made for men, and men for them, and a father just held

the fort till the Golden Young Man arrived.

How they laughed, with tears in their eyes! How infinitely precious was

the love that bound them together! Dad was never to be lost in the

shuffle--never, never; and he was to write every day, and she was to

write; and if it were a hundred Washingtons she'd come straight back to

him if he were lonely, for to her there was only one real Golden Young

Man, and that was her darling, darling father.

Yet as Mr. Ladd shut the study door, and returned to his seat beside the

lamp, he knew in spite of himself that he had said good-by. His

guardianship was over; near, now, was that unknown man, that unknown

rival, for whose pleasure he had lavished twenty years of incessant care

and devotion. Though Ladd was hardly a believer, the wish came out with

the fervency of a prayer: "Oh, my God, let him be worthy of her!"

*CHAPTER III*

She did write every day; sometimes the merest snippets, sometimes long,

graphic letters, full of the new life and the new people. Her debut had

been an immense success. Eddie Phelps, a horrid, tallowy, patronizing

person, but socially a dictator, had put the stamp of his approval on

her, and she had managed to receive it and not burst--which, if Papa

only knew it, was a very remarkable feat. But, anyway, she had been

hall-marked "sterling," and was enjoying herself furiously. And the

young men were so different from Carthage, so much more polished and

elegant--and pertinacious. Washington young men simply didn't know what

"No" meant, and it was like shoveling snow to get rid of them. But Aunt

Sarah was a regular White Wings, and the poor, the detrimental, and the

fast--every one, in fact, who wasn't a first-class _parti_ with

references from his last place--got carted away before he knew what had

struck him.

And Aunt Sally! "Why, Papa, we didn't know her at all. She is as young

as I am, and twice as eager, and dances her stockings through every

other night. Washington is divided between the people who hate her, and

the people who love her, and they put a tremendous zip into either end

of it. What she really wants is to marry me at the cold end, and

strengthen her position as she calls it; and though I say it, who

shouldn't, the cold-end young men are coming in fast. When one proposes

to me, she calls it a scalp, and looks, oh, so pleased! But if I see

any of them working up to that I try to stop him in time, though it's

awfully exciting just the same. That's why I've only three scalps to

report instead of about eight. Oh, Papa, what fun it is!"

In time her letters began to change, and there were little signs of

disillusionment. One was almost a tract on worldliness, in which she

talked about Vanity Fair, and dancing on coffins, and the inner hunger

of the soul. There were also increasing references to J. Whitlock

Pastor, always coupled with "ideals." J. Whitlock Pastor was quite a

remarkable young man of thirty, with "a beautiful austerity," and "fine

mind." His people were immensely wealthy, and immensely

fashionable--even in Carthage there was a sacredness about the name of

Pastor--and Phyllis said there was something splendid in his taking up

forestry as a life work, and devoting himself to it, heart and soul,

when he had been born--not with a silver spoon--but with a bird's-egg

diamond in his mouth.

If there was anything to be said against J. Whitlock Pastor, it was that

he was almost too good to be true. He wanted to leave the world better

for his having been, and all that--and seemed to have what might be

called an excruciating sense of duty. "A very quiet and rather a sad

man," wrote Phyllis, "whom one might easily mistake for a muff if one

hadn't seen him on horseback. He rides superbly, and I never saw a

ring-master in a circus who could come anywhere near him."

All this worked up to a telegram that reached Mr. Ladd a few weeks

later: "I accepted him last night, and, Papa, please come on quick and

bless us."

Mr. Ladd hastened to Washington as speedily as his affairs would allow,

which was five days later, and arrived just in time to dress for the

introductory dinner at Mrs. Pastor's--J. Whitlock's mother's. He tried

to imagine he was delighted, and caught his daughter in his arms with

the enthusiasm of a stage parent. But Phyllis was so pale, so calm, so

undemonstrative that he hardly knew what to make of her. He put her

cool indifference down to Washington training, but still it puzzled and

troubled him. It was so unlike a girl who had met her fate--so unlike

another pair of lovers that had been so much in his head that

day--Genivieve de Levancour, and a certain Bob Ladd. The contrast gave

him a certain sense of foreboding.

In the carriage she was very silent, and nestled against him like a

tired child. He repeated his congratulations; he strove again to be

delighted; joked, not without effort, about the exalted position of the

Pastors, and what a come-down it was for them to marry such poor white

trash as the Ladds. Then it occurred to him that perhaps this jarred

upon her! "Forgive me, Phyllis," he said humbly. "I--I hardly know what

I am saying. I--I guess I'm trying to hide what this recalls to

me--what this means to me."

She pressed his hand, and snuggled it against her cheek, but still

shrouded herself in reserve.

"Papa," she said suddenly, "you'd stick to me through thick and thin,

wouldn't you? Whatever I did--however foolish or silly I might be,

you'd always love me, wouldn't you?"

"By God, yes," he answered, "though why on earth you should ask--"

"Only to make sure," she exclaimed, brightening. "Just to be certain

that my old-dog father hadn't changed. Now say bow-wow, just to show

that you haven't!"

Mr. Ladd, very much mystified, and not at all comfortable in his mind,

obediently bow-wowed. It set Phyllis off in a peal of laughter, and it

was with apparent hilarity that both descended at the Pastor's front

door.

Whitlock's mother received them in the drawing-room. She was a stately,

gray-haired woman, with a subdued voice, and a graciousness that was

almost oppressive. Her guests had hardly been seated, when J. Whitlock

himself appeared, and excused himself, with faultless and somewhat

unnecessary courtesy, for not having been found awaiting their arrival.

Mr. Ladd saw before him a tall, thin young man, of a polished and

somewhat cold exterior, with a dryness of expression that was positively

parching. Like one of those priceless enamels of the Orient, one felt

that J. Whitlock Pastor had been roasted and glazed, roasted and glazed,

roasted and glazed until the substance beneath had become but a matter

of conjecture. The enamel was magnificent--but where was the man? Mr.

Ladd, with a choking sense of disappointment, began to suspect there was

none.

J. Whitlock opened the proceedings much as the czar might have opened a

Duma. He recited a neat, dry, commonplace little address of welcome,

and sounded a key-note of constraint and formality that was rigorously

maintained throughout the evening. The address was seconded by the

empress-dowager, and then it was Mr. Ladd's turn to swear loyalty to the

throne, and burst into cheers. He did so as well as he could, but it

was a poor, lame attempt; and when, almost in despair, he went up to J.

Whitlock, and impulsively wrung the Imperial hand, the very atmosphere

seemed to shiver at the sacrilege.

A frigid dinner followed in a dining-room of overpowering magnificence.

There was a high-class conversation to match, interrupted from time to

time by a small British army--small in number--but prodigal of inches,

and calves, and chest-measure--who stealthily pounced on plates,

obtruded thumbs, and stopped breathing when they served you. Mr. Ladd,

smarting with an inexplicable resentment, compounded of jealousy, scorn

and chagrin, writhed in his chair, and tugged at his mustache, and gazed

from his daughter to his prospective son-in-law with melancholy wonder.

Yet Phyllis seemed to be perfectly contented, sitting there so demure,

elegant and self-possessed at the terrible board of the Romanoffs. Mr.

Ladd could have wished that she had shown a little more assertion, a

little more--well, he hardly knew what but something to offset the

unconscious arrogance of these people, and to show them that a Ladd was

as good as they were, if not a darned sight better! But Phyllis, if

anything, was too much the other way. There was a humility in her

sweetness, her deference, her touching desire to please. To her father

she seemed to have accepted too readily, too gratefully, her beggar-maid

position at that kingly table.

But as he watched her some doubts assailed him. He remembered how

singular she had been in the carriage, how over-wrought, and unlike her

usual self. Her eyes, fixed so constantly on her intended's, had in

them more pleading than love; more a curious, studying, seeking look, as

though she, too, was trying to penetrate the enamel, and see beneath.

But her voice softened as she spoke to him; she smiled and colored at

his allusions to "us" and "our"; she shyly referred to their projected

honeymoon in the western forests, and spoke rapturously of galloping

through the glades at the head of twenty rangers, all sunburned and

jingling and armed to the teeth.

What was an old fellow to make of it, anyway? One could bring up a girl

from a baby, and still not know her. Mr. Ladd was very much perplexed.

After dinner, the ladies left the two men at their coffee, and retired.

The British Army set out liqueurs, cigars, a spirit-lighter, and then

noiselessly vanished. Now that they were alone together, Mr. Ladd hoped

that J. Whitlock would unbend; hoped that the long-deferred process of

making his acquaintance would begin. He might not be an ideal

son-in-law, but it was horse-sense to make the best of him. You had to

take the son-in-law God gave you. Besides, the man that Phyllis loved

was bound to have a fine nature; and if he could unveil it to her, he

surely could unveil it to her father. So, between sips of Benedictine,

and through the haze of a good cigar, Mr. Ladd essayed the task.

He commenced by describing his own early manhood; his courtship of

Phyllis' mother; his marriage in face of a thousand difficulties. Again

and again he faltered; it was all so sacred; his eyes were often

moist--but he persevered; he had to win this young man, and how better

than by appealing to the sentiment that unites all true lovers? The

elderly railroad president could not bear utterly to be left out of

these two young lives. His daughter was lost to him; at best a husband

leaves little for a father; this stranger had it now in his power to

make that little almost nothing. Small wonder, then, that Mr. Ladd

struggled for his shred of happiness; put pride on one side; exerted

every faculty he possessed to attract the friendship of Phyllis' master.

For a husband is a master; a woman is the slave of the man she loves;

forty centuries have changed nothing but the words, and the size and

metal of the ring.

It used to be of iron, and was worn on the neck.

Mr. Ladd's gaze, that had been fixed in vacancy, of a sudden fell full

on J. Whitlock's face. What he saw was an expression so cold, so

delicately supercilious, so patiently polite, that he stopped as

suddenly as though he had been struck by lightning. Was it for this,

then, that he had opened this holy of holies, into which no human being

before had ever looked,--this inmost recess of his soul, now profaned,

it seemed to him, for ever? For a second his shame transcended even his

disappointment. He had dishonored the dead, besides dishonoring

himself. He had allowed this tall, thin, bored creature to hear things

too dear, too intimate, to be spoken even to Phyllis. My God, what an

old fool he had been, what an ass!

"Had we not better join the ladies?" inquired J. Whitlock, after the

pause had lasted long enough to redeem the proposal from any appearance

of rudeness.

"I suppose we had," returned Mr. Ladd, in a tone as dry as his host's;

and together they both sought the drawing-room.

A long, long hour followed before, in decency, a very flustered,

embittered, and upset middle-aged gentleman could dare to say his

adieux. From the frescoed ceiling the painted angels must certainly

have wept at the sight beneath; or, if they did not weep, they surely

yawned. The labored conversation, the make-believe cordiality, the

awful gap when a topic fell to rise no more, certainly made it an

evening that never could be forgotten. Blessed Briton who said: "Mr.

Ladd's kerridge!" Twice blessed Briton who handed them into it, and

uttered the magic word "'Ome!"

"Did you like him, Papa?"

"A delightful young man, Phyllis, perfectly delightful."

"And his mother?"

"Charming, charming!"

"I never saw either one of them unbend as they did to you."

"It was a great compliment. I appreciate it."

"You don't think I could have done better?"

"No, indeed. Not if you love him."

"Papa?"

"Yes, dearest?"

"Papa, I've done something awful. Shut your eyes, and I'll try to tell

you."

"Phyllis, what do you--?"

"Are they shut--tight--_tight_?"

"Yes, but I don't--"

"Now, don't talk, Papa, but listen like a good little railroad

president, and I'll tell you what I think of J. Whitlock Pastor, and

that is he's _unbearable_! No, no, I'm not joking--I mean it, I mean

it! He's unbearable, and his mother's unbearable, and the forty yards

around them is unbearable, and I wouldn't marry him for anything under

the sun, no, not if he was the only man in the world except the

clergyman who would do it; and Papa, I'm so mortified and ashamed and

miserable that I don't know what to do. Didn't you notice me to-night,

and how shy and crushed I was, sitting there like a little Judas, and

feeling, oh, horribly wicked and treacherous? It was _all_ I could do

not to scream out that I hated him, just as loud as I could: I hate you!

I hate you! I hate you!--I was trying to tell you that when we started,

but I didn't have the courage. I wanted you to see him for yourself; to

realize how unendurable he is; I--I--wanted you not to blame me too

much, Papa."

To Mr. Ladd it was like a reprieve at the gallows' foot. Blame her?

Why, elation ran to his head like wine; he caught her in his arms and

hugged her; had he saved her from drowning he could not have been more

passionately thankful. His opinion of the young man came out in a

torrent of unvarnished Anglo-Saxon. To every epithet he applied to him,

Phyllis added a worse. In their wild humor, and bubbling over with a

laughter that verged on the hysterical, they vied with each other in

tearing J. Whitlock to pieces.

"But, Phyllis, Phyllis, how did you ever come to do it?"

"I don't know, Papa."

"But you must have liked him?"

"I thought I did."

"Was it the attraction of his position--his name--and all that kind of

thing?"

"No, I thought I loved him."

"How _could_ you have thought such a thing?"

"It's incredible, but I did, Papa. I loved him right up to the moment

when he kissed me. And how could I stop him after having looked down at

my toes, and said 'Yes.' He's been kissing me for five days--and, Papa,

I hate him."

The fierceness she put into these three words was vitriolic. Disgust,

revulsion, outraged pride flooded her cheek with carmine.

"Papa, I can't make any excuses for myself. It's not prudery; it's not

that; but somehow the real _me_ didn't like the real _him_, and that's

all I can say about it!"

"You'll have to write to him, and break it off."

"But what am I to tell him, Papa? It's so awful and humiliating for

him. I guess I'll just put it down to insanity in my family."

"But, good Lord, we haven't any--we've a very decent record."

"Oh, Papa, I simply must have been insane to have got engaged to

him.--I'll write him a beautiful letter of regret, and inclose a

doctor's certificate!"

Her incorrigible humor was again asserting itself. She outlined the

letter, her eyes dancing with merriment. Mr. Ladd, in no mood to

criticize these swift transitions, joined in whole-heartedly. They

laughed and laughed till the tears came, and arrived home like noisy

children from a party.

Mrs. Fensham, in a very decollete gown, and looking like a sylph of

twenty-five, was waiting for the carriage to take her to a ball. She

swam up in front of Bob, and raised her two little hands to his

shoulders--a graceful gesture, and one she was very fond of.

"And you found him a perfect dear, didn't you?" she murmured

ecstatically.

"Well, I don't know that I did," faltered Brother Bob, placing a kiss on

the top of her head. "The fact is, Sally, we've decided to call it

off!"

"Bob, you haven't broken the engagement!"

Her lisping voice turned suddenly metallic. She stared from her brother

to her niece, a sylph no longer, but a woman of forty-five, pale with

apprehension and anger.

"Phyllis has made a mistake, that's all," he said. "He looked very nice

in the show-window, but now we are going to take him back, and get a

credit-slip for something we want more."

"A new automobile coat for Papa," put in Phyllis mischievously.

"And you can both laugh about it!" exclaimed Aunt Sarah in appalled

accents. "Laugh at throwing over J. Whitlock Pastor! Oh, you little

Carthage nobodies--haven't you any sense at all--don't you know what you

are doing--isn't he as much a duke with us as any Marlborough or

Newcastle in England? He was too good; he was too nice; he wasn't

enough of a snob to blow and brag--and that's what he gets for it, the

'No' of a silly girl, who'd prefer a barber's block clerk to the

greatest gentleman in America!"

She tottered to the mantelpiece and burst into tears--the first tears

she had shed in twenty worldly and scheming years--and the only tears

that did attend the rupture of the Pastor-Ladd engagement.

*CHAPTER IV*

There was the usual chatter, the usual slanders, the usual innuendoes

that follow such an event. Charming little assassins, in Paquin gowns

and picture hats flew about sticking pins into Phyllis' reputation.

Those worse gossips, the clubs, were not behindhand either; and old

gentlemen, who ought to have known better, unctuously laid their heads

together and passed the lies along. It is so much the custom to dwell

on the good side of human nature that we are apt to forget the existence

of another--that cruel malignancy, which, in embryo, may be seen any

time at the monkey-house in the Zoo. In its more developed human form

it jostles at our elbows every day.

The American duke himself behaved with a beautiful propriety. Publicly

he took all the blame on his own shoulders, and hied him to the western

wilds to scourge the campers and cigarette-smokers who infested his

beloved forests. Thus congenially employed, he was quite willing to

wait for Time's healing hand to do the rest. In a year he was

completely reenameled, and took a finer polish than ever.

Mr. Ladd hoped that Phyllis would return to Carthage to hide her head

from the storm. But she insisted on staying in Washington, and "seeing

it through," which she did with the prettiest defiance imaginable,

returning pin for pin with gay insouciance, and dancing the night out in

all manner of lions' dens. In her veins there ran the blood of that old

aristocratic South--of those fighting-cock Frenchmen, dark, lithe and

graceful, who had loved, gambled and gone the pace with headlong

recklessness and folly; of those fiery Spaniards, more grave and still

more dissolute, to whom pride was the very breath of life, and who could

call out a man and shoot him with the stateliest of courtesy.--What a

race it had been in the heyday of its wildness and youth, the torment of

women, the terror of men, alluring even now through the haze of by-gone

pistol-smoke! And though it has been dead and gone these hundred and

fifty years, the strain yet persists in some Phyllis here, some

stripling there, attenuated perhaps, but far, far from lost.

Even to-day such intrepidity casts its spell. The eyes that are

unafraid, the mouth that can smile in peril, do we not still admire

their possessor--and that most of all in a young, high-bred and

exceedingly attractive woman? Washington certainly did in Phyllis

Ladd--young-man Washington, that is,--and they trooped after her in

cohorts, and would have drunk champagne from her little slipper had she

let them.

Months rolled by. The tide of Phyllis' letters rose in Mr. Ladd's

drawer--countless pages in that fine girlish hand, full of zest, full of

the joy of living, revealing, intimate, and silent only in regard to the

most important matter of all--J. Whitlock's successor.

Mr. Ladd knew what value to set on her assertion that she was "tired of

men." He waited, not without jealousy, for preference to show itself;

reading and re-reading every allusion that might afford a clue. If she

wrote that "the ambassador was a very kind old man, with aristocratic

legs, and a profile like a horse, who singled me out for much more than

my share of attention"--Mr. Ladd would forthwith look up that

ambassador; get his diplomatic rating; and worry about his being

sixty-six, and twice a widower.

One day, quite out of the sky, a card was brought him inscribed,

"Captain Baron Sempft von Piller, First Attache, Imperial German

Embassy, Washington." As a rule, applicants to see Mr. Ladd had first

to state their business, and undergo a certain amount of sifting before

they were admitted. In this manner inventors were weeded out, cranks,

people with a grievance against the claims' department, book-agents,

labor-leaders, charity-mongers, bogus clergymen who had been refused

half-rates--all that host who buzzed like mosquitoes outside Mr. Ladd's

net. But the First Attache of the Imperial German Embassy was given an

open track, which he took with a military stride, and the clank of an

invisible sword.

Mr. Ladd turned in his chair, and beheld a florid, tall, fine-looking

young man of twenty-eight or so, with the stiff carriage of a Prussian

officer, and unshrinking blue eyes that had been trained not to droop in

the face of anything.

The captain wasted no time in preliminaries. In a carefully-rehearsed

sentence, innocent of all punctuation, and delivered in a breath, he

said: "It is not my intention to trespass overlong on the time of I know

a much-engrossed gentleman but if you will kindly grant me three minutes

I shall be happy to convince you of the integrity of my character and

the honor of my intentions Mr. Ladd Sir."

Taking another breath that swelled out his magnificent chest at least

four inches, he resumed: "This I now lay before you is my

birth-certificate these are the reports on my gymnasium courses at

Pootledam respectively marked good very good indifferent good very good

till inspired by the thought of a military career I entered on probation

subsequently made permanent by the vote of my fellow-officers the tenth

regiment of Uhlans which after six years of honorable commendation I

left regretted by every one to place myself in the diplomatic service

Mr. Ladd Sir."

Taking a third breath, he went on:

"By kindly glancing at this letter which I have the honor to bear from

my esteemed chief whom I am proud also to call my friend you will see to

your complete satisfaction that I am no needy adventurer trading on an

historic and greatly-renowned name but a man of substance promise and

ability with the assurance of reaching if I live the highest place it is

in the power of my country and my emperor to grant Mr. Ladd Sir."

He was inhaling his fourth breath when Mr. Ladd managed to interpose a

speech of his own.

"I am delighted to see you, captain," he said, "and I shall be happy to

oblige you in any way I can. Perhaps you desire to inspect what is

really one of the most perfect double-track railroad systems in this

country, operated at the minimum of expense, and with an efficiency that

makes the K. B. and O. very favorably regarded by our public. If it

falls below the high standard of your own government-owned lines, you

must credit us with a traffic at least sixteen-fold larger per mile than

that of yours. I will ask you to bear this in mind before making too

critical a comparison."

A boyish and most engaging smile overspread the captain's features, and

for the moment he almost forgot how to go on with the set speech he had

learned so carefully. But he stiffened his shoulders, threw back his

head, and continued, like a student up for a difficult and trying

examination: "Before paying my addresses to one whose youth beauty and

charm has taken captive a heart hitherto untouched by the sentiment of

love I judged it only right as a gentleman and a former German officer

before seeking to compromise the lady's inclination in any way whatever

to provide myself with the necessary proofs of my unassailable position

and honor and lay them with profound respect in the hands of her

highly-considered and greatly-esteemed father Mr. Ladd Sir."

Mr. Ladd nearly fell off his chair at this announcement; but controlling

himself, he bent hastily over the papers, and managed to hide his

stupefaction. He was very much bewildered, and though favorably

impressed by Von Piller, had the American's distrust of all foreigners,

particularly if titled. The word "baron" conjured up horrible stories of

imposture and mortification; hungry fortune-hunters; shameless

masqueraders preying on credulity and snobbishness, always with debts at

home and often wives; old-world wolves ravening for the trusting lambs

of the new.

But the ambassador's letter was most explicit, and its authenticity

could be tested in an hour. The craftiest of wolves would not dare to

take such a risk. Wonder of wonders, it seemed, too, that the baron was

rich--one of the Westphalian iron kings--with great landed estates

besides. Yes, he was certainly a very eligible young man. No harm

could be done by rising and shaking hands with him. Mr. Ladd did so,

impressively.

"You are very punctilious," he said. "I wish we had more of that

ourselves. Your conduct is manly and straightforward, and I esteem it

highly. Frankly, I should prefer my daughter to marry an American--but

if a foreigner is to win her, I should be very happy to have that

foreigner you."

The baron, who was now quite out of set-speeches, and had to flounder in

English of his own making, murmured: "I lofe her--oh, how I lofe her!

My friends they say, 'crazy, crazy,' but I say, 'no, this tells me I am

wise.'"

And with that he pressed his hand to his heart, with an air of such

simplicity and devotion that Mr. Ladd was touched.

"You're a fine young man," he said, "and I wish you luck."

"You will speak well of me to her?--Manly, straightforward--you will say

those words?"

"With pleasure, Baron."

The florid face beamed; the blue eyes were shining; Mr. Ladd remembered

the tendency of foreigners to embrace, and hastened to put the desk

between them.

"I will go now," exclaimed Von Piller. "I will what you call, get busy.

I will lay at her little feet the heart of a man that adores her!"

"Don't be in too big a hurry," said the railroad president kindly.

"Take an old fellow's advice; begin by trying to make a good

impression."

Von Piller smiled complacently.

"Already have I done it," he remarked. "She likes me very mooch. The

battle is half-won, and all I need is General Papa to reinforce."

It suddenly shot through General Papa's mind that the baron was not so

simple as he appeared. Mr. Ladd's first feeling of compassion for a

hopeless suit changed to a grinding jealousy. It was intolerable to him

that anybody should carry off his precious daughter, and this amiable

young man at once took on the hue of an enemy. Their farewell was stiff

and formal; and when, two hours later, the confirming telegram arrived

from the German embassy, Mr. Ladd hotly consigned Captain Baron Sempft

von Piller to the devil.

*CHAPTER V*

Von Piller had not under-estimated the "good impression." It was

certainly good enough for him to become, two days later, the successful

suitor for Phyllis' hand. The engagement was in the papers, and

everybody was happy--save Mr. Ladd. On top of his natural resentment at

any poor human biped in trousers daring to aspire to his daughter, there

were two letters from Washington that embittered him beyond measure.

The one was from Phyllis; the other from Sarah Fensham; and though very

different in expression their gist was the same. He was besought _not_

to come to Washington.

"Dear, darling old daddy," wrote Phyllis, "The whole thing is such

gossamer, so faint and delicate and eider-downish, that one belittling

look of yours, one unguarded and critical word--would utterly destroy

it. Of course, Sempft is not the Golden Young Man, and I know it very

well, but I really do like him lots, and if you will give it six weeks

to 'set,' as masons say, I believe that it will turn very nicely into

love. But just now--! Oh, Papa, the poor little building would topple

so easily--and you know how hard I have found it already to stay too

close to those big, greedy, grasping creatures who want to race off with

one as a poodle does with a stick. Not that Sempft isn't awfully nice

and considerate, but I know there will be times when--! Oh, Papa, be

patient, and give me a chance, for if you should hurry over and catch me

in the right humor, I would send him away so fast that he would think he

was fired out of a Zalinski cannon!"

Sarah's letter was in a more wounding strain: "For Heaven's sake, stay

away, my dearest brother, or you will ruin everything. That girl of

yours is too fastidious and wilful for belief, and from the bottom of my

heart I am sorry for the poor dear baron, who is making such a goddess

out of an icicle. She is possessed of the same insane pride that you

have, and is quite of your own opinion that nobody is good enough for

her. After bringing her up all wrong, don't add to your folly by

breaking off a second splendid match. Stay in Carthage, and try to

acquiesce in the fact that sooner or later she is bound to marry

somebody; and thank your stars that it is somebody to be proud of. I

know she is too good for any one but an archangel, but still, steel

yourself to accept a young, wealthy, handsome, brilliant, accomplished,

high-born and distinguished son-in-law, who has the world at his feet.

Naturally to you it is an intolerable prospect. I don't ask you to say

that it is not. But for Heaven's sake, remain in Carthage, and keep

your sulks at a distance."

After his first anger had passed, Mr. Ladd took himself seriously to

task, and forced that other self of his to admit the undeniable justice

of both these letters. He was a cantankerous, cross-grained old

curmudgeon, and the right place for a cantankerous, cross-grained old

curmudgeon was unquestionably--Carthage. If he were so utterly unable to

make allowances for youth and immaturity--and he had to assent to the

fact that he was unable--he ought, at any rate, to have the grace to

keep his fault-finding face turned to the wall. Phyllis was right.

Sarah was right. Everybody was right, except a hot-headed old fellow,

with a sick and jealous heart, who, if he did not restrain himself,

would end by marring his daughter's future beyond recall.--Yes, he would

hold himself in; he would do nothing to incur reproach; he would let

things take their course, and pretend to be a sort of Sunny Jim,

smilingly regarding events from Carthage.

It was none too easy an undertaking, but he was sustained in some degree

by the hurried little scrawls that reached him, day by day, from

Phyllis.--It was all going splendidly. She was so proud of Sempft. He

was everywhere such a favorite. He was so high-spirited, and manly--and

so crazily in love with her. It was nice to have him so crazily in love

with her. It was nice to lead such a big, swaggering soldier by a pink

ribbon--to pin him with a little, girlish ticket marked "reserved"--to

see him jump at the mere raising of an eyebrow when some embezzling

young debutante had sneaked him away into a corner.--Then there was the

engagement ring she could not pull her glove over, with diamonds so

large and flashing that they'd light the gas; there was the gorgeous

pearl-necklace, which Aunt Sarah would not allow her to accept yet;

there was the emperor's wonderful cablegram of congratulation, all about

Germany and America, as though the two countries were engaged, instead

of merely she and Sempft. It made her feel so important, so

international--and horrid, shabby men snap-shotted her on the street

like a celebrity, walking backwards with cameras in their hands while

everybody fell over everybody to see what was going on!--Oh, yes, Papa,

she was saving it up to brag about to her grandchildren--when she was a

tiresome old lady in a castle corner, with nothing to do but bore chubby

little German aristocrats.

Her gaiety and sprightliness never wavered. Her content, her happiness

were transparent. If her ardor for Baron von Piller seemed never to

pass the big-brother limits, it might be assumed she concealed her

feelings, and was either too shy or too modest to betray them. Mr.

Ladd, who read her letters with a microscope, noticed the omission,

and--wondered. His misgivings were not untinged with pleasure. Did she

really love this man, he asked himself again and again? It was

impossible to be certain. Had it not been for the J. Whitlock Pastor

episode he would have been in less doubt. But with this in mind, he

could not help wondering--wondering a great deal.

The answer to these conjectures came with a startling unexpectedness.

One afternoon, on his return home, he found the front door open, and an

expressman staggering up to it with a trunk. In the hall were five more

trunks, and Henry and Edwards, both in shirt-sleeves, were departing for

the upper regions with another. Before Mr. Ladd could ask a question

there was a swift rush of skirts, an inroad of barking dogs, and a

radiant young person was hanging to his neck with round, bare arms. It

was Phyllis, her eyes dancing, her face flushed with the romp she had

been having with the dogs, her hair in wild disorder, and half down her

back.

"I'm home, Papa," she cried, "home for good, and in such awful disgrace

you oughtn't to take me in! Yes, your wayward girl has crept back to

the dear old farm, and though the snow was deep, and all she had was a

crust from a crippled child--she's here, Papa, at last, and, oh, oh, oh,

so glad!--Down, Watch, down! Teddy, you'll get one in the nose if you

don't stop!--Oh, the little wretch has got my slipper off!"

Teddy scampered away with it, and there was a lively tussle before it

was recovered, with all manner of laughter and slaps and growls.

"But Captain von Piller?" demanded Mr. Ladd. "Is he coming? Is he here,

too?"

"No, Papa," she returned, "he isn't here, and he never will be here, and

I left him screaming till you could hear it all over Washington. Just

howling, Papa, and calling for warships! And Aunt Sarah was hollering,

too, till the only dignified thing left was to tie my sheets together

and let myself out, which I did before there was a riot!"

"Phyllis, you don't mean that your engagement--"

"Hush, Papa, we can't talk here.--Come upstairs to your den."

There she heaped up a dozen pillows on the divan; settled herself with

Watch's head on her lap, and Wally and Teddy beside her; asked if there

were any chocolate creams, and resigned herself to there being none; and

then, pushing back the soft, thick hair from her eyes, told her father

to sit at her feet, and not to crowd a valuable dog.

"Yes, all that's finished," she said. "It was splendid and

international, and all that, but I could not stand it any more. He was

just like poor Whitlock, only worse. I don't know how to describe it,

Papa, for he was awfully correct and all that--I wouldn't for worlds

have you think he wasn't--only he expected all the conventional things

that go with being engaged, and wanted me to nestle against his

waistcoat, and, and--pant with joy I suppose--and whisper what a

beautiful, wonderful, irresistible, bubble-bubble-bubble person he

was--and shyly kiss his hand, probably--Oh, well, Papa, I tried to, and

I didn't like it, and in spite of myself it seemed wrong and

humiliating--and he was so large, and pink, and German, and so much of

him rolled over his collar, and everybody seemed in such a conspiracy to

poke us into dark corners and leave us there, and so finally I just

said, 'No, I've made a mistake, and here's your ring, and here's the

cablegram from the Kaiser, and here's the photograph of your dead

mother--and would you mind getting out of my life, please?--and friends

are requested to accept this the only intimation.'"

"And how did he take it?"

"He wouldn't take it--that was the trouble. He made a frightful fuss.

He couldn't have made more if we had been really married, and I had

announced my intention of running away with the elevator-boy! He

scrunched my hands till I thought the bones would break, and might have

thrown me out of the window if tea hadn't come in the nick of time.

Then he went off to Aunt Sarah, with the German idea of stinging up the

family--as though twenty aunts could make me love a man I didn't--and

succeeded so well that she practically drove me out. Oh, her position!

I never heard the end of it--and of course she said I had ruined it, and

that she never could hold up her head again. The only thing to do was

to run. So I ran and ran and ran--to my old dad!"

She slipped her hand down, and held her father's collar as though he,

too, were a dog, and gave it an affectionate little tug.

"My darling old dad," she murmured.

"It's not so bad to have one, is it?" he said. "To know where there is a

snug harbor, and an old fellow who thinks you are perfect, and

everything you do is right. You will get a lot of criticism for this,

and I suppose Washington will boil over--but to my thinking, you

couldn't have done better, and I am thankful for your courage. If you

don't love a man, for God's sake, don't marry him, even if you're both

walking up the aisle, and he's twiddling the ring!--To tell the truth, I

wasn't a bit partial to Von Piller, and found it pretty hard to sit

tight, and be told he was forty different kinds of a paragon."

"My darling Papa," she observed sweetly, "you're never going to like

anybody who wants to marry me, and it's sure to cost me some worry when

the right person does come.--Do you suppose he ever will?"

"Oh, I guess so."

"In spite of the awful record I have made? Aunt Sarah says I am branded

as a coquette, and no decent man will ever have anything more to do with

me."

"Rubbish."

Phyllis fondled Watch's ears, which were long and silky, and tried the

effect on dog-beauty of overlapping them on his head.

"Papa, what's the matter with me? Why haven't I any sense? Why am I

not like other girls?"

"You are very fastidious."

"Yes, that's true."

"And very proud."

"Yes, inherited."

"And demand a great deal."

"Yes--everything."

"You are in love with love--and are rather in a hurry."

"Oh, Papa--shut your eyes--I am love-hungry. I want to love--I'm crazy

to love. Only--only--"

"The right man hasn't arrived?"

"I hope it's that. If it isn't, I'm going to have a bad time of it. It

seems so useless; this getting engaged and then hating the poor

wretch.--It's such a terrible waste of energy and heart-beats all

round."

"Dad included."

"What a nuisance I am, to be sure! I've exhausted everybody's patience

except yours, and that's getting thin. It will end in my living alone

in a shanty with nothing but dogs, and the faded photographs of the men

I've thrown over. Aunt Sarah called me an awful name; called me an

engagement-buster; said that the habit would grow and grow till I was a

horrid old maid with nothing to tease but a parrot.--Though I'd love to

have a parrot--two of them--and raise little parrots! Little fluffy baby

parrots must be adorable. Papa, let's buy a pair to-morrow, and you'll

teach the he-one to swear, and I'll teach the she-one to be gentle and

submissive and always have her own way. And Papa--?"

"Yes, dearest?"

"You aren't cross with me, are you?"

"Not a bit."

"And I may live with you, and add up your bills, and bring you your

slippers, and dream all day of that Golden Young Man who doesn't exist?"

"Oh, don't say that--He does, Phyllis."

"Papa, he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't!"

*CHAPTER VI*

Socially speaking Carthage was as distant from Washington as is

Timbuctoo. While the Von Piller hurricane was raging in the nation's

capital, the Carthage barometer showed "fair and rising." To a

storm-tossed little mariner, it was like gaining the lee of some palmy

isle, and casting anchor in still water. The islanders, too, if a

trifle homespun and provincial, were the most delightful people, and

unspoiled by any intrusion of a higher civilization. Phyllis had not

realized how entirely her outlook had changed until she returned to her

own home. She saw her former school fellows with new eyes, and while

she could not forbear smiling at some of their ways, she liked them

better than ever before.--They, on their side, regarded with awe this

fashionable young beauty, who had jilted a Pastor, and given the mitten

to a real, live, guaranteed baron, and who had descended in their midst,

like a racer in a paddock of donkeys.

Some of them felt very donkeyfied indeed. Tom Fergus, a gelatinous

young man, somewhat forward and familiar, who was alluded to in the

local papers as "one of the leaders of the younger set" said she was

"raving pretty, but, my stars, what was a fellow to talk to her about?"

Billy Phillpots, who worked in his father's store (many of the young

fellows "worked in his father's store") vetoed her as "insufferably

stuck up," he having escorted her home one night, and failed to extort

the usual toll at the garden-gate.--The good night kiss at the

garden-gate was quite a Carthage institution, and as innocent as the

kiss of an early Christian.

Life in Carthage was altogether Early Christian--for the young people of

the better families. They met every night, and moved in flocks, like

sparrows, alighting first in one house and then another--taking up the

carpets for dancing, improvising suppers, crowding round the fireplaces

to sing, and tell stories. Presumably there was some social line drawn

somewhere; but money at least counted for little, and anybody that was

"nice" was allowed in. And it must be said, on the whole, that they

were remarkably "nice," and very much a credit to high-class democracy.

The boys were well-mannered, brotherly and respectful; the girls

charming in their blitheness and gaiety. Occasionally there was a

match, and a couple disappeared as completely as though they had fallen

into the river and been swept away. You couldn't marry, and still be a

sparrow. No, indeed! You passed into another world, and six months

after the sparrows would hardly know you on the street. One would not

venture to say this was cruel--though it always came as a shock to the

newly-wedded pair--it was just the sparrow way, that's all.

Phyllis was soon flying with the rest of them, and her ready

adaptability caused her to be accepted in their midst without more than

a passing hesitation. Hiding her riper and more womanly nature, and

absorbing herself in this animated triviality, she pretended to be as

much a sparrow as any of the flock, and no less lively and empty-headed.

She was lonely, heart-tired, and very much adrift on the sea of life;

and in the engaging childishness of these girls and boys, who, though of

her own age, were mentally only up to her elbow, she found a sort of

solace, a sort of peace. They kept her from thinking; their chatter and

good spirits were exhilarating; the naive admiration of the young men

warmed, and yet did not disturb her.--Before her long flight to other

skies, the little bird might well be thankful for the sparrows.

Spring came--summer. Her twenty-first birthday passed in the

Adirondacks, where her father had a cottage in that wilderness of woods

and lakes. She was in her twenty-second year now, and knew what it was

to feel old--oh, so old! That she was able, by the laws of the land, to

buy and hold real-estate seemed but a poor set-off to this encroachment

of time--though her father repeatedly pointed out this new privilege the

years had brought. She could marry, too, without his consent--another

empty concession to maturity, considering there was no one to marry with

or without it. Of course, there were a few silly babies running after

her as though she were a woolly sheep--but no one that the wildest

stretch of imagination could consider a man. Some of their fathers ran,

too--stout widowers panting with the unaccustomed exertion,--but that

was grotesque and disgusting. Far or wide, high or low, there wasn't a

pin feather of the Golden Young Man. His noble race was extinct. He

lived in books, but you never met him. Never, never. He had died out a

million years ago, leaving nothing save a tradition for poets and

novelists to paw over.

Quite convinced that it was a wretched world, Phyllis danced and rode,

picnicked and camped out after deer in a bewitching Wild West costume,

and was always the first to a party, and the last to leave it--all very

much like one who found it tolerable enough. Some would have called her

an insatiable little pleasure-seeker, and been wholly misled. "What are

any of us doing except waiting for a man?" she once announced with

shocking candor. "It's the fashion to talk of 'other interests' and we

girls are all graduating, and slumming, and teaching little foreign Jews

to sing '_My Country 'Tis of Thee_, and _Columbia_, _Gem of the Ocean_,

and learning to be trained nurses and bacteriologists--just in the

effort to save our poor little self-respect. We ruin our complexions,

dim our eyes, and spoil our nice hands--all the property of some future

lord and master, whom we really are pilfering--and who's deceived? Who

takes it seriously? We don't, who do it. Poof, what a pretense it

is!--If you have to wait, why not two-step through it as I do, and be as

happy as you can, like people snowed up in a train. That's what a young

girl is--snowed up--and I only wish some one would come with a spade and

dig me out!"

These racy confidences entertained and delighted her father, but on

other people they often had a contrary effect. The truth from the lips

of babes and sucklings, however phenomenal, is also disconcerting. Old

women, who in private taught their daughters a revolting cynicism, and

called it "putting them on their guard," were much overcome by Phyllis'

frankness. It was "bold"; it was "unladylike"; it was "dreadful." They

tore Phyllis to pieces, and prophesied the most awful things. It may be

that they were right. Selfishness is a fine ballast, and an anxious

regard for number one keeps many a little ship on an undeviating course.

Phyllis was made to smart for her unconventional sayings, and they often

came back to her, so distorted and coarsened by their travels, that her

cheeks flushed with anger.

"There's one thing I am learning fast," she said, "and that is, all my

friends seem to be men, and all my enemies, women--and I may as well get

used to it now. I know there are a few exceptions either way, but it's

substantially that, anyhow, and one might as well face up to it, and

save trouble."

"I'm afraid you are what they call a man's woman, my dear," said Mr.

Ladd.

"I'm glad of it," exclaimed Phyllis saucily. "I don't want to be any

other kind of a woman, least of all one of those sneaking, cowardly,

backbiting, hypocritical things. I don't wonder they used to whip them

in the good old days. If men hadn't degenerated so terribly, they'd be

whipping them now!"

Autumn saw her back in Carthage again. Aunt Sarah was begging to have

her for another Washington winter, and was in a beautifully forgiving

humor. The breaches in her social position had been repaired, and the

Demon Want, confound him, was knocking loudly at the door of her elegant

establishment--so that the hope of another visit, with its accompanying

shower of Brother Bob's gold, loomed very attractively before these

cold, blue eyes. But Phyllis could not be beguiled; she had no wish to

repeat that mad winter; her mood was all the other way--for her big

tranquil house, her books, her dogs, her horses, and long dreaming hours

to herself, undisturbed. She had loved Washington, and had exhausted

it. The strain of its business-like gaiety was not to be endured again.

It was a factory of pleasure, and the hours over-long, the tasks

over-hard. Aunt Sarah might ring the bell all she wished, but the

factory that winter would be one toiler short. When a person has

entered her twenty-second year, that advanced age brings with it a

certain serenity unknown to wilder twenty. You are glad to lie back

with a dog's head in your lap, and lazily watch the procession. Silly

young men, choking in immense collars, no longer can keep you out of bed

till three A.M. Let the new debutantes have that doubtful joy.

Twenty-two preferred her book, and her silent rooms.--Not that Carthage

was without its simple relaxations, but they were well spaced out, with

long intervals between.

"Miss Daisy wants you on the 'phone, Miss."

"Oh, all right--I'm coming.--Hello, hello, hello--What a dear you are to

ask me--A--matinee Wednesday? Love to!--What's it to be?"

"Oh, Phyllis, you won't be offended, will you, but I'm so poor, and

their boxes are only five dollars, and will hold six, and they've

promised to squeeze in three more chairs--and so I've invited nine--and

it's in that cheap, horrid Thalia Theater, but nobody can hurt us in a

box, and everybody says the play's wonderful, and you can eat peanuts,

which you can't do in a real theater; and it's _Moths_, by Ouida, and

Cyril Adair is the star, and he is so wonderfully handsome--oh, you must

have seen his pictures in the barber-shop windows--and anyway, even if

he isn't, the play is delightfully wicked--because I had such a fight

with mama about it, and then Howard has been twice, which he wouldn't

have done if it wasn't; and even if it isn't, how am I to give a

theater-party on no more than five dollars? The Columbia boxes are

fifteen, and so are the Lyceum's, and when they say six, it's six, and

you simply couldn't dare to ask nine girls because they wouldn't let

them in. But the Thalia man was so pleased and impressed that I believe

he would have included ice-cream if I had asked him--and Phyllis?"

"Yes, darling."

"It would give such a lot of ginger to it, if you would lend me your

carriage and the dog-cart--! Oh, I knew you would! What a comfort you

are, Phyllis. I don't know how I'd get along without you, you are

always so generous and obliging. Nettie Havens has volunteered tea at

her house--just insisted on it when I told her. I guess that poor little

five never went so far in all its little history! I can't think it ever

ran a whole theater-party before, with carriages and teas. It's an awful

tacky way of doing things, I admit, but what does it matter if we have a

good time?--Yes, that's the only way to look at it, and you're a

darling. Do you know I think Harry Thayre is sweet on--! Oh, bother,

she says I've to ring off, or pay another nickel. If it was a man she'd

let him have fifteen cents' worth! Well, good-by, good-by--!"

It was a pretty sight they presented in their box, a veritable

flower-bed of young American womanhood. The bright, girlish faces, the

laughter, the animation, the sparkling eyes, the ripples of merriment,

the air of innocent bravado--all were in such contrast to the usual

patrons of the Thalia that the house could not take its eyes off them.

It was essentially a shop-girl-and-best-young-man theater, with a

hoodlum gallery, and a general appearance of extreme youth. Those who

did not chew gum were almost conspicuous, and a formidable young man

with a voice of brass, perambulated the aisles with a large tray, and

terrorized nickels and dimes from the pockets of swains. He had a

humorous directness that made the price of immunity seem cheap at the

money. It was worth a dime any time to escape him.

And the play?

It was a rousing love-story, crude, stilted, old-fashioned, but

developed with a force and earnestness that Ouida has always possessed.

The brutal Prince, the ill-used Princess, Correze, the idol of the

public, the tenor whose voice has taken the world by storm, heart-broken

and noble in his hopeless love--here were full-blooded situations to

make the heart beat. And how nine of them _did_ beat in that crowded

box. And what scalding tears rolled down those youthful cheeks! And

what little fists clenched as the Prince, passing all bounds, and

incensed to frenzy, struck--positively struck--the adorable being who

was clinging so desperately to honor and duty! Who could blame Correze

for what was to follow? Assuredly not our nine rosebuds, who, if

anything, found the splendid creature almost too backward, too

self-sacrificing. But--!

And Cyril Adair, who played Correze with a fervid pathos that tore the

heart out of your breast! Of course, you knew he had taken the world by

storm. Of course you knew the public idolized him. Wasn't he the

handsomest, manliest, most chivalrous fellow alive? Hadn't he a voice

to melt a stone, or drive, as cutting as a rapier, through even a

Prince? His firm chin, his faultless teeth, his strange, smoldering,

compelling eyes, his vigorous yet graceful frame--small wonder that the

Princess threw everything to the winds for such a man. Under the

circumstances none of the nine would have waited half so long. The

Princess' devotion to honor and duty seemed hardly less than morbid.

Her patience under insults was positively exasperating. She clung to

respectability with both hands--screamed, raged, but stuck to it as

tight as a limpet--until a blow in the face, and the vilest of epithets

from her brutal husband, toppled her finally to perdition--that is, if

it were perdition to link the remainder of her life with that glorious

being, and abandon everything for love.

The box applauded wildly, and led off the whole house. The curtain was

made to rise again and again. Correze, advancing to the footlights, was

left in no doubt as to where he had scored his heaviest hit, and

rewarded those eager, girlish faces with a glance of his fine eyes, and

a bow intended for them alone. Phyllis was the least enthusiastic of

the party, and her silence during the first intermission was noisily

commented on. She ate caramels slowly, and added nothing but

monosyllables and an enigmatic smile to the rapturous demonstrations of

her companions. But had they noticed her during the further course of

the performance, they might have had something else to wonder at. With

parted lips, and breath so faint that she seemed not to breathe at

all--with a face paling to marble, and poignant with a curious and

unreasoning distress, her eyes never quitted those of Cyril Adair, and

fixed themselves on his in a stare so troubled, so fascinated, that her

soul seemed to leave her body and to pass the footlights.

*CHAPTER VII*

The tea that followed was but a blurred memory, a confused recollection

of noise and chatter, with a stab at the heart every time the actor's

name was mentioned. She was thankful to get home, and lock herself in

her room. She was in a tumult of shame, agitation, and an exquisite

guilty joy. She partly undressed, and threw herself on her bed,

shutting her eyes to win back the face and voice that had moved her to

the depths. What had he done to her? A few hours before she had never

known of his existence. The merest accident had revealed it to her, and

now he was causing the blood to surge through her veins, and mantle her

cheeks with dishonor. For it was dishonor. Everything in her revolted

at such a position. His preposterous name struck fiercely on her pride

and her sense of the ridiculous--Cyril Adair! How could any one,

masquerading under such an egregious alias, dare to give her a moment's

concern. She burst out laughing at herself, a contemptuous and bitter

laugh. Cyril Adair! No dazzled little housemaid could have been

sillier than she.

Yet his face haunted her, the tones of his voice, that strange,

smoldering look in his eyes. How greedily that dreadful woman had

kissed him! Those were no stage kisses. Before a thousand people she

had abandoned herself to his arms, and fastened that painted mouth to

his in an ecstasy. The audience thought it was acting. Phyllis, with a

keener perception, saw the truth, and it made her savage with jealousy.

That dreadful woman was shameless, crazy, beside herself. She had wooed

him with every fiber of her body, pressing his head to her bosom, using

every artifice to inflame him, and what had brought down the thunders of

the house had not been a delineation of passion, but the naked thing

itself.

It was horrible. Actors and actresses were horrible. No wonder they

were despised even while they were run after. No wonder their lives

were notorious. How could it be otherwise when--? But she envied that

woman. Yes, she envied that woman, terrible as it was to admit it.

Hated her, and envied her.--No, she pitied her as one of her own silly,

headlong sex, cursed with this need to love. She was no longer young;

she was thirty years old if a day; she was probably poor, disreputable,

with nothing in the world but a trunk full of trashy finery, and no home

but a cheap hotel. Love was the only thing she had, poor wretch, the

only thing.

And Cyril Adair? It was hard to imagine him in private life except as

Correze. But, of course, he wasn't Correze--that was absurd. Perhaps

he would be so changed that one would scarcely know him on the street.

She had heard of such disillusions--of tottering old men playing

boys--and wasn't Bernhardt sixty? But a woman can tell, a woman

who--who--cares. That vigorous manhood was no made-up pretense; such

freshness, such warmth, such grace, could not be affected; he was

certainly not much more than thirty, on the border line of youth and

early-maturity when men, to her, possessed their greatest charm.

Lying there, in a swoon of shy delight, she allowed her fancy to fly

away in dreams. Hand in hand, they trod a fairy-land of love and

rapture. She stole sentences from his part, and made him repeat them to

her alone--avowals, passionate and tender, in all the mellow sweetness

of the voice that still reechoed in her heart. He was Correze, and she,

in the madness of her infatuation, had forced her way to him and thrown

herself humbly at his feet. His love was not for her; she aspired to no

such heights; but she had come to be his little slave; to follow him in

his wanderings; to sleep across his door, and guard him while he slept.

To be near him was all she asked. His little slave, who, when he was

dejected and weary, would nestle beside him, and cover his hand with the

softest kisses. She wanted no reward; she would try not to be jealous

of those great ladies, though there would be times when she could not

hold back her feelings, and his hand, as she drew it across her eyes,

would be all wet with tears.

With her maid's knock at the door there came a sudden revulsion.

Phyllis called to her to go away, unwilling to be seen in her

defenselessness, and fearful of she knew not what. But the spell was

broken. The bubble of that pretty fantasy vanished at one touch of

fact. Harsh reality obtruded itself, and with it a pitiless

self-arraignment. She had been swept off her feet by a third-class

actor, in a third-class play, full of mawkish sentiment and unreality,

in a third-class theater where they chewed gum, and ate apples while

they wept over the hero's woes! A wave of self-disgust rose within her.

She felt soiled, humiliated. How dared this cheap, showy creature reach

out to take such liberties with a woman a thousand times above him? A

creature, who in all probability ate with his knife, carried on low love

affairs with admiring shop-girls, and practised his fascinations before

a mirror, like a trick-monkey! Pah, the thought of her amorous

imaginings reddened her cheeks, and consumed her with bitterness and

shame. Where was her self-respect, her modesty? If wishes could have

killed, there would have been no performance of _Moths_ that night at

the Thalia Theater.

At dinner she convulsed her father with an account of the play, in which

neither Adair nor the audience were in any way spared. In her zest and

mockery, it all took on a richly humorous aspect, and at times she was

interrupted by her own silvery peals of laughter. To hear her, how

could any one have guessed that she had been stirred as she had never

been stirred before, and that the screaming farce she described had been

in reality the one drama that had ever touched her? Was it in revenge

for what she had suffered? Was it perversity? Or was it the attempt to

conquer a physical attraction so irresistible that it tormented and

terrified her even while she fought it with the best of all

weapons--derision?

She passed a wretched night, tossing and turning on her bed in a whirl

of emotions. She was haunted by that face which appeared to regard her

with such reproach. Why had she betrayed him, it seemed to ask? The

smoldering eyes, compelling always, were questioning and melancholy.

That look, of such singular intensity, and with its strange and

mysterious appeal to some other self of hers, again asserted its

resistless power. She felt herself slipping back, in a langour of

tenderness, to the mood that had shocked her so much before. In vain

she repeated the saving words--threw out those little life-buoys to a

swimmer drowning in unworthy love--"third-class actor"--"matinee

hero"--"shop-girls' idol."--The drowning swimmer continued to drown,

unhelped. The life-buoys floated away, and disappeared. Engulfing

love, worthy or unworthy, drew down her spent body to the blue and

coraled depths, and held her there, fainting with delight.

In our secret hearts, who has not, at some time or other, felt an

unreasoning desire for one all unknown. Is love, indeed--true love,

anything else? Glamour and idealization--we would not go far without

either, and many, hand in hand, have trod the long path to the grave,

and died happy with their illusions. Nature, to screen her coarser

intent, fools us, little children that we are, with these pretty and

poetic artifices. May it always be so, for God knows, it is an ugly

world, and it does not do to peer too curiously behind the scenes.

There was a Mrs. Beekman that Phyllis knew, the widow of a distinguished

lawyer, left with nothing, who had bravely set herself to earn her

living as a milliner. It was to the credit of Carthage that Mrs.

Beekman's altered fortunes had not impaired its regard for her. She

kept her friends in spite of the "Hortense" over her shop, and a window

full of home-made hats, which, of themselves, would have amply justified

ostracism. It was no new thing for Mrs. Beekman to act as chaperon, and

repay, in this small measure, many kindnesses that verged on charity.

So she was not surprised, though much pleased and excited, when Phyllis

telephoned, and asked her to go with her to the theater. "I liked the

play so much I want to see it again," trickled that tiny voice into her

ear, "and though it's at that awful Thalia Theater, we can sit in a box,

and be quite safe and comfortable.--May I call for you a little after

eight, dear?"

Mrs. Beekman, who was an indefatigable pleasure-seeker, consented with

effusiveness. Phyllis was a darling to have thought of her. One of her

girls had told her the play was splendid, and that the star--oh, what

didn't she say about the star! Was Phyllis crazy about him, too? Hee,

hee, all alike under their skins, as Kipling said! Not that she liked

Kipling--he was so unrefined--but Miss Britt (you know Miss Britt, the

silly one, with poodle eyes, and a poodle-fool if ever there was one)

Miss Britt raved for hours about his "somber beauty." Wasn't it

killing! If Adair wanted to, he could leave town with two box-cars of

conquests! My, the milliners wouldn't have a girl left, and the

ice-cream parlors would all have to shut.--At eight, dear?--And dress

quietly so as not to attract attention? Hee, hee, it was quite a lark,

wasn't it?

Sitting in the same box, on the same chair, but with a feeling as though

years had elapsed since she had last been there, Phyllis again saw the

curtain rise on _Moths_. The impulse that had brought her, the mad

desire to see the man who had tortured her so cruelly, had changed to a

cold critical mood, to a disdain so comprehensive that it included

herself no less than Adair. Dispassionate and contemptuous, it cost her

no effort to steel herself against his first appearance. His mouth was

undeniably rather coarse; she detected a self-complacency beneath his

Correze that his acting failed to hide; she saw his glance seek the

back-benches with a satisfaction at finding them filled, that struck her

as somehow greedy and tradesmanlike. What a disgusting business it was

to posture and rant, and choke back sham tears, and mimic the sacredest

things in life--and watch back-benches with an eye to the evening's

profits! The wretchedest laborer, with his pick and shovel, was more of

a man. At any rate he did something that was dignified, that was useful

and wanted. He was not framed in cardboard; there was no row of lights

at his honest, muddy feet; his loving was a private matter, and when he

kissed he meant it.--How fortunate it was that she had come! How

unerring the instinct that had brought her back to be cured!

But as the play proceeded such reflections were forgotten in the

intensity of her absorption. Again she was leaning forward with parted

lips; rapt, over-borne, lost to everything, and pale with an

indescribable tumult of emotion. She was conscious of no audience; of

naught save the man who held her captive with a power so absolute and

irresistible that birth, training, pride, weighed as nothing in the

balance. His voice pierced her heart; his eyes seemed to draw the soul

from her body; she trembled at her own helplessness, though the

realization of it was also a strange and intoxicating pleasure.

But intermingled with that pleasure, darting through it like a tongue of

flame, was a jealousy of Miss de Vere that not even the bitterest of

contempt could allay. Phyllis felt to the full the degradation of being

jealous of any one bearing so preposterous a name. Lydia de Vere! Her

lips curled at herself. Oh, that shoddy affectation of aristocracy!

Lydia de Vere! And that in a ten-twenty-thirty cent theater, and hardly

clothed above the waist; and yet, in spite of her painted face, her dyed

hair, and all of her thirty years, with shoulders and breast that a

duchess might have envied, she was handsome in her common, flamboyant,

chorus-girl way, with the meaningless good looks that one associates

with tights and gilt spears. Her acting was stilted and false; her fine

ladyism an impossible assumption; she railed at the Prince in the

accents of a cook giving notice. But her love for Correze taxed no

histrionic powers. It was vehement and real, as were the kisses she

bestowed so freely, and the caresses she lingered over with voluptuous

satisfaction. Beneath the drama of fictitious personages was another of

flesh and blood, like a splash of scarlet on a printed page.

What fury and anguish lay pent up in one girlish bosom! What a

suffocating sense of defeat, bitterness and shame!-- To burn with

jealousy of such a woman was more lowering than to-- No, she would not

admit that word to herself. It was folly, infatuation, madness--but not

love. It would pass with the swiftness it had come, leaving her in

wonder at herself, though the scar would remain for many a long day.

This man was robbing her of something that never perhaps could be

altogether replaced. How wicked it was, how unjust--she who had done

nothing to tempt the lightning! She hated him for it; she clenched her

teeth and defied him; she understood now what she had read in books that

there are men the mind scorns even while the body surrenders. But she

was made of stronger stuff; she had pride and courage; her pearls were

not for swine to trample on. She would put him out of her head for

ever.

It was terrible how he always got back again. There were tones in his

voice that melted every resolution. If ever laughter was music, it was

his, and the contagion of it swept the house; and his face, though not

handsome in the accepted sense, was striking in the effect it gave of an

untamed, extraordinary and powerful nature, only half revealed. What

was pride or courage or anything? What availed the hatred of that

hotly-beating little heart? Had he not but to look her way to make it

his own? Had he crushed it in his hand, would it not have died of joy?

Hatred, resentment, outraged self-respect--words, nothing but words.

As the house streamed out she waited in dread for Mrs. Beekman's

criticism. However desperately she might belittle Adair to herself,

Phyllis shrank from hearing condemnation on other lips. The pride that

had failed so utterly to defend her, had taken sides with the enemy,

devotedly, passionately. Judge of her surprise, then, her pleasure and

relief, when Mrs. Beekman said to her solemnly: "Phyllis, that man's a

genius! He's perfectly splendid!" Misunderstanding her companion's

silence, and thinking it implied dissent, she went on with a note of

argument in her voice. "Of course one can feel somehow that he has had

no advantages--that he has probably never been within ten miles of the

people he is trying to represent--(do you remember his shaking hands

with his gloves on?)--but just the same he has a wonderful and

magnificent talent, and we'll hear of him as surely as the world heard

of Henry Irving, or Booth, or Bernhardt. Truly, Phyllis, I believe the

day will come when we'll be bragging of having admired Adair before he

was famous; that is, if you feel like me about it," she added

doubtfully.

"I do, I do!" cried Phyllis. "I've never seen anybody on the stage I've

liked as much."

"Well, I have," said Mrs. Beekman candidly. "He certainly suffered from

being with all those idiots, and I don't like that fling-ding walk of

his.--I guess he's about five years short of the winning-post, but we'll

see him romp in as sure as my name's Emma Beekman."

"Romping in" jarred somewhat on Phyllis' ear, but all the same Mrs.

Beekman's admiration was very sweet to her, and in a queer sort of way

was comforting and reassuring. There was dignity in idolizing a genius;

it raised her in her own good opinion.

She forgot the apples and the chewing-gum; she forgot even Miss de Vere;

a mantle of unreasoning happiness enveloped her, and with it came a gush

of affection for Mrs. Beekman that quite astonished the latter. She

held her hand in the dark, and tried, with many unseen blushes, to keep

the one subject uppermost. To lie back in the carriage and hear Adair

praised, thrilled her with delicious sensations. She was insatiable,

and kept the milliner repeating "genius, genius, genius," like a parrot.

It cost her an order for a twenty dollar hat, but what did she care?

She would have given the clothes off her back in the extravagance of her

desire. Fortunately Mrs. Beekman was nothing loath, and would have

chattered for ever on this entrancing topic. "I guess we're as bad as

my girls," she said, with her good-natured laugh, "and he could put us

both in the box-car, too, if he had the mind."

"I shouldn't care if I was the only one," returned Phyllis gaily, "and

anyway, I've always loved traveling!"