With much difficulty we found ourselves at last in the spacious
grounds of Bella's estate. I had laid my plans carefully the day
before, and there seemed no possibility that they would miscarry. By
liberal fees I had learned from her butler that she was to spend that
night in New York with a friend, and for a further consideration he
offered to leave one of the drawing-room windows open so that we
should have a clear field.
Everything seemed to be working beautifully, and I already felt the
coveted letters in my grasp. We found the French window ajar, and with
tremulous hearts stepped over the sill and into the room. After
several collisions with the furniture, of which there seemed to be
what we thought an unnecessary amount, we finally scraped our way into
the hall.
Here was a quandary. We were in a hall, but what hall? Whether the
stairs led in the right direction there was no one present to consult.
We walked or rather crawled up them, nevertheless. I tried the first
door on the landing, and was rewarded with "Is that you?" by a female
voice that sent us scuttling along the passage in undignified haste.
Well, at last, after many narrow escapes from breaking our necks, we
reached Bella's room. I knew it the moment I saw the closet full of
shoes. Bella was always proud of her feet, and had, I believe, a pair
of boots for every hour of the day.
To make things even more sure that I had arrived at the chaste temple
of my former flame, there was the famous bureau of ebony inlaid with
ivory--that bureau which contained enough of my inflammatory letters
to reduce it to cinders.
"Can you regard that bureau with equanimity?" I exclaimed,
unconsciously assuming a dramatic attitude. "Does it not recall your
vanished youth--the red horizon of your adolescence? Ah," I cried,
overcome by the sight of that familiar bit of furniture, "how often
have I slid a piece of jewelry into that top drawer as a surprise for
Bella! Her delighted shriek which followed the discovery rings in my
ears even now. Oh, halcyon days of happy holiday, mine no more, can a
lifetime with a funded houri wholly fill your place?"
"That's all very well," cried Vandeleur, who can assume a disgustingly
practical tone when he wants to. "While you are rhapsodizing here over
your poetical past, some stalwart menial may arrive with a
blunderbuss, and fill our several and symmetrical persons with No. 2
buckshot. Perhaps Bella may have missed her train or her friend. She
might return here at any moment and surprise us"--looking around him
uneasily.
"Anybody would think that you had never been in a boudoir at this time
of night," I retort savagely.
I begin to pull out the drawers of the bureau, breaking locks in the
most reckless way, and tossing the contents of these dainty
receptacles about in the most utter confusion. Vandeleur, with his
eyeglass adjusted, is poking into everything in the closet as if he
were looking for a mouse, only pausing now and then to glare around
with an apprehensive shiver.
"Dear me," I soliloquize, while the contents of those bureau drawers
are tossed here and there in the fever of my search. "How everything
here reminds me of the past! She has even preserved the menu card of
that memorable dinner at Torloni's; and here--here is a lock of brown
hair tied with a pink ribbon! I really believe it must be mine!"
"My deah boy," howls Vandeleur, shaking me by the arm vigorously,
"will you cut short your soliloquy? Is this a time for poetry, when we
might get ten years if we were found burglarizing this house?"