engagement to walk with her at half-past four. She had not returned
from a girl’s luncheon to which she had gone. At ten minutes past five
she came, full of apology for her delay--“I really couldn’t leave.
The lunch was over before three o’clock, but the Secretary of State’s
daughter was enjoying herself and, though we were all furious with
her, as we had other engagements, she wouldn’t leave; and, of course,
none of us could leave until she left. When she did finally take
herself away the Secretary of the Treasury’s daughter had given up her
engagement and had settled herself for the rest of the afternoon. She
didn’t leave until ten minutes ago. So there we were, penned in and
forced to stay.”
“Precedence again?” said Frothingham.
“Precedence. It’s outrageous that those two girls should show so little
consideration.”
“I’ve known the same sort of thing to happen at home,” Frothingham
assured her. “Once when I’d gone to a house only for dinner I had to
stay until half-past four in the morning. The Prince of Wales was
there, and he was just then mad about ‘bridge.’ He insisted on playing
and playing. Several of us were asleep in the next room--the hostess
was nodding over her cards.”
“But he must have seen,” said Elsie. “Why didn’t he take the hint?”
“Well, you see, the poor chap led such a deadly dull life in those
days. When he found himself having a bit of fun he didn’t care a rap
what it cost anyone else. It’s a mistake to bother with other people’s
feelings, don’t you think?”
“It only makes them supersensitive and hard to get on with,” replied
Elsie. “I used to be considerate. Now I’m considerate only when it’s
positively rude not to be. Besides, I must expect to buy my way through
the world. I never had any friends--though I used to think I had, when
I was a fool and didn’t know that just the sight of wealth makes human
beings tie up their good instincts and turn loose the worst there is in
them. Even when rich people are friendly with each other it’s usually
in the hope of getting some sordid advantage.”
“Do you apply that to yourself or only to others?”
“It applies to me--it has applied to me ever since I found what sort of
a world I was living in.”
“I don’t believe it, my dear girl,” drawled Frothingham, the more
convincingly for the lack of energy in his tone. And he gave her a
quick, queer look through his eyeglass and was stolid again.
She coloured just a little. “Oh, I suppose I’d be as big a goose as
ever if I should fall in love again.”
“Again?”
She laughed. “I’ve been in love four times in the last four years, and
almost in love three times more. That’s a poor record for a Washington
girl--there are so many temptations, with all these fascinating
foreigners streaming through. But I’m not counting the times I’ve been
made love to in half a dozen modern languages--I and my father’s money.”
“Possibly you were unjust to some of the men who’ve said they admired
you. They may not have attached so much importance to your father’s
money as--you do.”
The thrust tickled her vanity--nature had given her an over-measure
of vanity to compensate for her under-measure of charm. She looked
pleased, though she said: “I don’t deceive myself as to myself.”
“A man might have been attracted to you because you had money,”
continued Frothingham dispassionately, “and might have stayed on for
your own sake.”
Elsie lifted her eyebrows. “Perhaps,” she said. “I’ll admit it’s
possible.”
“And, honestly now, do you pretend that you’d marry a man who had
nothing but love to offer you? What has attracted you in the men you
thought well of? You say there have been four--or, rather, four and
three halves. Has any one of ’em been a poor devil of a nobody?”
Elsie hesitated; in the twilight he saw from the corner of his eye that
her upper lip was trembling. They were walking near the tall, white,
glistening monument, in the quiet street that skirts the grounds of the
White House. “One,” she said, at last, in a low voice. “I didn’t care
especially for him. But sometimes I think he really did care for me--he
was a wild, sensitive creature.” She looked at Frothingham and smiled.
“And when I get in my black moods I’m half sorry I sent him away.”
“But you did send him away, didn’t you?” Frothingham’s expression and
tone were satirical, yet sympathetic, too. “And you complain of men
for being precisely as you are!”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted.
“I take it for granted the girl who consents to marry me will consent
because she wishes to be a Countess.” He drew closer to her--she
looked her best in twilight hours, and he succeeded in putting as
much tenderness into his voice as was necessary to enable so drawling
and indifferent a person to create an impression of sentiment. “If
I were walking here with the girl I wished to win, I’d say nothing
of sentiment. I’d simply trust to the only thing I have that could
possibly induce her to listen to me.”
She glanced shyly up at him--he thought her almost pretty.
“Do you think that would win her?” he asked in a low tone.
“I--don’t--know,” she replied slowly. Her commonplace voice had also
been touched with the magic that had transformed her face.
“Won’t you think of it?”
“If you wish,” she murmured.
They went on in silence a few minutes, then she spoke in an attempt at
her usual voice: “But we must turn back. I’ll have just time to dress
for dinner.”
And he decided that he would say no more on the principal subject for
several days. He thought he understood how to deal with American girls
rather better now. “I’ll give her a chance to walk round the trap,” he
thought. And then he reminded himself that it was hardly a trap--wasn’t
she getting the better of the bargain? “She’s indulging in a luxury,
while I’m after a desperate necessary. And, by Jove, it won’t be easy
not to make a face, if I get it--with her.”
XIII
So confident was he--and so out of conceit with his impending
success--that he took a day’s vacation, going up to New York with
Wallingford to attend a ball for which Longview had hired half of
Sherry’s, and otherwise to amuse himself. The revisiting of the scene
of his early failure depressed him; he lost nearly a thousand dollars
at Canfield’s; he borrowed a thousand from Wallingford; he returned to
Washington in the depths of the blues. And he found the posture of his
affairs completely changed.
On the very day he gave Elsie the chance to become a Countess, Prince
Rontivogli had discovered that Ysobel Ballantyne had decided that she
was sufficiently in love with Boughton to take the risk of his not
succeeding to the title. Rontivogli was not the man to waste time on
impossibilities--indeed, he had no time to waste. He turned away from
the beautiful Miss Ballantyne instantly, and with all the ardour of
his fiery Southern nature laid siege to Elsie Pope. And, while Elsie
was somewhat reserved in her welcome, he found an ally in her father,
who thought it would sound extremely well to be able to say, “My
daughter, the Princess.”
Rontivogli was tall, had a clear, pallid skin, eloquent black eyes, the
brow and nose and chin of an Italian patrician, the manners and speech
of chivalrous adoration for women which disguise profound contempt for
their intelligence.
When Frothingham, just returned from New York, and still enshrouded in
surly gloom, drove up to Pope’s door, he saw Rontivogli’s cabriolet
standing a few yards down the drive. Rontivogli was conducting himself
in Washington as if he were rich, so plausibly that only the foreign
element was without doubts as to the object of his visit to America.
At sight of this trap Frothingham scowled. “What’s that Italian doing
here?” he said to himself, and his fear answered the question. When
they came face to face in the parlour Elsie greatly enjoyed it. The
Italian was smooth and urbane; Frothingham, careless of the feelings
of a man he despised and thoroughly English in his indifference to the
demands of courtesy to Elsie, was almost uncivil. He and Elsie talked
for a few minutes, then she drew Rontivogli into the conversation. The
Prince answered in French, and French became the language. Frothingham
spoke it far worse than Rontivogli spoke English, so he was practically
excluded. He sat dumb and stolid, wondering why “the brute hasn’t the
decency to take himself off when I came last.”
But “the brute” drew Elsie into a lively discussion on a book he had
sent her and, because there was no break in the argument, was seemingly
not impolite in lingering. It was almost an hour before he rose, kissed
her hand, gave her an adoring look, said “_À bientôt_,” and departed.
But, although he was physically gone, he was actually still there--if
anything Frothingham was more acutely conscious of him.
“I don’t believe Miss Ballantyne could stand that fellow,” he said,
aware of his tactlessness, but too angry to care. “I think all those
Latins unendurable. They’re a snaky lot and their manners suggest
waiters and valets.”
Elsie flushed and slightly drew in the corners of her mouth, a sure
sign that her temper had been roused in the worst way--through wounded
vanity. “Oh, you British are so insular,” she replied, “and so
self-satisfied. Here in Washington we learn to appreciate all kinds of
foreigners and to make allowances even for Englishmen”--that last with
a mere veneer of good nature. “I think Rontivogli charming. He’s so
intelligent, and has so much temperament.”
Frothingham recovered his self-control in presence of obvious danger.
He looked calmly at her through his eyeglass. “Dare say you’re right,”
he drawled. “Rontivogli’s a decent enough chap, so far as I know, and
for an Italian devilish clean-looking.”
Elsie had no intention of driving him off; in spite of the
Italian’s superiority in title and “temperament,” she preferred the
Englishman--she knew him better and in a more candid way. She became
conciliatory, and they were soon amicable again. But Frothingham saw
that his vacation had been perilously costly, that he must work to
reinstate himself, that it was not a wise moment for reopening the
matter of the engagement which only four days ago seemed all but
settled. He found that Elsie was dining at the Italian Embassy, to go
afterwards to a ball at the Vice-President’s to which he was invited.
He arranged to see her there and left.
Boughton and he dined together at the Metropolitan Club. While they
were having a before-dinner cocktail Boughton told him, in confidence,
that he was engaged to Ysobel Ballantyne. “So that’s why I find
Rontivogli poaching,” thought Frothingham. And he said presently: “What
do you know about that chap Rontivogli? He _looks_ a queer ’un.”
“Not a thing,” replied Boughton. “I had all our fellows writing over
to the other side, following him up. The answers thus far show nothing
downright shady. He’s down to a box of a house and a few acres just
north of Milan. And that’s swamped in mortgages. No one knows how he
raised the wind for this trip. He seems to have a good bit of cash,
doesn’t he?”
“I’m particularly interested in knowing about him,” continued
Frothingham. “He’s developed an astonishing interest in a girl friend
of mine. I’d hate to see her taken in by a scamp. And I’m sure he’s
that.”
“Oh,” said Boughton. “Miss Pope?”
“Yes,” replied Frothingham. “And she thinks well of him.”
“I’ll be glad to help you, old man. I sha’n’t drop my inquiry as I’d
intended.”
“Thanks,” said Frothingham. And they talked of other matters.
When he looked Elsie up at the Vice-President’s that night for the
first of the dances she had promised him, he found her on a rustic
bench in the garden, almost screened from observation, Rontivogli
beside her. The Italian’s classic face was aglow, and Frothingham saw
that he had checked a torrent of enamoured eloquence. He saw, also,
that Elsie was not pleased by the interruption. However, she left
Rontivogli and went with him. As they entered the ballroom he said: “I
don’t care for this music, do you? Let’s sit it out. Only”--he gave
her a look of quiet raillery--“you must engage not to go back to your
volcano until _my_ dance is over.”
“Volcano?” A smile of pleased vanity strayed into her eyes and out
again.
“Yes--your Vesuvius, whose eruption I was brute enough to interrupt.
Beastly of me, wasn’t it?”
“Rontivogli seems to annoy you a great deal.”
“He? Not in the least.” And his tranquil eyeglass affirmed his
falsehood. “But I assure you he’ll spout all the fiercer for the
interruption. I know those Southern chaps. I don’t wonder we stand no
show against ’em. I tossed the sponge as soon as I saw what he was
about.”
They were sitting on the stairs now and could talk without being
overheard. “Possibly you may remember,” he went on, “I said something
that was rather important to me--last Thursday, down near the
monument--at half-past six precisely, to be exact--I heard a clock
strike as I finished. Do you recall it?”
Elsie was puzzled by his light, satirical tone. “Yes,” she said. “I do
vaguely recall that you said something vague.”
“I didn’t mean to be vague. But that doesn’t matter now. I see there’s
no chance for me--at present. And I wished to say to you that at
least I sha’n’t give up our delightful friendship. No matter what you
do with your Italian, you’ll feel that I’m your friend, won’t you?”
Frothingham said it as if he meant it; and to a considerable extent
he did mean it--chagrined though he was, he fancied her so little in
the rôle he had invited her to play that his prospective defeat found
him not utterly despondent. He had reasoned out his course carefully
and had come to the conclusion that his chance lay in posing as her
disinterested friend. Perhaps she would confide in him, would give him
the opportunity to advise and criticise--an admirable position from
which to undermine and destroy his rival.
As Elsie had not fully made up her mind to Rontivogli, and as she saw
nothing but advantage to her in keeping Frothingham “on the string,”
she responded to his frank and manly appeal. And she believed what he
said, as she believed pretty much everything men told her; and she
liked him better than ever. “If he were only a prince,” she said to
herself regretfully, “and had temperament.”
That same night she accepted Rontivogli; when Frothingham came to
lunch the next day she told him. “Well,” he drawled, “I can’t say I’m
shouting glad. But I can honestly congratulate _him_. And--I hope you
won’t regret.”
“We’re not announcing the engagement for several days,” she said.
“That’s good. You don’t mind my saying--you know we’ve agreed to be
friends--but I think you--your father ought to make careful inquiry
about him. I’m sure everything’s all right, but--it’s prudent.”
Elsie smiled. “Oh, we have made inquiries,” she said. “Besides, anyone
can see what sort of man he is--anyone but a prejudiced Englishman.”
“I don’t deny prejudice. Is it surprising?” And he gave her a long
look that might have meant anything or nothing. “But--one can’t be too
careful about foreigners.”
“Foreigners!” Elsie laughed with good-humoured mockery. “And what are
_you_?”
“Why, an Englishman. We don’t count as foreigners here.”
“No--but as--as”--Elsie had “poor relations” on the tip of her tactless
tongue, but she caught it and changed it to “step-brothers.” And she
went on, “Which is much more suspicious.”
Frothingham found encouragement in her willingness to discuss her
fiancé with him--it showed plainly how foreign she felt to Rontivogli,
how friendly to him. A few afternoons later--it was the day after the
dinner at which her engagement was formally announced--she went with
Frothingham to call on “Madame Almansa” in her surroundings of Spartan
simplicity. They found Ysobel and Boughton there also, and when Ysobel
took Frothingham and Boughton into the small library adjoining the
smaller drawing room to look at some old prints “Sue” had brought with
her from Spain, Elsie talked with “Sue” of the engagement.
Madame Almansa was chary of congratulations, full of cautionings and
doubts. “I don’t wish to cast a shadow on your happiness, dear--for you
_are_ happy, aren’t you?”
“Indeed I am,” replied Elsie convincingly--Rontivogli was an ideal
lover; he could even sing his mad passion in a voice that was
well-trained and thrilling.
“But--you know my sad experience.” Madame Almansa sighed like Medea
thinking on the treachery of Jason. Her glance fell upon the engagement
ring. She took Elsie’s hand. “How beautiful!” she exclaimed. “I love
emeralds and that is a magnificent one. And only a tiny flaw.”
Elsie coloured with annoyance. “I think you are mistaken,” she said.
“It’s a perfect stone.”
“Certainly it is perfect, dear,” replied Madame Almansa in her
superior, informative tone. “Perfect for an emerald. But, you know,
there are no emeralds of size anywhere in the world that haven’t flaws.
At least, I never heard of one. Emeralds are valuable in spite of
their flaws.”
Elsie coloured again, this time with annoyance at having exposed her
ignorance.
“A superb setting,” continued Madame Almansa. “It must be very, very
old. I love that kind of setting--beautifully engraved, dull gold.
The only objection is that it’s the best kind for deceiving one as
to genuineness, isn’t it? One could not tell whether that stone was
genuine or imitation. You know, they make such wonderful imitations.
When I was going out in the world I had all my best jewels reproduced
in imitation stuff, and usually I wore the imitation. One felt so much
safer.”
Elsie drew her hand away, smiling sweetly. She was inwardly
raging--“The cat!” she said to herself. “Clawing me viciously, and
purring as if she hadn’t a claw.”
She left in a few minutes, Rontivogli calling for her. To relieve
her feelings, and also because she was in the habit of saying nearly
everything that came into her head, she told him what Madame Almansa
had said, making vigorous comments as she related.
Rontivogli, half turned toward her as they sat side by side in her
victoria, regarded her with his luminous smile. “That is the way of
the world, _ma belle et bonne_,” he said in his gentlest manner. “It
is difficult to harden one’s self to such wickedness. But there is
also much that is beautiful and fine. And we--you and I--will shut
everything else out of our lives, will we not?”
He made her feel unworthy, almost “common,” when he talked in that
fashion--she realised painfully that she was sadly lacking in
“temperament,” and she dreaded that he might find her out.
“The ring,” he went on, “has been in the family for eight hundred
years--perhaps longer. It is unchanged. No question of its genuineness
has ever been raised, so far as I know. We are not so suspicious as
some of you Americans.”
“She didn’t question it’s genuineness,” replied Elsie. “She simply
wished to make me uncomfortable with a malicious insinuation. Or,
maybe, she was just talking. It was silly of me to tell you.”
He protested that he was not disturbed. But he seemed unable long to
keep off the subject, returning to it as the cleverest habitual liar
will fatuously return to his unquestioned lie to weaken it by trying
further to bolster it up. So persistent was he that he at last made
her uneasy--not that she suspected him, or was conscious of having been
disturbed by his unnecessary reassurances. The next morning she went
down to a jeweller’s in Pennsylvania Avenue--she had other business
there and thought it her sole object in going, forgetting that she had
intended to send her mother. She discussed several proposed purchases
with the manager, whom she knew well. As she talked she had her elbows
on a show case, and her ungloved hands clasped so that the ring was in
full view--curiously, it was not on the engagement finger. He noted it,
thought she wished him to speak of it, because as she exhibited it she
often glanced at it.
“Would you mind letting me look at that beautiful ring?” he asked.
“Certainly.” She drew it off with some nervousness, gave it to him,
and, as he looked, watched him and it alternately with vague anxiety.
“A very old, a very quaint setting,” he said, “and a fine----”
He paused; her mouth was dry and her skin hot.
“A fine stone--a beautiful stone,” he continued. “One of the finest I
ever saw. The flaw is slight.”
Elsie drew a long breath--she felt an unaccountable sense of relief.
The manager took his glass, went to the window, and studied the stone
and the setting. “I’m glad to hear you say the stone’s genuine,” said
she, now admitting to herself that Madame Almansa’s poison had been
lurking far down in her mind. “Someone doubted it, and as it was
important to me to know, I intended to ask you.”
“In that case,” said the manager, “I feel it’s my duty to tell you the
stone’s an imitation.”
Elsie grew rigid and cold from amazement and rising horror.
“A good imitation,” continued the manager, intent upon the stone,
“but unquestionably not genuine. The setting makes it additionally
deceptive.”
“How much is the ring worth?” she asked, gathering herself together
heroically.
“Well--the stone, of course, is worthless--a few dollars. But the
setting is old and quite beautiful. It might bring a hundred or so from
a collector if it hit his fancy and had an authentic history. If the
stone were genuine, the ring would be worth about--five thousand, I
should say, as a rough guess.”
“Fortunately, I haven’t bought it yet,” she said carelessly. And she
took it from him and put it--in her pocketbook. “The stone seems to
have been undisturbed in that setting for a long time,” she added, as
she closed the pocketbook.
“Oh, there’s no telling as to that. It was manufactured by the newest
process. It has been only two or three years, I believe, since they
learned to put in the flaws so cleverly. They make them very well in
New York now.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Macready,” said Elsie. “You won’t say anything
about it, will you?”
“You needn’t have asked that, Miss Pope,” answered Macready with a
reproachful smile.
“Thank you again,” she said. It was not until she was driving away,
that her cheeks began to burn fiercely and the hot tears of shame and
anger to scald her eyes.
XIV
She went straight to her father with the whole story. He listened
sitting at his desk, balancing a broad ivory paper-cutter on his
forefinger. She felt much better when she had finished; her anger
seemed to have been carried off in her words.
After a long silence her father said: “What do you wish to do?”
She looked foolish. “I don’t know, papa,” she said feebly. “What do you
think we ought to do?”
“He may have been honestly deceived.”
“But Mr. Macready said----”
“That was merely his offhand opinion,” he interrupted. “They’ve been
making imitation jewels of all kinds for years. I know the Italians
have long been clever at it.”
Elsie was silent. She could not help remembering Rontivogli’s stupid,
over-crafty reiterations. She knew that he knew.
“And,” continued her father, examining the paper-cutter critically,
“there isn’t the slightest doubt as to the genuineness of Prince
Rontivogli himself.”
Another long silence during which neither father nor daughter showed
the slightest curiosity as to what thoughts the other’s face might be
revealing.
“Even if he did wilfully deceive in this--not vitally
important--matter,” continued the aspirant for a princess-daughter, “I
can imagine many extenuating circumstances. It isn’t the young man’s
fault that he’s poor. It isn’t unnatural that he shouldn’t wish to
expose his poverty--especially if he”--the Senator’s face took on a
smile of fatherly benevolence--“happened to care for the young lady.
‘All’s fair in love and war,’ you know. And we must not judge harshly
those who have less than we have. Still----”
Rontivogli’s “temperament” was vigorously reinforcing his title in
repairing the havoc the false jewel had played with him in Elsie’s
mind. He had been a convincing lover; Elsie had too much vanity and
too much desire to be loved madly not to be a credulous young woman.
“I don’t know what to do, papa,” she said in the tone that proclaims a
decision reached and a wish for support in it.
[Illustration: “_I can imagine many extenuating circumstances_”]
“Perhaps,” replied the Senator slowly, the personification of
forgiving charity, “it might be best to let the matter drop.”
“But I simply can’t _wear_ the ring! I’d feel such a fraud, and I’d
soon be disliking him, though this may not be at all his fault.
Besides, someone might----”