"You could 'a' seen a Neapolitan woman yesterday, Cora," said
Hedrick, obligingly, "if you'd looked out the front window. She
was working a hurdy-gurdy up and down this neighbourhood all
afternoon." He turned genially to face his sister, and added: "Ray
Vilas used to say there were lots of pretty girls in Lexington."
Cora sprang to her feet. "You're not smoking," she said to Corliss
hurriedly, as upon a sudden discovery. "Let me get you some
matches."
She had entered the house before he could protest, and Hedrick,
looking down the hall, was acutely aware that she dived
desperately into the library. But, however tragic the cry for
justice she uttered there, it certainly was not prolonged; and the
almost instantaneous quickness of her reappearance upon the porch,
with matches in her hand, made this one of the occasions when her
brother had to admit that in her own line Cora was a miracle.
"So thoughtless of me," she said cheerfully, resuming her seat.
She dropped the matches into Mr. Corliss's hand with a fleeting
touch of her finger-tips upon his palm. "Of course you wanted to
smoke. I can't think why I didn't realize it before. I must
have----"
A voice called from within, commanding in no, uncertain tones.
"Hedrick! I should like to see you!" Hedrick rose, and, looking
neither to the right nor, to the left, went stonily into the
house, and appeared before the powers.
"Call me?" he inquired with the air of cheerful readiness to
proceed upon any errand, no matter how difficult.
Mr. Madison countered diplomacy with gloom.
"I don't know what to do with you. Why can't you let your sister
alone?"
"Has Laura been complaining of me?"
"Oh, Hedrick!" said Mrs. Madison.
Hedrick himself felt the justice of her reproof: his reference to
Laura was poor work, he knew. He hung his head and began to scrape
the carpet with the side of his shoe.
"Well, what'd Cora say I been doing to her?"
"You know perfectly well what you've been doing," said Mr. Madison
sharply.
"Nothing at all; just sitting on the steps. What'd she _say_?"
His father evidently considered it wiser not to repeat the text of
accusation. "You know what you did," he said heavily.
"Oho!" Hedrick's eyes became severe, and his sire's evasively
shifted from them.
"You keep away from the porch," said the father, uneasily.
"You mean what I said about Ray Vilas?" asked the boy.
Both parents looked uncomfortable, and Mr. Madison, turning a leaf
in his book, gave a mediocre imitation of an austere person
resuming his reading after an impertinent interruption.
"That's what you mean," said the boy accusingly. "Ray Vilas!"
"Just you keep away from that porch."
"Because I happened to mention Ray Vilas?" demanded Hedrick.
"You let your sister alone."
"I got a right to know what she said, haven't I?"
There was no response, which appeared to satisfy Hedrick
perfectly. Neither parent met his glance; the mother troubled and
the father dogged, while the boy rejoiced sternly in some occult
triumph. He inflated his scant chest in pomp and hurled at the
defeated pair the well-known words:
"I wish she was _my_ daughter--about five minutes!"
New sounds from without--men's voices in greeting, and a ripple of
response from Cora somewhat lacking in enthusiasm--afforded Mr.
Madison unmistakable relief, and an errand upon which to send his
deadly offspring.
Hedrick, after a reconnaissance in the hall, obeyed at leisure.
Closing the library door nonchalantly behind him, he found himself
at the foot of a flight of unillumined back stairs, where his
manner underwent a swift alteration, for here was an adventure to
be gone about with ceremony. "Ventre St. Gris!" he muttered
hoarsely, and loosened the long rapier in the shabby sheath at his
side. For, with the closing of the door, he had become a Huguenot
gentleman, over forty and a little grizzled perhaps, but modest
and unassuming; wiry, alert, lightning-quick, with a wrist of
steel and a heart of gold; and he was about to ascend the stairs
of an unknown house at Blois in total darkness. He went up,
crouching, ready for anything, without a footfall, not even
causing a hideous creak; and gained the top in safety. Here he
turned into an obscure passage, and at the end of it beheld,
through an open door, a little room in which a dark-eyed lady sat
writing in a book by the light of an oil lamp.
The wary Huguenot remained in the shadow and observed her.
Laura was writing in an old ledger she had found in the attic,
blank and unused. She had rebound it herself in heavy gray
leather; and fitted it with a tiny padlock and key. She wore the
key under her dress upon a very thin silver chain round her neck.
Upon the first page of the book was written a date, now more than
a year past, the month was June--and beneath it:
"Love came to me to-day."
Nothing more was written upon that page.