In the drawing room of her mansion on Grosvenor Square, Lady Alice
Mordaunt was pouring tea, and talking as usual the same trifling
commonplaces that had on a previous occasion excited her cousin's
disdain. Opposite her sat her mother, Lady Fletcher, a perfect model of
the well-bred English matron, while Opal Ledoux, in the daintiest and
fluffiest of summer costumes, was curled up like a kitten in a corner of
the window-seat, apparently engrossed in a book, but in reality watching
the passers-by.
From her childhood up she had lived in a Castle of Dreams, which she had
peopled with the sort of men and women that suited her own fanciful
romantic ideas, and where she herself was supposed to lie asleep until
her ideal knight, the Prince Charming of the story, came across land
and sea to storm the Castle and wake her with a kiss.
It was made up of moonbeams and rays of sunshine and
rainbow-gleams--this dream--woven by fairy fingers into so fragile a
cobweb that it seemed absurd to think it could stand the winds and
torrents of Grown-Up Land; but Opal, in spite of her eighteen years, was
still awaiting the coming of her ideal knight, though the stage setting
of the drama, and her picture of just how the Prince Charming of her
dreams was to look, and what he would say, had changed materially with
the passing of the years.
If sometimes she wove strange lines of tragedy throughout the dreams,
out of the threads of shadow that flitted across the sunshine of her
life, she did not reject them. She felt they belonged there and did not
shrink, even when her young face paled at the curious self-pity the
passing of the thought invoked.
Hers was a strange mixture, made up of an unusual intermingling of many
bloods. Born in New Orleans, of a father who was a direct descendant of
the early French settlers of Louisiana, and of a Creole mother, who
might have traced her ancestry back to one of the old grandees of Spain,
she yet clung with a jealous affection to the land of her birth and
called herself defiantly "a thorough-bred American!" Her mother had died
in giving her birth, and her father, while she was still too young to
remember, had married a fair Englishwoman who had tried hard to be a
mother to the strange little creature whose blood leaped and danced
within her veins with all the fire and romance of foreign suns. Gay and
pleasure-mad as she usually appeared, there was always the shadow of a
heartache in her eye, and one felt the possibility of a tragedy in her
nature. In fact one felt intuitively sorry--almost afraid--for her lest
her daring, adventurous spirit should lead her too close to the
precipice along the rocky pathway of life.
She was thinking many strange thoughts as she sat looking out of the
window. Her English cousins, related to her only through her stepmother,
yet called kin for courtesy's sake, had given up trying to understand
her complexities, as she had likewise given up trying to explain
herself. If they were pleased forever to consider her in the light of a
conundrum, she thought, why--let them!
After a while the ladies at the tea-table began to chat in more
confidential tones. Opal was not too oblivious to her surroundings to
notice, nor to grasp the fact that they were discussing her, but that
knowledge did not interest her. She was so used to being considered a
curiosity that it had ceased to have any special concern for her. She
only hoped that they would sometime succeed in understanding her better
than she had yet learned to understand herself. It might have interested
her, however, had she overheard this particular conversation, for it
shed a great light upon certain shades of character she had discovered
in herself and often wondered about, but had never had explained to her.
But she did not hear.
"I am greatly concerned about Opal," Lady Alice was saying. "She is the
most difficult creature, Mamma--you've no idea how peculiar--with the
most dangerous, positively _immoral_ ideas. I do wish she were safely
married, for then--well, there is really no knowing what might happen to
a girl who thinks and talks as she does. I used to think it might be a
sort of American pose--put on for startling effect, you know--but I
begin to think she actually means it!"
"Yes, she means it," replied Lady Fletcher, lowering her voice
discreetly, till it was little more than a whisper. "She has always had
just such notions. It gives Amy a great deal of trouble and worry to
keep her straight. You know--or perhaps you didn't know, for we don't
talk of these things often, especially when they are in one's
family--but there is a bad strain in her blood and they are always
looking for it to crop out somewhere. Her mother married happily--and
escaped the curse--but for several generations back the women of her
family have been of peculiar temperament and--they've usually gone wrong
sometime in their lives. It seems to be in the blood. They can't help
it. Mr. Ledoux told Amy all about it at the time of their marriage, and
that is the reason they have tried to keep Opal as secluded as possible
from the usual free-and-easy associations of American girls, and are so
anxious to marry her off wisely."
"And speedily," put in Alice--"the sooner the better!"
"Yes, yes--speedily!"
Lady Fletcher gave an uneasy glance in Opal's direction before she
continued.
"You are too young to have heard the story, Alice, but her
grandmother--a black-eyed Spanish lady of high rank--was made quite
unpleasantly notorious by her associations with a brother of Lady
Henrietta Verdayne. He was an unprincipled roué--this Lord Hubert
Aldringham--a libertine who openly boasted of the conquests he had made
abroad. Being appointed to many foreign posts in the diplomatic service,
he was naturally on intimate terms with people of rank and royalty. They
say he was very fascinating, with the devil's own eye, and ten times as
devilish a heart--"
"Why, Mamma!"
Alice was shocked.
"I am only repeating what they said, child," apologized the elder woman
meekly. "Women will be fools, you know, over a handsome face and a
tender voice--some women, I mean--and that's what Opal has to fight
against."
"Poor Opal," murmured Alice, "I did not know!"
"Some even go so far as to say--"
Again Lady Fletcher looked up apprehensively, but Opal was still
absorbed in her dreams.
"To say--what, Mother?"
"Well, of course it's only talk--nobody can actually _know,_ I suppose,
and I wouldn't, of course, be quoted as saying anything for the world,
dear knows; but they say that it is more than probable that Opal's
mother was ... _Lord Hubert's own daughter!"_
"Oh, Mother! If it is true--if it _could_ be true--what a fight for
her!"
"Yes, and the worst of it is with Opal, she won't fight. She has been
rigidly trained in the principles of virtue and propriety from her very
birth, and yet she horrifies every one at times by shocking ideas--that
no one knows where she gets, nor, worse yet, where they may lead!"
"But she is good, Mother. She has the noblest ideas of charity and
kindness and altruism, of the advancement of all that's good and true in
the world, of the attainment of knowledge, of the beauties and
consolation of religion. It's fine to hear her talk when she's
inspired--not a bit preachy, you know--she's certainly far enough from
that--but more like reading some beautiful poem you can but half
understand, or listening to music that makes you wish you were better,
whether you take in its full meaning or not."
This was a long speech for Lady Alice. Her mother looked at her in
amazement. There certainly must be something out of the ordinary in this
peculiar American cousin to wake Alice from her customary languor.
Alice smiled at her mother's surprise.
"Strange, isn't it, Mother?" she asked, half ashamed of her unusual
enthusiasm. "But it's true. She'd help some good man to be a power in
the world. I feel it so often when she talks. I didn't know women ever
thought such things as she does. I-I-I believe we can trust her, Mother,
to steer clear of everything!"
"I hope so, Alice; I am sure I hope so, but--I don't know. I am afraid
it was a mistake to keep her so much alone. It gives her more unreal
ideas of life than actual contact with the world would have done."
Opal Ledoux left the window and sauntered down the long drawing-room
toward the table where the speakers were sitting.
"What are you talking about?--me?"
The cousins were surprised and showed it by blushing guiltily.
Opal laughed merrily.
"Dreary subject for a dreary day! I hope you found it more interesting
than I have!" And she stretched her small figure to its utmost height,
which was not a bit above five foot, and shrugged her shoulders lazily.
"What are you reading, Opal?" asked Lady Fletcher, in an effort to
change the subject, looking with some interest at the volume that the
girl carried.
"Don't ask me--all twaddle and moonshine! I ought not to waste my
valuable time with such trash. There isn't a real character in the book,
not one. When I write a book, and I presume I shall some time, if I live
long enough, I shall put people into it who have real flesh and blood in
them and who do startling things. But I'll have to live it all first!"
"Live the startling things, Opal? God forbid!"
"Surely! Why not?"
And Opal dropped listlessly into a chair, tossed the offending book on a
table, and taking a cup of tea from the hand of her cousin, began to sip
it with an air of languid indifference, which sat strangely on her
youthful, almost childlike figure.
"By the way, Alice," she asked carelessly, "who was the young man who
stared at us so rudely last night as we drove away from the theatre?"
"I saw no young man staring, Opal. Where was he?"
"Why, he stood on the pavement, waiting, I suppose, for his carriage,
and as we drove away he looked at me as though he thought I had no right
to live, and still less to laugh--I believe I was laughing--and as we
turned the corner I peeped back through the curtain, and he still stood
there in the full glare of the light, staring. It's impolite,
cousins--_very! Gentlemen_ don't stare at girls in America!"
"What did he look like, Opal?" asked Lady Fletcher.
"Like a Greek god!" answered the girl, without a second's hesitation.
"What!"
Both women gasped, simultaneously. They were dismayed.
"Oh, don't be shocked! He had the full panoply of society war-paint on.
He was certainly properly clothed, but as to his being in his right
mind, I have my doubts--serious doubts! He stared!"
"I hope you didn't stare at him, Opal!"
"Well, I did! What could he expect? And I laughed at him, too! But I
don't believe he saw me at all, more's the pity. I am quite sure he
would have fallen in love with me if he had!"
"Opal!"
Opal was thoroughly enjoying herself now. She did enjoy shocking people
who were so delightfully shockable!
"Why, _'Opal'?"_ and her mimicry was irresistible. "Don't you think I'm
a bit lovable, cousin?--not a bit? You discourage me! I'm doomed to be a
spinster, I suppose! Ah, me! And I'd far rather be the spinster's cat!
Cats aren't worried about the conventions and all that sort of thing.
Happy animals! While we poor two-footed ones they call human--only we
aren't really more than half so--have to keep our claws well hidden and
purr hypocritically, no matter how roughly the world rubs our fur the
wrong way, nor how wild we are to scratch and spit and bristle! Wouldn't
you like to be a cat, Alice?"
"Goodness, child! What an idea! I am very well contented, Opal, with
the sphere of life into which I have been placed!"
"Happy, happy Alice! May that state of mind endure forever! But come!
Haven't you an idea, either of you, who my Knight of the Stare can be?"
"You didn't describe him, Opal."
Opal opened her eyes in wide surprise.
"Didn't I? Why, I thought I did, graphically! A Greek god, dressed _en
règle_. What more do you want? I am sure anyone ought to recognize him
by that."
Her listeners looked at her in real consternation, which she was quick
to see. Her eyes danced.
"Well, if you insist upon details, I can supply a few, I guess, if I
try. I am really dying of curiosity to know who he is and why he stared.
Of course I didn't look at him very closely. It wouldn't have
been--er--what do you call it?--proper. And of course I could not see
clearly at night, anyway. But I did notice he was about six feet tall.
Imagine me, poor little me, looking up to six feet! With broad
shoulders; an athletic, muscular figure, like a young Hercules; a
well-shaped head, like Apollo's, covered with curls of fair hair; a
smooth, clear skin, with the tint of the rose in his cheek that deepened
to blood-red when his blue eyes, in which the skies of all the world
seemed to be mirrored, stared with an expression like that of a man upon
whom the splendor of some glorious Paradise was just dawning. He looked
like an Englishman, yet something in his attitude and general appearance
made me think that he was not. His hands--"
"Opal! Opal! What do you mean? How could you see so much of a young man
in so short a time? And at night, too?"
Opal pouted.
"You wanted a detailed description. I was trying to give it to you. As I
told you at the start, I couldn't see much. But anyway, he stared!"
"And I dare say he wasn't the only one who stared!" put in Lady Alice in
dry tones of reprehension. "I can't imagine who it could be, can you,
mother?"
"Not unless it was that strange young Monsieur Zalenska--_Paul_
Zalenska, I believe he calls himself--Paul Verdayne's guest. I rather
think, from the description, that it must have been he!"
"Zalenska? What a name! I wonder if he won't let me call him 'Paul!'"
said the incorrigible Opal, musingly. "I shall ask him the first time I
see him. Paul's a pretty name! I like that--but I'll never, never be
able to twist my tongue around the other. He'd get out of hearing before
I could call him and that would never do at all! But 'Monsieur,' you
say? Why 'Monsieur'? He certainly doesn't look at all like a Frenchman!"
"No one knows what he is, Opal; nor who. That is, no one but the
Verdaynes. He has always made a mystery of himself."
Opal clapped her small hands childishly.
"Charming! My ideal knight in the flesh! But how shall I attract him?"
She knitted her brows and pondered as seriously as though the fate of
nations depended upon her decision.
"Shall I send him my card, Alice, and ask him to call? Or would it be
better to make an appointment with him for the Park? Perhaps a
'personal' in the _News_ would answer my purpose--do you think he reads
the _News_, or would the _Times_ be better? Come, cousins, what do you
think? I am so young, you know! Please advise me."
She clasped her hands in a charming gesture of helpless appeal and the
ladies looked at one another in horrified silence. What unheard of thing
would this impossible girl propose next! They would be thankful when
they saw her once more safely embarked for the "land of the free," and
out from under their chaperonage, they hoped, forever. They realized
that she was quite beyond their restraining powers. Had she no sense of
decency at all?
The door opened, callers were announced, and the day was saved.
Opal straightened up, put on what she called her "best dignity" and
comported herself in so very well-bred and amiable a manner that her
cousins quite forgave all her past delinquencies and smiled approval
upon the charming courtesy she extended to their guests. She could be
_such_ a lady when she would! No one could resist her! And yet they felt
themselves sitting upon the crater of a volcano liable to erupt at any
moment. One never felt quite safe with Opal.
But, much to their surprise and relief, everything went beautifully, and
the guests departed, delighted with Lady Alice's "charming American
cousin, so sweet, so dainty, so witty, so brilliant, and altogether
lovely--really quite a dear, you know!"
But for all that, Lady Alice Mordaunt and Lady Fletcher were far from
feeling easy over their guest, and ardently wished that the girl's
father would cut short his visit to France and return to take her back
with him to America. And while these two worthy ladies worried and
fretted, Opal Ledoux laughed and dreamed.
And in a big mansion over in Berkeley Square Monsieur Paul Zalenska
wondered--and listened.