That hall at Kirklamont was for Gavan Napier, as he looked back, forever
associated with the most decisive hours in his own fate, as well as that
of his closest friend. It meant to him, perhaps more than anything, the
abiding memory of that morning after the arrival of Miss Greta's "little
friend."
He stood in front of the fireplace, waiting for Andrews to bring in the
post. At that particular moment there wasn't anybody else in the hall.
There probably soon would be somebody, Napier reflected, with a mingled
sense of amusement and uneasiness. For this was about the time Miss von
Schwarzenberg was astute enough to choose for her little tete-a-tetes
with the private secretary--always elaborately accidental. Sir William
would be out riding; Lady McIntyre dawdling over her late breakfast, and
Madge in the schoolroom, as Napier could all too plainly hear,
practising with that new ruthlessness introduced by Miss von
Schwarzenberg.
Miss Greta was never so at a loss as to enter without her little excuse,
"I think I must have left my knitting." Or, _sans_ phrase, she would go
to the writing table and consult Whitaker or Bradshaw. There was always
a semblance of reasonableness in such preoccupation. For Lady McIntyre
had fallen into the habit of going to Miss Greta for every sort of
service, from somebody's official style and title to looking out trains.
It wasn't the first, by several score of times, that young ladies had
shown themselves fertile in pretexts for a little conversation with Mr.
Napier. He himself was not in the least averse, as a rule, to a little
harmless flirtation--even with a governess. But suppose this particular
young woman should, with the fatal German sentimentality, be really
falling in love. One day, as he was sorting the letters, she had stood
at the table beside him, _durchblattering_ Bradshaw with piteous
aimlessness. He suggested: "Shall I look it up for you.... Where do you
want to go?"
With a heave of her high bosom she had answered that sometimes she
thought the place she'd best go to was the bottom of Kirklamont Loch.
Only the timely entrance of a servant with a telegram had, Napier felt,
saved him from a most inconvenient scene. He reflected anxiously upon
the high rate of suicide in Germany. It would be very awful if for sake
of his _beaux yeux_ Miss Greta should find a watery grave.
He looked at the clock. If the post was late, so was Miss von
Schwarzenberg.
Suddenly it came over Napier that she timed these entrances of hers, not
according to the clock, and not according to his own movements. He was
sometimes twenty minutes waiting there alone for the post to come in.
"God bless my soul!" he ejaculated mentally. Wasn't she invariably here
about two minutes before Andrews brought in the bag?
Before Napier had time to readjust himself to this new view of the
lady's apparent interest in _him_--there she was!--in her very
feminine, rather Londony, clothes; her intensely white, plump neck
rising out of a lace blouse; her yellow hair bound in smooth braids
round her head; a light dust of pearl powder over her pink cheeks.
She came straight over to the fireplace, "Mr. Napier, I should like to
speak to you a moment."
Napier lowered his newspaper, "Yes, Miss von Schwarzenberg."
"I don't know if you gathered yesterday ... the Pforzheims are old
friends of my family."
"Oh?" said Napier.
"Their father and my father were brothers-in-arms," she went on in that
heroine-of-melodrama style she sometimes affected. "They have been close
friends since their university days."
"Really." Napier's calm seemed to detract from her own.
The color surged into her round cheeks, but she held her head
dauntlessly on its short white neck as she confessed, "Carl and Ernst
have known me since I was a child."
Napier laid down the newspaper. "Indeed!"
"I suppose," she challenged him, "you think, that being the case, it was
very odd we should meet like strangers?"
"Oh, I dare say you had your reasons," he said, as Andrews came in.
Napier walked the length of the hall to where the man had put down the
bag.
Miss von Schwarzenberg did not move till Andrews had gone out. She did
not move even then, until Napier found his keys, selected his duplicate,
fitted it to the lock, and at last threw back the leather flap and drew
out the letters.
That instant, as though she had only just resumed control of her
self-possession, Miss von Schwarzenberg, handkerchief in hand, moved
softly down the hall and stood at Napier's side. It came over him that
this wasn't the first time that she had executed this simple
manoeuver, if manoeuver it was. He knew now that he had been
imputing to his own attractiveness her invariable drawing near while he
transacted his business with the letter-bag. The little pause before
Andrews left the room he had set down as a concession to the
proprieties. More than ever--so he had read her--if she laid traps for
little talks with the private secretary, was it important that the
servants should not be set gossiping. But now, with an inward jolt, he
asked, had he been making an ass of himself? His hand, already inserted
a second time to draw out more letters, came forth empty. He noticed
that her eyes were on it as he turned the palm of his hand toward him,
fingers doubled and nails in a line. He studied them.
She studied the letters already lying in an unsorted heap. They seemed
not to interest. She pressed her handkerchief to her lips and raised her
eyes. "I would have told you before--only--only,"--her beautiful mouth
quivered and her eyes fell again--"you ... are difficult to talk to."
"Am I?" said Napier, in a tone of polite surprise, still studying his
nails.
"For me. Yes.... You make it difficult. Why _do_ you, Mr. Napier?"
That man must have a heart of stone to resist an appeal so voiced.
"Perhaps you imagine it," he said, taking refuge in pulling out the rest
of the letters and sorting them into piles.
She stood as though too discouraged to continue, too listless to go
away. But when, in the midst of his sorting, Napier glanced at her, he
discovered no listlessness in the eyes that kept tally of the letters he
was dealing out. What earthly good does it do her to read the outsides
of our envelopes? he wondered.
"I've been unhappy," she went on, "most unhappy under my enforced
silence. I've wanted so much that _you_ anyhow should know the truth."
"I don't know why I especially--" he began.
"No, no, no!" she said a little wildly, in spite of the hushed softness
of her tone, "you don't know. And it's a good thing--a good thing you
don't. But I'm too unhappy under the innocent little deceit that's been
forced on me. You see, we had quarreled, the Pforzheims and I. That is,
_they_ quarreled. They each wanted to marry me. Oh, it was dreadful!
They wanted to fight a duel...."
"About...?" Napier laid a long official envelope on the top of Sir
William's pile.
"About me," she said with lowered eyes. "That was why I went to America.
I couldn't bear it. I said: 'We are strangers from this day!' And
so,"--she pressed her handkerchief again to her lips--"and so we met
like that. I told them I wouldn't stay here an hour if they swerved a
hair's breath from the role of strangers. Now,"--her voice altered
suddenly as though out of weariness after immense effort--"now you
know."
Napier took out the last letters. "I expect," he said kindly, "it's been
hard enough for you--at times."
"The strain is frightful." She swallowed and began again. "I--Maybe
you've noticed.... They will write to me from time to time."
She waited. Napier's face as blank as the new sheet of blotting paper in
front of the great presentation ink-stand.
"Well, is it my fault?" she demanded. "I've tried to make them see what
an equivocal position it puts me in, how unfair--" her face yearned for
sympathy.
Napier went on with his sorting.
"It's too nerve-racking," she said with increasing agitation. "Each one
thinks the other has got over that old madness. But the letters they
write me...! _Frantic!_" She came closer still. She laid her hand on
Napier's sleeve. "Do you know, sometimes I'm afraid...." She drew back,
as a step sounded on the gravel.
"The Pforzheims!" Napier said to himself.
But a very different apparition stood there. The girl in the Mercury
cap. Not so blithe as the day before--eager still, but wistful.
"Why, my _dear_ Nan!" Miss von Schwarzenberg said again, precisely as
she had before. "I told you I would come for you!"
"Yes, in the afternoon, you said. But I couldn't wait. Don't look like
that, dearest." She had lowered her voice as Miss von Schwarzenberg
joined her in the lobby. "I began to be afraid I'd only dreamed that you
were so near again."
Miss von Schwarzenberg answered in a voice lower still. Napier gathered
up Sir William's letters and his own. As he went with them into the
library, Miss von Schwarzenberg turned hastily. "I'll just go and see if
Lady McIntyre can spare me two minutes. I'll meet you out there, by the
clump of firs."
"All right," the girl said quietly, and turned away.
Miss von Schwarzenberg knew as well as Napier did that Lady McIntyre was
in the breakfast-room looking at the illustrated papers over her second
cup of coffee. But Miss von Schwarzenberg hurried upstairs.
Ordinarily Napier would have sat reading and answering his own letters
till what time Sir William should come in from his ride. To-day he stood
near the library fire--still seeing that face under the cap. What had
the von Schwarzenberg been saying to her? It wasn't at all the face she
had brought here the evening before. And if Julian Grant had been struck
by the happy faith in its yesterday aspect, Napier found something
rather touching in the hurt steadfastness it showed to-day.
"It isn't the same face," Napier repeated to himself; and before he had
at all made up his mind what he should do next, he was going through the
hall.
There she was pulling off her gloves, and holding her hands over the
fire.
"It _is_ cold," Napier said, and he seized the poker. The flames sprang
up and danced on the girl's face.
"Oh, _my_! How nice! You are the private secretary, aren't you?"
"What makes you think that?" he asked, a little on his dignity.
"Well, the other one was 'Julian,' wasn't he?"
Napier didn't much like this familiarity with a Christian name on the
part of a stranger. "Yes. I'm Gavan Napier."
"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Napier." She held out her hand.
He said nothing, only glanced round the hall in an undecided fashion
after releasing her hand, and then put his letters down on the nearest
chair. "I hope I'm not in your way," the girl said. "You see, I don't
know at all what private secretaries do. You are the first one I ever
met."
He laughed, and said they were a good deal like other people so far as
he'd observed, and didn't do anything in particular.
Miss Ellis declared she knew better than that. "That's where you sit,
isn't it?"--she nodded at the big table--"writing your state documents.
And I suppose everybody goes by on tiptoe. And nobody dares speak to
you ... and _of course_ I oughtn't to be here!"
"Oh, yes, you ought."
"No. I ought by rights to be out by the firs. But I was cold. I didn't
see why I should wait out by the firs when there was a fire here doing
nobody any good."
She misinterpreted his steady look. "Oh, my! _you_ think I ought to have
gone out and waited by the...!"
"Nothing of the sort! I shouldn't have thought half so well of you if
you'd gone out and waited by the firs."
But the wing-capped head with its overweight of hair turned anxiously
toward the staircase by which Greta had vanished. "I've often heard
Greta say, 'The great thing is to learn instinctive obedience.'"
"But why on earth should you obey Miss von Schwarzenberg?"
"Because Greta's the cleverest as well as the most splendid person in
the world." She glowed with it. "And knows more in a minute than I do in
a year."
Napier laughed at that reason, so Miss Ellis produced another. "And
then, you see, ever since I was quite young I always _have_ obeyed
Greta--when I was good!"--she threw in quickly with a self-convicting
laugh.
"How long have you known Miss von Schwarzenberg?"
"Oh, for ages. Ever since I was seventeen."
"That _must_ have been a long time ago!"
"Well, it is. It's going on six years. Will it hold me too?" She looked
doubtfully at the brass bar of the fender.
"Oh, yes," he reassured her, "it would hold ten of you." His smiling
glance took note of the small-boned hands that clutched the brass. From
the delicate ankles and the impossible feet, up to the slim neck, there
wasn't enough substance in her to furnish forth a good British specimen
of half her age. Yet when she stood up she was not only tall, she was
almost commanding. That was partly carriage, he decided, and
partly--well, what was it?
"The trouble about Greta," she went on, "is that she's a person
everybody is always wanting. Then, added to that, she is the best
daughter in the world. Every year she went home for several months. But
she always got back in time!" The girl smiled an odd smile, not as
though intended for Napier at all. "She always got back (we've often
talked about it) just as I was about to commit some _awful_ mistake."
Napier was morally certain he could have got her--if only for the honor
and glory of Greta--to enumerate one or two of these timely rescues, if,
by a stroke of rank bad luck, Julian hadn't appeared at that moment.
"Oh, my!" said Miss Ellis under her breath--which, was silly as well as
slightly irritating.
With a casual "Hello!" Julian came marching over to the fireplace.
"You're being very energetic all of a sudden," Napier said, with his
smiling malice. "This early worm, Miss Ellis, is Mr. Grant."
"I'm very glad to meet you." She stood up and held out her hand.
"Hasn't it been a splendid morning?" she asked. And did they have many
days so un-Scotch-misty as this?
They went on uttering banalities about the morning and the countryside,
and smiling into each other's faces.
Napier sat on the fender-stool, chuckling to himself. Fancy old Julian!
Do him all the good in the world to have a girl looking at him like
that.
She did so want to see as much as ever she could of "this lovely coast."
Perhaps Mr. Grant would advise her what to begin with?
Oh, Julian could advise. There was nothing he was readier at.
"Stop! stop!" the girl interrupted, "I mustn't be made greedier than I
am; for I've only got two or three days."
"Two or three--! Where are you going?" Julian demanded.
"Greta thinks London."
"_London?_"
"Well, there _is_ the National Gallery, and the old city churches," Nan
said, with marked absence of enthusiasm. "Oh, I don't doubt really but I
shall find it perfectly fascinating.... And then from time to time Greta
will run up for a day or two."
"It isn't my business," Julian said, in that tone people use when they
have definitely adopted the business in question, "but it sounds to me
the very poorest--" He left it hanging there.
"Surely," Napier observed quietly, "when you came, you meant to stay
longer?"
"Oh--yes! when I first came. But, you see, I didn't understand. I
thought being a governess here was like being a governess at home." And
quickly, as though to obliterate any suggestion of odious comparison,
"Perhaps it's because we have so few governesses in California."
"Well, does that make it different for them?"
"Well, we give them time to themselves. I--I don't criticize your way,"
she threw in, a little flustered to find where she was going--"only
we--Oh, here is Lady McIntyre!" she ended with much relief.
The manners of the lady of Kirklamont were in marked contrast to her
pinched and chilled appearance. Her fairness was the kind that goes with
a slightly reddened nose and a faint, bluish tinge about the mouth at
this hour of the morning. She was most genial to Miss Ellis, and the
girl was, in her turn, won to ease and confidence.
"No, thank you, I won't sit down. I didn't _mean_ to stay but half a
minute ... though I'm afraid Greta may think, even now, that I still
don't understand that her time belongs to you."
"But we are not such slave drivers!" The little lady shook her diamond
ear-rings. Greta could certainly take any day off to be with her friend,
and _every_ day, she of course had several hours at her disposal,
whenever she wished.
Miss von Schwarzenberg, in the act of descending the stairs, had paused
the fraction of a second. "Oh, there you are!" she threw over the
banisters toward Lady McIntyre.
It occurred to Napier that the girl standing between him and Julian was
a little uneasy at being found so far this side of the firs.
"Yes," Lady McIntyre said, "I was just arranging with Miss Ellis that
she must stay to luncheon."
"And _I_ was just going to ask if you'd consent to _our_ plan," Greta
said as she joined the group. "We thought of lunching at the inn."
At sight of the smile on Miss von Schwarzenberg's face--still more at
her "plan,"--the slight cloud of dubiety vanished from Miss Ellis. She
stood in full sunshine.
"But why not lunch here?" urged Lady McIntyre.
"We want to talk America, don't we? And the old days?"
"Yes, yes," said her enraptured friend.
"Well, then,"--Lady McIntyre fell in with what she took to be the
previous arrangement--"you'll bring her back to tea."
They all saw Miss Ellis to the door, and Miss Greta saw her to the first
gate.
"I say," remarked Julian, when the lady of the house had also
disappeared, "why shouldn't we take those two girls around?"
"Sir William. He'd never stand it."
"No, no! But after. He plays before tea, doesn't he?"
"Yes, before."
"Very well, then. We'll take 'em round after. I'll come with the motor."
He caught up his cap. "You arrange it with the Paragon." Julian bolted
off toward the footpath leading to the inn.
Did she realize that, the woman coming back with the reflective air?
Apparently not. She lifted her bent head, and when she saw Napier was
waiting there at the door alone she smiled. She was certainly very
charming when she smiled.
"I don't want to disparage the golfing powers of either Bobby or Madge,"
Napier said, "but what do you say to a round with me after tea?"
She looked at him oddly. It struck Napier that she didn't apply her
formula, "You are very kind." He was conscious of a slight embarrassment
under her scrutiny.
"You say that because Lady McIntyre asked you to."
"Not only for that reason."
Whereat Miss Greta lowered her eyes. "What should I do about Nan Ellis?"
she said.
"Oh, we've thought of that. Mr. Grant will look after her while you and
I--" he smiled. "Shall we say half-past five?"
The china-blue eyes turned to the open door and to the gaitered
rotundity approaching--Sir William coming up from the stable. "Half-past
five, then," she murmured. On her way to the schoolroom she caught up a
book with the air of one who finds at last a boon long sought.
Sir William was inclined to be facetious over "catching you and the
Incomparable One. I've always known the day would come...."
Instead of tackling the letters, he went on with his absurd chaffing.
"The fact is," Napier said, when he had shut the library door, "I've
been wanting to say a word about this lady."
"What's up?" Sir William was still smiling roguishly.
"I'm thinking of the matter of the translation. Surely an official
document of that description ought not to be in chance hands."
What did he mean? It hadn't been in chance hands.
It had been in the hands of Miss von Schwarzenberg. And Miss von
Schwarzenberg, Napier reminded his chief, was an outsider. Or, if not
that (hastily he readjusted himself to the McIntyre view) she was at all
events outside the official circle.
"My dear boy, of course she is. She is a woman. And beyond knowing an
English equivalent for a German word, she understands as much about the
bearing of a paper on International Commerce--as much as that Aberdeen
terrier."
"I think, sir, you underrate Miss von Schwarzenberg's intelligence."
"Or maybe you," said Sir William, wrinkling his little nose with silent
laughter, "maybe you underrate the Aberdeen's."
* * * * *
Miss Greta did not produce her friend at tea time. "Nan doesn't care
about tea. Americans don't, you know. She will meet us at the links."
And it so fell out.
If Miss Ellis didn't "take to" tea, she "took to" golf "as if she'd been
a born Scot," according to Julian. Why on earth Miss von Schwarzenberg
should want to go on trying when the power to hit a ball was so
obviously not among her many gifts, passed Napier's understanding. It
struck him as rather nice of her that she wasn't the least disturbed by
Nan's swinging efficiency. Was that because it got rid of her?--put wide
stretches of sand and gorse between the ill-matched couples? Napier
would hardly have stood it so amiably but for Julian's disarming
frankness as to the satisfaction he, at all events, was deriving from
the arrangement.
And Nan--planted high above a bunker, hair rather wild, face sparkling
with zest for the game, or for the company, or for that she was Nan
Ellis.
"_Look_ at her!" Julian said, on a note so new in Napier's experience of
him that he stood silent a moment, looking, not at the girl, but at his
friend.
Napier was still in the phase of being immensely diverted at the
spiffing progress of old Julian's flirtation--so much better for him
than addling his brains over that scheme of internationalism that was
going to save the world.
"Look at her," Julian repeated, "did you ever see anybody so, so ...
God's-in-His-Heaven,-all's-well-with-the-world!"
"Look here, Julian, I hope you're not...."
"Well, do you know, I'm afraid I am," said his friend. "I don't really
quite understand what it is that's happened. But _something_ has."
With that childlike directness that was part of Julian's charm for the
more complex mind, he turned to Napier just before the von Schwarzenberg
came within earshot. "There's a fly in the precious ointment," he said.
"This rot about her going to London. Look here, Napier, the von
Schwarzenberg woman would do anything for you. Make her leave the girl
in peace here."
"Impossible!" Napier said with decision. "How _could_ I ask such a
thing, you unpractical being!"
"That woman" was too near now for more, and Julian sheered off toward
the figure on the sky-line.
On the way back to the hall, Miss von Schwarzenberg talked more
intimately than ever she had to Napier. She told him about her home in
Hanover. About her childhood. Her "years of exile." So she spoke of
America. She had a story of how an odious Chicago millionaire had wanted
to marry her.
"But why do I tell you all this?"
Napier too had been wondering.
"It must be," she went on, "because you are a little less 'remote' this
evening, and I am suffering from _Heimweh_."
In a sturdy, practical tone Napier advised her not to give way to that!
In order to divert her thoughts, "What do you think of ..."--he nodded
to the two on in front.
"Of what?" said Miss von Schwarzenberg, dreamily.
"Well, aren't you chaperoning your friend?"
"Chaperoning!" She came to, suddenly. Plainly she hadn't liked the word.
"We are too near of an age for chaperoning."
"It's not a question of age, is it?"--Napier extricated himself quickly.
"But perhaps it's only that I don't understand. I never can be quite
sure about Americans."
"Exactly my feeling," Miss von Schwarzenberg struck in. "They are so
old ... and yet so passionate. Oh, there's more than three thousand miles
of salt water between us of the Old World and the people of the New.
They're a new kind of humanity."
They found Nan and Julian alone in the hall. As Napier stopped to
unshoulder the golf bag, Miss von Schwarzenberg lingered too.
"What shall you do in that miserable inn all by yourself the whole
evening?" they heard Julian saying.
At the sound of the golf clubs clattering into the corner, Nan called
out, "Here they are!" She came running to the lobby. "I wanted to say
good-by, dearest." She pressed Greta's hand. "Hasn't it been heavenly,
learning golf? I never enjoyed myself so much."
"I wonder," Miss von Schwarzenberg said, smiling, "how many thousand
times I've heard you say exactly that."
"Oh, have you, Greta? No matter how many times I've said it before, I
never knew what the words meant till this minute. Good-by."
Julian walked on air at the girl's side. "I say," Napier called after
him, "don't forget you're dining here."
"Here? Oh, no," said the unblushing Julian. "I'm dining at 'The Queen of
Scots.'"
"_Are_ you?" said Nan, stopping short. "I was _thinking_ of asking you,
but I didn't know I had."
"You hadn't."
"Oh! and do you in Scotland," she laughed, "invite yourself to dinner?"
"Yes, when it's an inn."
They went off arguing, laughing.
The hall seemed to grow suddenly dark. Miss von Schwarzenberg leaned
against the big table as she unwound her scarf.
"Is your friend given to these sudden--a--these flirtations?" Napier
asked in his lightest tone.
Miss von Schwarzenberg spoke of "several little affairs." She couldn't
say how far they had gone. "You know the American standard in these
things isn't ours." She spoke of the sanctity, the binding character, of
the German betrothal.
While this recital was going on, Napier's thoughts were nearer the
Scots' Inn than the scene of the German _Polterabend_.
Should he or shouldn't he?
He knew quite well he could prevent this American girl's being shunted
on to the London line. Suppose he didn't prevent it? Julian would never
know how easily Napier could have kept Nan Ellis in Scotland.
Should he or shouldn't he?
Suddenly it occurred to him how extraordinarily serious he was being
about this trifle. What could it matter whether this little American
tourist spent a few weeks in Scotland or went to London to-morrow?
Napier knew, looking back, that he had no faintest prevision of the
difference that the girl's going or her staying would make, even to
Julian. And all the same he stood there in the middle of Kirklamont Hall
with the oddest sense of compulsion upon him.
He must see to it that the girl didn't go.
"I'm far from being unsympathetic to,"--he moved his head in the general
direction of the "Queen of Scots." "But, speaking of flirtation, I can't
help hoping your friend won't carry _my_ friend off to London."
Miss von Schwarzenberg's air of dreamy sentimentality dropped from her
as the petals of an overblown rose at some rude touch. She stood bare of
all but the essential woman with never a grace to clothe her. "What on
_earth_ are you talking about? Does she _mean_ to carry him off...?"
Napier shrugged. "I can only say that it's highly probable if Miss Ellis
goes to London that Mr. Grant will find an excuse for going too."
"You'd have to prevent that. What would his father, what would Lady
Grant think of...." She stopped there, as having indicated some
unsuitableness even greater than might appear.
"All the more, then," said Napier, as though she had given out of those
close-shut lips some damning fact, "all the more we ought to keep an eye
on them. But if they are in London--there'll be only one of us 'to keep
an eye'--" She kept both of hers on Napier. "You'd be here," he added,
"and I'd be sweltering in London."
"You, too, in Nan's train!"
"Oh, dear, no!" he laughed. "In Julian's, catching up what Miss Ellis
designs to let fall."
"You, too!" she repeated, as though the calamity were greater than she
could grasp.
He nodded. "I'd have to. Especially after what you ... didn't say. And
to go to London now would be an awful sell for both of us."
"For both of us?" she inquired with a little catch.
"For Julian and me. My holiday begins in ten days, and we were counting
on having it in Scotland. You see," he explained, "we've looked forward
to these next weeks for over a year. We've spent our summers together
ever since Eton days. If Julian goes, I've got to go too. And I should
look on such a necessity,"--he gazed upon the lady as he spoke, with
eyes well practised in conveying tender regretfulness--"I should look on
it as a personal misfortune."
The stricture about her mouth relaxed. The lips even trembled a little.
Napier couldn't imagine himself actually making love to Miss von
Schwarzenberg. But he could easily imagine himself kissing that
beautiful mouth of hers. So easily, indeed, that with some abruptness he
turned away.
It was lucky he had.
"There she is!" Out of a fiery cloud, Madge McIntyre, on tiptoe, looked
in at the window. Her schoolboy brother, behind her, was grinning.
"Bobby's won his bet!" she called out derisively to the world in
general. The wind of her scorn stirred in her flaming hair. Wildfire
tossed it back to say to her companion, "She has been able to tear
herself away from her American!"
"I've been looking for you," said Miss Greta, calmly. "Come round."
"Looking for me! Oh, _my_!" A final shake of the flaming mane, and as if
Wildfire's fury had shriveled her; had burnt both of them up, she and
Bobby vanished.
Napier made for the library, thanking his stars for the interruption.
What in the name of common sense had he been about to do? To saddle
himself with a flirtation--or a relation of some sort--with this foreign
young woman from whom, with considerable expenditure of skill, he had
kept clear for over a year!
"Mr. Napier,"--she overtook him on the library threshold--"I can't have
you thinking me ungrateful. I appreciate--_do_ believe me, how
particularly kind and thoughtful--yes, chivalrous, you've shown
yourself--"
With genuine amazement Napier faced her again. "What--a--I don't
understand...."
"Oh, I can well believe you do these things--these generous, delicate
things almost without thinking." Before he knew what she was about, she
had found his hand. She was pressing it in both of hers. She held up her
face--or, as it seemed, her lips. He backed away. "I shall _never_
forget," she said in her intense whisper, "your putting me on my guard
like this. And I may be able to be of use to you before we've done.
Meggie, where are you, child?"