imaginings. "I never saw any one look less wicked than yourself. Are you wicked?" he added, audaciously.

She flirted her fan at him, and her eyes danced so coquettishly that he no longer saw the drooping lids. "_Our_ wickedness takes the form of flirtation,--heartless and unprincipled. Ask Captain Hastings. We are all refusing him in turn. Talk to me about England, while I study you and determine which line to take. I haven't typed you yet--I never make the fatal mistake of generalising."

As he answered the questions she put to him in rapid succession, his own impressions changed several times. He was charmed by her intelligence, occasionally by a flash of something deeper. Again, he saw only the thrilling beauty of her figure, and once something vibrated across his brain so fleeting that he barely realised it was an echo of the repulsion her mother had inspired.

"Well? What are your conclusions?" she demanded suddenly.

"I--what?"

"You have been sizing me up. I want to know the result."

"You shall not," he said stubbornly. "I--I beg pardon; I have lost the knack of polite fencing."

"I had read that Englishmen were blunt and truthful beings--either through conscious superiority or lack of complexity, I forget which. My father and the few others out here are almost denationalised."

"Well, I did beg pardon. And when a man is talking and receiving impressions at the same time, the impressions are not very well defined."

"But you think quickly and jump at conclusions. And minds of that sort sometimes make mistakes."

"I frequently make mistakes. Among the few things I have learned is not to judge people at sight--nor in a lifetime, for that matter. I certainly don't pretend to size up women, particularly women like yourself."

"That was very neat. Why myself? I am a very transparent young person."

She flirted her lashes at him, but he fancied he saw a gleam of defiance shoot between them.

"You are not transparent. If you are kind enough to let me see a good deal of you, I fancy I shall know something of twenty Miss Randolphs by the time I leave California."

"Some you will like, and some you will not," she replied, with calm disregard of her previous a.s.sertion. "Well, I shall know what you think of me before long--don't make any mistake about that. Shall we flirt, by the way, or shall we merely be friends?"

"The last condition would give greater range to your inherent wickedness."

She laughed, apparently with much amus.e.m.e.nt. "I have a good many friends, nevertheless,--real friends. I have made it my particular art, and have rules and regulations. When they transgress, I fine them."

"Suppose we begin that way. I'd like to know the rules."

"N-o, I don't think I want to. You see, the rule I most strictly enforce is that when the party of the other part transgresses, I never sit with him in a conservatory again."

"Let us cut the rules by all means. I feel a poor helpless male, quite at your mercy: I haven't been in a conservatory for years. Although I've made a point of seeing something of the society of every capital I've visited, I've forgotten the very formula of flirtation. I might take a few lessons of Hastings--"

"Oh, don't! What a combination that would be! I will teach you all that it is necessary for you to know."

"Heaven help me. I shall be wise and sad when I leave California.

However, I face my fate like a man; whatever happens, I shall not run.

Just now it is my duty to wait on you. Shall I bring your supper here?"

"Yes--do. You will find a table behind that palm. Draw it up. There. Now bring what you like for yourself, but only a few oysters for me."

He returned in a few moments followed by a man, who spread the table with delicate fare.

Miss Randolph nibbled her oysters prettily. Thorpe was about to fill her gla.s.s with champagne, when she shook her head.

"I cannot," she said. "It goes to my head--one drop."

"Then don't, by all means. I hope you like it, and are resisting a temptation."

"I detest it, as it happens. If you want to see me in the high heroic role, which I infer you admire, you must devise a temptation of another sort."

"I think your dear little s.e.x should be protected from all temptation. I rather like the Oriental way of doing things."

"Don't you flatter yourself that a wall fifteen feet high, and covered with broken gla.s.s, would protect a woman from temptations, if she wanted them. A man, to keep a woman inside that wall, must embody all the temptations himself."

Thorpe looked at her, and drew his brows together.

"That was a curious remark for a girl to make," he said, coldly.

"You mean it would be if I were English. But I am not only American, but Californian, born and brought up in a city where they are trying to be civilised and succeeding indifferently well. Do you suppose I can help seeing what life is? I should be next door to an idiot if I could."

"I hardly know whether you would be more interesting if you had been brought up in England. No," he added, reflectively, after a moment, "I don't think you would be."

"What you really think is, that I should not be half so interesting, but much more ideal."

"If I thought anything of the sort, it was by a purely mechanical process," he said, reddening. "I have lived out of England too much to be insular in all my notions."

"I don't believe an Englishman ever changes on certain points, of which woman is one; heredity is too strong. If you sat down and thought it all over, you'd find that although you could generalise on a more liberal scale than some of your countrymen, your own personal ideals were much the same as theirs."

"Possibly, but as I don't intend to marry till I'm forty,--when I intend to stand for Parliament,--I'm not bothering about ideals at present."

"That was a more insular remark than you evidently imagine.

However--speaking of ideals, I should say that California generated them more liberally than any other country--through sheer force of contrast.

I have grown rather morbid on the subject of good people, myself. I grow more exacting every month of my life; and the first thing I look for in a new man's face is to see, first, whether he has a mind, and then, whether it controls all the rest of him. I've seen too much of practical life to have indulged much in dreams and heroes; but I've let my imagination go somewhat, and I picture a man with all the virtues that you don't see in combination out here, and living with him in some old European city where there are narrow crooked streets, and beautiful architecture, and the most exquisite music in the cathedrals."

Her voice had rattled on lightly, and she smiled more than once during her long speech. But her eyes did not smile; they had a curious, almost hard, intentness which forced Thorpe to believe that her brain was casting up something more than the froth of a pa.s.sing mood.

"I am afraid you won't meet your hero of all the virtues," he said, "even in a picturesque old continental town. But I think I understand your feeling. It is the principle of good in you demanding its proper companionship and setting."

"Yes, that is it," she said, softly. "That is it. I am no worse than other girls; but I flirt and waste my time abominably. It would be all right if I did no more thinking than they do; but I do so much that, if I were inclined to be religious, I believe I'd run, one of these days, into a convent. However, I can always look forward to the old European town."

"Alone?"

"I suppose when your left eyebrow goes up like that you're trying to flirt. I don't know that I'd mind being alone, particularly. It would be several thousand times better than the society of some of the people I've been forced to a.s.sociate with. I love art,--particularly architecture and music,--and I'm sure I could weave a romance round myself. Yes, I'm sure I should love it as much as I hate this country,"

she added with such vehemence that Thorpe set down his fork abruptly.

"You are very pale," he said; "I think you had better take a little champagne. Indeed, you must be utterly worn out. I can imagine what a lot you have had to do and think of to-day."

He filled her gla.s.s, and she drank the champagne quickly.

"I have a shocking head," she said; "but I _need_ this. I have been out eight nights in succession, and have been on the go all day besides.

Mother never attends to anything; and father, of course, is too busy to bother with parties. Cochrane and I have to do everything."

"Tell me some more of your ideals," said Thorpe. He was not sure that he liked her, but she piqued his curiosity.