Mr. Heatherbloom felt vaguely disturbed; his heart pounded oddly. He half started to get up, then sank back. He waited for another peal of laughter; it didn't come. Why?

"Of course I should have no objection to your being one of a train party," said Miss Dalrymple at length.

"That isn't just what I mean," returned the prince in his courtliest tones. But it wasn't hard to picture him now with a glitter in his gaze,--immovable, sure of himself.

There was a rather long pause; broken once more by Miss Dalrymple: "Shall we not return to the music room?"

That interval? What had it meant? Mute acquiescence on her part, a down-turning of the imperious lashes before the steadfastness of the other's look?--tacit a.s.sent? The casting off of barriers, the opening of the gates of the divine inner citadel? Mr. Heatherbloom was on his feet now. He took a step toward the door, but paused. Of course! Something clammy had fallen from his hand; lay damp and dripping on the rag. He stared at it--a bar of soap.

What had he been about to do--he!--to step in there--into the conservatory, with his bar of soap?--grotesque anomaly! His face wore a strange expression; he was laughing inwardly. Oh, how he was laughing at himself! Fortunately he had a saving sense of humor.

What had next been said in the conservatory? What was now being said there? He heard words but they had no meaning for him. "I will send you the second volume of _The Fire and Sword_ trilogy," went on the prince.

"One of my ancestors figures in it. The hero--who is not exactly a hero, perhaps, in the heroine's mind, for a time--does what he must do; he has what he must have. He claims what nature made for him; he knows no other law than that of his imperishable inner self. I, too, must rise to those heights my eyes are set on. It must be; it is written. We are fatalists, we Russians near the Tartar line! And you and I"--fervently--"were predestined for each other."

Mr. Heatherbloom had but dimly heard the prince's words and failed to grasp them; he didn't want to; his head was humming. Her light answer sounded as if she might be very happy. Yes; naturally. She was made to be happy, to dance about like sunshine. He liked to think of the picture. The prince, too, was necessary to complete it; necessary, reaffirmed Mr. Heatherbloom to himself, pulling with damp fingers at the inconsequential lock of hair over his brow. Of course, if the prince could be eliminated from that mental picture of her felicity?--but he was a part of the composition; big, barbaric, romantic looking! In fact, it wouldn't have been an adequate composition at all without him; no, indeed!

And something rose in Mr. Heatherbloom's throat; one of his eyes--or was it both of them?--seemed a little misty. That confounded soap! It was strong; a bit of it in the corner of the eyes made one blink.

The two in the conservatory said something more; but the young man in the "boudoir" didn't catch it at all well. By some intense mental process, or the sound of the scrubber on the edge of the tub, he found he could shut a definite cognizance of words almost entirely from his sense of hearing. The prince's voice seemed slightly louder; that, in a general way, was patent; no doubt the occasion warranted more fervor on his part. Mr. Heatherbloom tried to imagine what she would look like in--so to say, a very complaisant mood; not with flaming glance full of aversion and scorn!

Violet eyes replete only with love lights! Mr. Heatherbloom bent lower over the tub; his four-footed charge Beauty, contentedly immersed to the neck in nice comfortably warm water, licked him. He did not feel the touch; the fragrance of orchids seemed to come to him above that other more healthful, less agreeable odor of special cleansing preparation.

Her accents were heard once more. Those final words sounded like a soft command. Naturally! She could command the prince--now! Mr. Heatherbloom heard a door close--a replica of the harsh click he had listened to when she had shut the front door so unceremoniously on him a short time before. Then he heard nothing more. He gazed around him as he sat with his hands tightly closed. Had it been only a dream? Naughty whined; Sardanapolis edged toward him and mechanically he began to brush him down until he shone as sleek and shining as his a.s.syrian namesake.

CHAPTER V

A CONTRETEMPS

More days pa.s.sed and Mr. Heatherbloom continued to linger in his last position. It promised to be a record-making situation from the standpoint of longevity; he had never "lasted" at any one task so long before. Miss Van Rolsen, to his consternation, seemed to unbend somewhat before him, as if she were beginning--actually!--to be more prepossessed in his favor. These evidences that he was rising in the stern lady's good graces filled Mr. Heatherbloom with new dismay; destiny certainly seemed to be making a mock of him.

A week went by; two weeks--three, and still twice a day he continued to march to and from the park with his charges. The faces of all the nurse-maids and others who frequented the big parallelogram of green became familiar to him; he learned to know by sight the people who rode in the park and had a distant acquaintance with the squirrels.

He became, for the first time, aware one day, from the perusal of a certain newspaper he always purchased now, that the prince had returned to Russia. Although Miss Dalrymple refused to be interviewed, or to confirm or deny any statement, it was generally understood (convenient phrase!) that the wedding would take place in the fall at the old Van Rolsen home. The prince had left America in his yacht--the _Nevski_--for St. Petersburg, announced the society editor. After a special interview with the czar and a few necessary business arrangements, the n.o.bleman would return at once for his bride. And, perhaps, he--Mr.

Heatherbloom--would still be at his post of duty at the Van Rolsen house!

Since the day the prince had been with Miss Dalrymple in the conservatory, Mr. Heatherbloom had not seen, or rather heard, that gentleman at the house. But then he--Mr. Heatherbloom--belonged in the rear, and, no doubt, the prince had continued to be a daily, or twice, or three-times-a-day visitor to Miss Van Rolsen's elegant, if somewhat stiff, reception rooms. Now, however, he would come no more until he came finally to "take with him the bride--"

The thought was in Horatio's mind when for a third time he encountered her, face to face, on a landing, near a stair, or somewhere in the house, he couldn't afterward just exactly recall where, only that she looked through him, without recognition, speech or movement of an eyelash, as if he had been a thing of thin air! But a thing that became suddenly imbued with real life; inspired with purpose! She had permitted him to remain in the house, knowing his professed helplessness in the matter--she _must_ have divined that--playing with him as a tigress with a victim (yes; a tigress! Mr. Heatherbloom wildly, on the spur of the moment, compared her in his mind to that fierce beautiful creature). He would force her to tell him to go; she would certainly not suffer him to remain there another day if he told her--

"Miss Dalrymple, there is something I ought to say. I could not help overhearing you and the prince, one day, several weeks ago, in the conservatory."

After he said it, he asked himself what excuse he had for saying it. If he had stopped to a.n.a.lyze the impulse, he would have seen how absurd, unreasonable and uncalled for his words were. But he had no time to a.n.a.lyze; like a diver who plunges suddenly, on some mad impulse, into a whirlpool, he had cast himself into the vortex.

She looked at him and there was nothing _in nubibus_ to her about his presence now. The violet eyes saw a substance--such as it was; recognized a reality--of its kind! Before the clouds gathering in their depths, Mr. Heatherbloom felt inclined to excuse himself and go on; but instead, he waited. There was even a furtive smile on his lips that belied a quick throbbing in his breast; he thrust one hand as debonairly as possible into his trousers pocket. His att.i.tude might have been interpreted to express indifference, recklessness, or one or more of the synonymous feelings. She thought so badly of him already that she couldn't think much worse, and--

"So,"--had she been paler than her wont, or had excess of pa.s.sion sent the color from her face?--"you are a spy as _well!_"

His head shot back a little at the accent on the "well", but he thrust his hand yet deeper into the pocket and strove not to lose that a.s.sumed expression of ease.

"I--a spy? I did not intend to--you--" He paused; if he wished to set himself right in her eyes, why should he have spoken at all? Mr.

Heatherbloom saw he had not quite argued out this matter as he should have done; his bearing became less a.s.sured.

"Is there"--her voice low and tense--"anything despicable, mean, paltry enough that you are not?"

Mr. Heatherbloom moistened his lips; he strove to think of a reply, sufficiently comprehensive to cover all the features of the case, but not finding one at once apologetic and yet not so, remained silent. He made, however, a little gesture with his hand--the one that wasn't in the pocket. That seemed to imply something; he didn't quite know what.

She came slightly closer and his heart began to pound harder. A breath of perfume seemed to ascend between them; the arrows in her eyes darted into his. "How much--_what_ did you hear?" she demanded.

"I--am really not sure--" Was it the orchids which perfumed the air? He had always heard they were odorless. The question intruded; his brain seemed capable of a dual capacity, or of a general incapacity of simultaneous considerations. He might possibly have stepped back a little now but there was a wall, the broad blank wall behind him. He wished he were that void she had first seemed to see--or not to see--in him. "I didn't hear very much--the first part, I imagine--"

"The first part?" Roses of anger burned on her cheek. "And afterward?--spy!" Her little hands were tight against her side.

He hesitated; her foot moved; all that was pa.s.sionate, vibrant in her nature seemed concentrated on him.

"I don't think I caught much; but I heard him say something about fate, or destiny, and men coming into their own--that old Greek kind of talk, don't you know--" He spoke lightly. Why not? There was no need of being melodramatic. What had to be must be. He couldn't alter her, or what she would think. "Then--then I was too busy to catch more--that is, if I had wanted to--which I didn't!" He was forced to add the last; it burst from his lips with sudden pa.s.sion; then they curved a little as if to ask excuse for a superfluity.

She continued to look at him, and he looked at her now, squarely; a strange calm descended upon him.

"And that," he said, "is all I heard, or knew, until this morning, when I saw in the paper," dreamily, "he was coming back in the fall for--"

The color concentrated with sudden swift brightness in her cheeks. "You saw that--any one--every one saw--Oh--"

She started to speak further, then bit her lip, while the lace stirred beneath the white throat. Mr. Heatherbloom had not followed what she said, was cognizant only of her anger. Her eyes were fastened on something beyond him, but returned soon, very soon.

"Oh," she said, "I might have known--if I let you stay, through pity, you would--"

"Pity!" said Mr. Heatherbloom.

"Because I did not want to turn you out into the street--"

She spoke the words fiercely. Mr. Heatherbloom seemed now quite impervious to stab or thrust.

"I permitted you to remain for"--she stopped--"remembering what you once were; who your people were! What"--flinging the words at him--"you might have been. Instead--of what you are!"

Mr. Heatherbloom gazed now without wincing; an unnatural absence of feeling seemed to have pa.s.sed over his features, making them almost mask-like. It was as if he stood in some new pellucid atmosphere of his own.

"Of course," he said, as half speaking to himself, "I must have earned my salary, or Miss Van Rolsen wouldn't have retained me. So I am not a recipient of charity. Therefore,"--did the word suggest far-away school-boy lessons on syllogisms and sophistries--"I have no right to feel offended in that you let me remain, you say, 'through pity', when as a matter of fact it was impossible for me to tender my resignation, in view of--" He finished the rest of a rather involved logical conclusion to himself, taking his hand out of his pocket now and pa.s.sing it lightly, in a somewhat dragging fashion, over his eyes. Then he gazed momentarily beyond, as if he saw something appertaining to the "auld lang syne", but recalled himself with a start to the beautiful face, the threads of gold, the violet eyes.

"You will see to it now, of course"--his manner became brisk, almost businesslike--"that I, as a factor, am eliminated here? That, I may conclude, is your intention?"

"Perhaps," said the girl, a sibyl for intentness now, "you would prefer to go? To be asked to! You would find the streets"--with swift discerning contempt--"more profitable for your purpose than here, where you are known."

"Perhaps," a.s.sented Mr. Heatherbloom. He spoke quite airily; then suddenly stiffened.

At his words, the sight of him as he uttered them, she came abruptly yet nearer; her breath swept and seemed to scorch his cheek.