"At Mrs. Cheston's ball last week."

"Have you seen her since?"

"No--she won't let me come near her. Mr. Seymour pa.s.sed me yesterday and hardly spoke to me."

St. George canted his chair and zigzagged it toward the blazing hearth; then he said thoughtfully, without looking at the young man:

"Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish! Have you told your father?"

"No--he wouldn't understand."

"And I know you didn't tell your mother." This came with the tone of positive conviction.

"No--and don't you. Mother is daft on the subject. If she had her way, father would never put a drop of wine on the table. She says it is ruining the county--but that's mother's way."

St. George stooped over, fondled one of the dogs for a moment--two had followed Todd out of the room--settled back in his chair again, and still looking into the fire, said slowly:

"Bad business--bad business, Harry! Kate is as proud as Lucifer and dislikes nothing on earth so much as being made conspicuous. Tell me exactly what happened."

"Well, there isn't anything to tell," replied the young fellow, raising his head and leaning back in his chair, his face the picture of despair.

"We were all in the library and the place was boiling-hot, and they had two big bowls, one full of eggnog and the other full of apple-toddy: and the next thing I knew I was out in the hall and met Kate on the stairs.

She gave a little smothered scream, and moaned--'Oh, Harry!--and you promised me!'--and then she put her hands to her face, as if to shut me out of her sight. That sobered me somewhat, and after I got out on the porch into the night air and had pulled myself together, I tried to find her and apologize, but she had gone home, although the ball wasn't half over.

"Then this was not the first time?" He was still at the hot coals, both hands outfanned, to screen his face from the blaze.

"No--I'm sorry to say it wasn't. I told her I would never fail her again, and she forgave me, but I don't know what she'll do now. She never forgives anybody who breaks his word--she's very queer about it. That's what I came to see you about. I haven't slept much nights, thinking it over, and so I had the mare saddled, as soon as it got light, hoping you would be home. Todd thought you might be--he saw Dr.

Teackle's Joe, who said you were all coming to-day."

Again there was a long pause, during which Temple continued to study the coals through his open fingers, the young man sitting hunched up in his chair, his handsome head dropped between his shoulders, his glossy chestnut hair, a-frouze with his morning ride, fringing his collar behind.

"Harry," said St. George, knocking the ashes slowly from his pipe on the edge of the fender, and turning his face for the first time toward him,--"didn't I hear something before I went away about a ball at your father's--or a dance--or something, when your engagement was to be announced?"

The boy nodded.

"And was it not to be something out of the ordinary?" he continued, looking at the boy from under his eyelids--"Teackle certainly told me so--said that your mother had already begun to get the house in order--"

Again Harry nodded--as if he had been listening to an indictment, every word of which he knew was true.

St. George roused himself and faced his guest: "And yet you took this time, Harry, to--"

The boy threw up both hands in protest:

"Don't!--DON'T! Uncle George! It's the ball that makes it all the worse.

That's why I've got no time to lose; that's why I've haunted this place waiting for you to get back. Mother will be heart-broken if she finds out and I don't know what father would do."

St. George laid his empty pipe on the table and straightened his body in the chair until his broad shoulders filled the back. Then his brow darkened; his indignation was getting the better of him.

"I don't know what has come over you young fellows, Harry!" he at last broke out, his eyes searching the boy's. "You don't seem to know how to live. You've got to pull a shoat out of a trough to keep it from overeating itself, but you shouldn't be obliged to pull a gentleman away from his gla.s.s. Good wine is good food and should be treated as such. My cellar is stocked with old Madeira--some port--some fine sherries--so is your father's. Have you ever seen him abuse them?--have you ever seen Mr. Horn or Mr. Kennedy, or any of our gentlemen around here, abuse them? It's scandalous, Harry! d.a.m.nable! I love you, my son--love you in a way you know nothing of, but you've got to stop this sort of thing right off. And so have these young roysterers you a.s.sociate with. It's getting worse every day. I don't wonder your dear mother feels about it as she does. But she's always been that way, and she's always been right about it, too, although I didn't use to think so." This last came with a lowered voice and a deep, indrawn sigh, and for the moment checked the flow of his wrath.

Harry hung his head still lower, but he did not attempt to defend himself.

"Who else were making vulgarians of themselves at Mrs. Cheston's?" St.

George continued in a calmer tone, stretching his shapely legs until the soles of his shoes touched the fender.

"Mark Gilbert, Tom Murdoch, Langdon Willits, and--"

"Willits, eh?--Well, I should expect it of Willits. He wasn't born a gentleman--that is, his grandfather wasn't a gentleman--married his overseer's daughter, if I remember right:--but you come of the best blood in the State,--egad!--none better! You have something to maintain--some standard to keep up. A Rutter should never be found guilty of anything that would degrade his name. You seem to forget that--you--d.a.m.n me, Harry!--when I think of it all--and of Kate--my sweet, lovely Kate,--and how you have made her suffer--for she loves you--no question of that--I feel like wringing your neck! What the devil do you mean, Sir?" He was up on his feet now, pacing the room, the dogs following his every movement with their brown agate eyes, their soft, silky ears straightening and falling.

So far the young fellow had not moved nor had he offered a word in defence. He knew his Uncle George--better let him blow it all out, then the two could come together. At last he said in a contrite tone--his hands upraised:

"Don't scold me, Uncle George. I've scolded myself enough--just say something to help me. I can't give Kate up--I'd sooner die. I've always made a fool of myself--maybe I'll quit doing it after this. Tell me how I can straighten this out. She won't see me--maybe her father won't.

He and my father--so Tom Warfield told me yesterday--had a talk at the club. What they said I don't know, but Mr. Seymour was pretty mad--that is, for him--so Tom thought from the way he spoke."

"And he ought to be mad--raging mad! He's only got one daughter, and she the proudest and loveliest thing on earth, and that one he intends to give to you"--Harry looked up in surprise--"Yes--he told me so. And here you are breaking her heart before he has announced it to the world. It's worse than d.a.m.nable, Harry--it's a CRIME!"

For some minutes he continued his walk, stopping to look out of the window, his eyes on the mare who, with head up and restless eyes, was on the watch for her master's return; then he picked up his pipe from the table, threw himself into his chair again, and broke into one of his ringing laughs.

"I reckon it's because you're twenty, Harry, I forgot that. Hot blood--hot temper,--madcap dare-devil that you are--not a grain of common-sense. But what can you expect?--I was just like you at your age.

Come, now, what shall we do first?"

The young fellow rose and a smile of intense relief crept over his face.

He had had many such overhaulings from his uncle, and always with this ending. Whenever St. George let out one of those big, spontaneous, bubbling laughs straight from his heart, the trouble, no matter how serious, was over. What some men gained by anger and invective St.

George gained by good humor, ranging from the faint smile of toleration to the roar of merriment. One reason why he had so few enemies--none, practically--was that he could invariably disarm an adversary with a laugh. It was a fine old blade that he wielded; only a few times in his life had he been called upon to use any other--when some under-dog was maltreated, or his own good name or that of a friend was traduced, or some wrong had to be righted--then his face would become as hot steel and there would belch out a flame of denunciation that would scorch and blind in its intensity. None of these fiercer moods did the boy know;--what he knew was his uncle's merry side--his sympathetic, loving side,--and so, following up his advantage, he strode across the room, settled down on the arm of his uncle's chair, and put his arm about his shoulders.

"Won't you go and see her, please?" he pleaded, patting his back, affectionately.

"What good will that do? Hand me a match, Harry."

"Everything--that's what I came for."

"Not with Kate! She isn't a child--she's a woman," he echoed back between the puffs, his indignation again on the rise. "And she is different from the girls about here," he added, tossing the burned match in the fire. "When she once makes up her mind it stays made up."

"Don't let her make it up! Go and see her and tell her how I love her and how miserable I am. Tell her I'll never break another promise to her as long as I live. n.o.body ever holds out against you. Please, Uncle George! I'll never come to you for anything else in the world if you'll help me this time. And I won't drink another drop of anything you don't want me to drink--I don't care what father or anybody else says. Oh, you've GOT to go to her!--I can't stand it any longer! Every time I think of Kate hidden away over there where I can't get at her, it drives me wild. I wouldn't ask you to go if I could go myself and talk it out with her--but she won't let me near her--I've tried, and tried; and Ben says she isn't at home, and knows he lies when he says it! You will go, won't you?"

The smoke from his uncle's pipe was coming freer now--most of it escaping up the throat of the chimney with a gentle swoop.

"When do you want me to go?" He had already surrendered. When had he ever held out when a love affair was to be patched up?

"Now, right away."

"No,--I'll go to-night,--she will be at home then," he said at last, as if he had just made up his mind, the pipe having helped--"and do you come in about nine and--let me know when you are there, or--better still, wait in the hall until I come for you."

"But couldn't I steal in while you are talking?"

"No--you do just as I tell you. Not a sound out of you, remember, until I call you."

"But how am I to know? She might go out the other door and--"