Marie Louise confessed, "Well, I'd hardly say that."

She told Polly what she had told Mr. Verrinder of the appearance of Sir Joseph and Lady Webling, of their thrill at her resemblance to their dead daughter, of their plea that she leave the stage and enter their family, of her new life, and the outbreak of the war.

Major Widdicombe pounded on the door and said: "Are you girls going to talk all night? I've got to get up at seven and save the country."

Polly cried to him, "Go away," and to Marie Louise, "Go on."

Marie Louise began again, but just as she reached the first suspicions of Sir Joseph's loyalty she remembered the oath she had plighted to Verrinder and stopped short.

"I forgot! I can't!"

Polly groaned: "Oh, my G.o.d! You're not going to stop there! I loathe serials."

Marie Louise shook her head. "If only I could tell you; but I just can't! That's all; I can't!"

Polly turned her eyes up in despair. "Well, I might as well go to bed, I suppose. But I sha'n't sleep a wink. Tell me one thing, though. You weren't really a German spy, were you?"

"No, no! Of course not! I loathe everything German."

"Well, let the rest rest, then. So long as Lady Clifton-Wyatt is a liar I can stand the strain. If you had been a spy, I suppose I'd have to shoot you or something; but so long as you're not, you don't budge out of this house. Is that understood?"

Marie Louise nodded with a pathetic grat.i.tude, and Polly stamped a kiss on her brow like a notarial seal.

CHAPTER VIII

The next morning's paper announced that spring had officially arrived and been recognized at the Capitol--a certain Senator had taken off his wig. Washington accepted this as the sure sign that the weather was warm. It would not be officially autumn till that wig fell back into place.

There were less formal indications: for instance, the annual flower-duel between the two terraces on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue. The famous Emba.s.sy Terrace forsythias began it, and flaunted little fringes of yellow glory. The slopes of the Louise Home replied by setting their magnolia-trees on fire with flowers like lamps, flowers that hurried out ahead of their own leaves and then broke and covered the ground with great petals of shattered porcelain. The Emba.s.sy Terrace put out lamps of its own closer to the ground, but more gorgeous--irises in a row of blue, blue footlights.

The Louise Home, where gentlewomen of better days, amba.s.sadresses of an earlier regime, kept their state, had the last word, the word that could not be bettered, for it uttered wistaria, wistful lavender cl.u.s.ters weeping from the trellises in languorous grace.

Marie Louise, looking from her open window in Rosslyn, felt in the wind a sense of stroking fingers. The trees were brisk with hope. The river went its way in a more sparkling flow. The air blew from the very fountains of youth with a teasing blarney. She thought of Ross Davidge and smiled tenderly to remember his amiable earnestness. But she frowned to remember his engagement with Lady Clifton-Wyatt. She wondered what excuse she could invent to checkmate that woman.

Suddenly inspiration came to her. She remembered that she had forgotten to pay Davidge for the seat he surrendered her in the chair-car. She telephoned him at his hotel. He was out. She pursued him by wire travel till she found him in an office of the Shipping Board. He talked on the corner of a busy man's desk. She heard the busy man say with a taunting voice, "A lady for you, Davidge."

She could hear the embarra.s.sment in his voice. She was in for it now, and she felt silly when she explained why she bothered him. But she was stubborn, too. When he understood, he laughed with the constraint of a man bandying enforced gallantries on another man's telephone.

"I'd hate to be as honest as all that."

"It's not honesty," she persisted. "It's selfishness. I can't rest while the debt is on my mind."

He was perplexed. "I've got to see several men on the Shipping Board.

There's a big fight on between the wooden-ship fellows and the steel-ship men, and I'm betwixt and between 'em. I won't have time to run out to see you."

"I shouldn't dream of asking you. I was coming in to town, anyway."

"Oh! Well, then--well--er--when can I meet you?"

"Whenever you say! The Willard at--When shall you be free?"

"Not before four and then only for half an hour."

"Four it is."

"Fine! Thank you ever so much. I'll buy me a lot of steel with all that money you owe me."

Marie Louise put up the receiver. People have got so used to the telephone that they can see by it. Marie Louise could visualize Davidge angry with embarra.s.sment, confronting the important man whose office he had desecrated with this silly hammockese. She felt that she had made herself a nuisance and lost a trick. She had taken a deuce with her highest trump and had not captured the king.

Furthermore, to keep Davidge from meeting Lady Clifton-Wyatt would be only to-day's battle. There would still be to-morrows and the day-afters. Lady Clifton-Wyatt had declared herself openly hostile to Marie Louise, and would get her sooner or later. Flight from Washington would be the only safety.

But Marie Louise did not want to leave Washington. She loved Washington and the opportunities it offered a woman to do important work in the cosmopolitan whirl of its populace. But she could not live on at Polly Widdicombe's forever.

Marie Louise decided that her hour had struck. She must find a nook of her own. And she would have to live in it all by herself. Who was there to live with? She felt horribly deserted in life. She had looked at numerous houses and apartments from time to time. Apartments were costlier and fewer than houses. Since she was doomed to live alone, anyway, she might as well have a house. Her neighbors would more easily be kept aloof.

She sought a real-estate agent, Mr. Hailstorks, of the sort known as affable. But the dwellings he had to show were not even that. Places she had found not altogether odious before were rented now. Places that her heart went out to to-day proved to have been rented yesterday.

Finally she ran across a residence of a sort. She sighed to Mr.

Hailstorks:

"Well, a carpenter made it--so let it pa.s.s for a house. I'll take it if it has a floor. I'm like Gelett Burgess: 'I don't so much care for a door, but this crawling around without touching the ground is getting to be quite a bore.'"

"Yes, ma'am," said Mr. Hailstorks, bewilderedly.

He unlocked the door of somebody's tenantless ex-home with its lonely furniture, and Marie Louise intruded, as one does, on the chairs, rugs, pictures, and vases that other people have been born with, have achieved, or have had thrust upon them. She wondered, as one does, what sort of beings they could have been that had selected such things to live among, and what excuse they had had for them.

Mr. Hailstorks had a surprise in store for her. He led her to the rear of the house and raised a shade. Instead of the expectable back yard, Marie Louise was startled to see a n.o.ble landscape leap into view. The house loomed over a precipitous descent into a great valley. A stream ran far below, and then the cliffs rose again opposite in a succession of uplifting terraces that reminded her somehow of Richmond Hill superbly built up above the silver Thames.

"Whatever is all that?" she cried.

"Rock Creek Park, ma'am," said Mr. Hailstorks, who had a sincere real-estately affection for parks, since they raised the price of adjoining property and made renting easier.

"And what's the price of all this grandeur?"

"Only three hundred a month," said Mr. Hailstorks.

"Only!" gasped Marie Louise.

"It will be four hundred in a week or two--yes ma'am," said Mr.

Hailstorks.

So Marie Louise seized it before its price rose any farther.

She took a last look at Rock Creek Park, henceforth her private game-preserve. As she stared, an idea came to her. She needed one. The park, it occurred to her, was an excellent wilderness to get lost in--with Ross Davidge.