"Oh, don't throw that sort of thing at me," he flamed out, striding up and down. "Steptoe's been putting that into your head. He's strong on the sentimental stuff. You and he are in a conspiracy against me.

That's what it is. It's a conspiracy. He's got something up his sleeve--I don't know what--and he's using you as his tool. But you don't come it over me. I'm wise, I am. I'm a fool too. I know it well enough. But I'm not such a fool as to----"

She was frightened. He was going "off the hooks." She knew the signs of it. This rapid speech, one word leading to another, had always been her mother's first sign of super-excitement, until it ended in a scream. If he were to scream she would be more terrified than she had ever been in her life. She had never heard a man scream; but then she had never seen a man grow hysterical.

His utterance was the more clear-cut and distinct the faster it became.

"I know what it is. Steptoe thinks I'm going insane, and he's made you think so too. That's why you want to get away. You're afraid of me.

Well, I don't wonder at it; but you're not going. See? You're not going. You'll go when I send you; but you'll not go before. See? I've married you, haven't I? When all is said and done you're my wife. My wife!" He laughed, between gritted teeth. "My wife! That's my wife!"

He pointed at her. "Rashleigh Allerton who thought so much of himself has married _that_--and she's trying to do the generous by him----"

Going up to him timidly, she laid her hand on his arm. "Say, mister, would you mind countin' ten?"

The appeal took him so much by surprise that, both in his speech and in his walk, he stopped abruptly. She began to count, slowly, and marking time with her forefinger.

"One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten."

He stared at her as if it was she who had gone "off the hooks." "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, nothin'. Now you can begin again."

"Begin what?"

"What you was--what you were sayin'."

"What I was saying?" He rubbed his hand across his forehead, which was wet with cold perspiration. "Well, what was I saying?"

He was not only dazed, but a pallor stole over his skin, the more ghastly in contrast with his black hair and his scarlet dressing-gown.

"Isn't there no place you can lay down? I always laid momma down after a spell of this kind. It did her good to sleep and she always slept."

He said, absently: "There's a couch in the library. I can't go back to bed."

"No, you don't want to go back to bed," she agreed, as if she was humoring a child. "You wouldn't sleep there----"

"I haven't slept for two nights," he pleaded, in excuse for himself, "not since----"

Taking him by the arm she led him into the library, which was in an ell behind the back drawing-room. It was a big, book-lined room with worn, shiny, leather-covered furnishings. On the shiny, leather-covered couch was a cushion which she shook up and smoothed out. Over its foot lay an afghan the work of the late Mrs. Allerton.

"Now, lay down."

He stretched himself out obediently, after which she covered him with the afghan. When he had closed his eyes she pa.s.sed her hand across his forehead, on which the perspiration was still thick and cold. She remembered that a bottle of Florida water and a paper fan were among the luxuries of the back spare room.

"Don't you stir," she warned him. "I'm goin' to get you something."

Absorbed in her tasks as nurse she forgot to make the sentimental reflections in which she would otherwise have indulged. Back to the room from which she had fled she hurried with no thought that she was doing so. From the grave of hope she disinterred a half dozen of the spider-web handkerchiefs to which a few hours previously she had bid a touching adieu. With handkerchiefs, fan, and Florida water, she flew back to her patient, who opened his eyes as she approached.

"I don't want to be fussed over----" he was beginning, fretfully.

"Lie still," she commanded. "I know what to do. I'm used to people who are sick--up here."

"Up here" was plainly the forehead which she mopped softly with a specimen from Margot's Parisian consignment. He closed his eyes. His features relaxed to an expression of relief. Relief gave place to repose when he felt her hand with the cool scented essence on his brow. It pa.s.sed and pa.s.sed again, lightly, soothingly, consolingly.

Drowsily he thought that it was Barbara's hand, but a Barbara somehow transformed, and grown tenderer.

He was asleep. She sat fanning him till a feeble daylight through an uncurtained window warned her to switch off the electricity. Coming back to her place, she continued to fan him, quietly and deftly, with no more than a motion of the wrist. She had the nurse's wrist, slender, flexible; the nurse's hand, strong, shapely, with practical spatulated finger-tips. After all, he was in some degree the drowning unconscious prince, and she the little mermaid.

"He'll be ashamed when he wakes up. He'll not like to find me sittin'

here."

It was broad daylight now. He was as sound asleep as a child. Since she couldn't disturb him by rising she rose. Since she couldn't disturb him even by kissing him she kissed him. But she wouldn't kiss his lips, nor so much as his cheek or his brow. Very humbly she knelt and kissed his feet, outlined beneath the afghan. Then she stole away.

Chapter XV

The interlacing of destinies is such that you will not be surprised to learn that the further careers of Letty Gravely, of Barbara Walbrook, of Rashleigh Allerton now turned on Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, whose name not one of the three was ever destined to hear.

On his couch in the library Allerton slept till after nine, waking in a confusion which did not preclude a sense of refreshment. At the same minute Madame Simone was finishing her explanations to Mademoiselle Coucoul as to what was to be done to the seal-brown costume, which Steptoe had added to Letty's wardrobe, in order to conceal the fact that it was a model of a season old, and not the new creation its purchasers supposed. Taking in her instructions with Gallic precision mademoiselle was already at work when Miss Tina Vanzetti paused at her door. The door was that of a small French-paneled room, once the boudoir of the owner of the Flemish chateau, but set apart now by Madame Simone for jobs requiring deftness.

Miss Vanzetti, whose Neapolitan grandfather had begun his American career as a boot-black in Brooklyn, was of the Americanized type of her race. She could not, of course, eliminate her Latinity of eye and tress nor her wild luxuriance of bust, but English was her mother-tongue, and the chewing of gum her national pastime. She chewed it now, slowly, thoughtfully, as she stood looking in on Mademoiselle Odette, who was turning the skirt this way and that, searching out the almost invisible traces of use which were to be removed.

"So she's give you that to do, has she? Some stunt, I'll say. Gee, she's got her gall with her, old Simone, puttin' that off on the public as something new. If I had a dollar for every time Mamie Gunn has walked in and out to show it to customers I'd buy a set of silver fox."

Mademoiselle's smile was radiant, not because she had radiance to shed, but because her lips and teeth framed themselves that way. She too was of her race, alert, vivacious, and as neat as a trivet, as became a former midinette of the rue de la Paix and a daughter of Batignolles.

"Madame she t'ink it all in de beezeness," she contented herself with saying.

With her left hand Miss Vanzetti put soft touches to the big black coils of her back hair. "See that kid that all these things is goin'

to? Gee, but she's beginnin' to step out. I know her. Spotted her the minute she come in to try on. Me and she went to the same school.

Lived in the same street. Name of Letty Gravely."

Seeing that she was expected to make a response mademoiselle could think of nothing better than to repeat in her pretty staccato English: "Name of Let-ty Grav-el-ly."

"Stepfather's name was Judson Flack. Company-promoter he called himself. Mother croaked three or four years ago, just before we moved to Harlem. Never saw no more of her till she walked in here with the old white slaver what's payin' for the outfit. Gee, you needn't tell me! S'pose she'll hit the pace till some fella chucks her. Gee, I'm sorry. Awful slim chance a girl'll get when some guy with a wad blows along and wants her." The theme exhausted Miss Vanzetti asked suddenly: "Why don't you never come to the Lantern?"

In her broken English mademoiselle explained that she didn't know the American dances, but that a fella had promised to teach her the steps.

She had met him at the house of a cousin who was married to a waiter chez Bouquin. Ver' beautiful fella, he was, and had invited her to a chop suey dinner that evening, with the dance at the Lantern to wind up with. Most ver' beautiful fella, single, and a detective.

"Good for you," Miss Vanzetti commanded. "If you don't dance you might as well be dead, I'll say. Keeps you thin, too; and the music at the Lantern is swell."

The incident is so slight that to get its significance you must link it up with the sound of the telephone which, as a simultaneous happening, was waking Judson Flack from his first real sleep after an uncomfortable night. Nothing but the fear lest by ignoring the call the great North Dakota Oil Company whose shares would soon be on the market, would be definitely launched without his a.s.sistance dragged him from his bed.

"h.e.l.lo?"

A woman's voice inquired: "Is this Hudson 283-J?"

"You bet."