"Because I was such a perfect prig. I'll do anything you like for Miss Lane. I mean to say, I'll arrange for a musicale and ask her to sing."

The color rushed into Dan's face. How bully of her! What a brick this showed her to be! He said: "You are as sweet as a peach!"

The d.u.c.h.ess' hands were still on his shoulders. She could feel his rapid breath.

"I don't make you think of a box of candy now?" she murmured, and the boy covered her hand with his own.

"I don't know what you make me think of-it is bully, whatever it is!"

If the Spanish tapestry could only have reversed its idea, and if the immaculate lady, or even one of the rabbits, could have drawn a sword to protect the Green Knight, it would have been pa.s.sing well. But the woven work, when it first had been embroidered, was done for ever; it was irrevocable in its mistaken idea, that it is only the _woman_ who needs protection!

CHAPTER XIII-THE FACE OF LETTY LANE

As Dan went through the halls of the Carlton on his way to his rooms that same evening, the porter gave him two notes, which Dan went down into the smoking-room to read. He tore open the note bearing the Hotel Savoy on the envelope, and read:

"Dear Boy: Will you come around to-night and see me about five o'clock? Don't let anything keep you." (Letty Lane had the habit of scratching out phrases to insert others, and there was something scratched out.) "I want to talk to you about something very important. Come sure. L. L."

Dan looked at the clock; it was after nine, and she would be at the Gaiety going on with her performance.

The other note, which he opened more slowly, was from Ruggles, and it began in just the same way as the dancer's had begun:

"Dear Boy: I have been suddenly called back to the United States. As I didn't know how to get at you, I couldn't. I had a cable that takes me right back. I get the _Lusitania_ at Liverpool and you can send me a Marconi. Better make the first boat you can and come over.

"Joshua Ruggles."

Ruggles left no word of advice, and unconscious of this master stroke on the part of the old man, whose heart yearned for him as for his own son, Dan folded the note up and thought no more about Ruggles.

When an hour later he came out of the Carlton he was prepared for the life of the evening. He stopped at the telephone desk and sent a telegram to Ruggles on the _Lusitania_:

"Can't come yet a while; am engaged to be married to the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater."

He wrote this out in full and the man at the Marconi "sat up" and smiled as he wrote. With Letty Lane's badly written note in his pocket, and wondering very much at her summons of him, Dan drove to the Gaiety, and at the end of the third act went back of the scenes. There were several people in her dressing-room. Higgins was lacing her into a white bodice and Miss Lane, before her gla.s.s, was putting the rouge on her lips.

"h.e.l.lo, you," she nodded to Dan.

"I am awfully sorry not to have shown up at five. Just got your note.

Just got in at the hotel; been out of town all day."

Dan saw that none of the people in the room was familiar to him, and that they were out of place in the pretty brocaded nest. One of them was a Jew, a small man with a gla.s.s eye, whose fixed stare rested on Miss Lane. He had kept on his overcoat, and his derby hat hung on the back of his head.

"Give Mr. Cohen the box, Higgins," Miss Lane directed, and bending forward, brought her small face close to the gla.s.s, and her hands trembled as she handled the rouge stick.

Mr. Cohen in one hand held a string of pearls that fell through his fat fingers, as if eager to escape from them. Higgins obediently placed a small box in his hand.

"Take it and get out of here," she ordered Cohen. "Miss Lane has only got five minutes."

Cohen turned the stub of his cigar in his mouth unpleasantly without taking the trouble to remove it. "I'll take the box," he said rapidly, "and when I get good and ready I'll get out of here, but not before."

"Now see here," Blair began, but Miss Lane, who had finished her task, motioned him to be quiet.

"Please go out, Mr. Blair," she said. "Please go out. Mr. Cohen is here on business and I really can't see anybody just now."

Behind the Jew Higgins looked up at Dan and he understood-but he didn't heed her warning; nothing would have induced him to leave Letty Lane like this.

"I'm not going, though, Miss Lane," he said frankly. "I've got an appointment with you and I'm going to stay."

As he did so the other people in the room took form for him: a blind beggar with a stick in his hand, and by his side a small child wrapped in a shawl. With relief Dan saw that Poniotowsky was absent from the party.

Cohen opened the box, took its contents out and held up the jewels.

"This," he said, indicating a string of pearls, "is all right, Miss Lane, and the ear-drops. The rest is no good. I'll take or leave them, as you like."

She was plainly annoyed and excited, and, as Higgins tried to lace her, moved from her dressing-table to the sofa in a state of agitation.

"Take them or leave them, as _you_ like," she said, "but give me the money and go."

The Jew took from his wallet a roll of banknotes and counted them.

"Six," he began, but she waved him back.

"Don't tell me how much it is. I don't want to know."

"Let the other lady count it," the Jew said. "I don't do business that way."

Dan, who had laid down his overcoat and hat on a chair, came quietly forward, his hands in his pockets, and standing in front of the Jew, he said again:

"Now you look here-"

Letty Lane threw the money down on the dressing-table. "Please," she cried to Dan, "let me have the pleasure of sending this man out of my room. You can go, Cohen, and go in a hurry, too."

The Jew stuffed the pearls in his pocket and went by Dan hurriedly, as though he feared the young man intended to help him. But Dan stopped him:

"Before this deal goes through I want you to tell me why you are-"

Miss Lane broke in: "My gracious Heavens! Can't I even sell my jewels without being bossed? What business is it of yours, Mr. Blair? Let this man go, and go all of you-all of you. Higgins, send them out."

The blind man and the child stirred, too, at this outburst. The little girl wore a miserable hat, a wreck of a hat, in which shook a feather like a broken mast. The rest of her garments seemed made of the elements-of dirt and mud-mere flags of distress, and the odor of the poor filled the room: over the perfume and scent and smell of stage properties, this miserable smell held its own.

"Come, Daddy," whispered the child timidly, "come along."

"Oh, no, not you, not you," Letty Lane said.

Job Cohen crawled out with ten thousand pounds' worth of pearls in his pockets, and as soon as the door had closed the actress took up the roll of notes.

"Come here," she said to the child. "Now you can take your father to the home I told you of. It is nice and comfortable-they will treat his eyes there."