I added earnestly--coaxingly: "And _stay_ away, you know!"

And I took a deep breath, for I expected to see her wilt or go straight up in the air. I knew it was a toss-up for either.

Not she! She just twisted a sour smile at me.

"Ummh!" she grunted. "Perhaps you don't know that Francis has suggested that to me several times--frankly and rudely--when I have complained.

That may surprise you."

It did not surprise me--not at all, by Jove! What _did_ surprise me was that my Frances had ever allowed this jolly female barnacle to fasten on her in this way. Remembered a remark of Jack Ellsworth's about some bounder visiting at his house that he said "the old man couldn't pry loose with a crowbar." Devilish coa.r.s.e way to express it, I had thought; but now I understood.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The frump was _this_ sort! Poor Frances! Poor Frances!

I was just considering the advisability of tactfully trying to shame this girl into taking the next train, or whatever it is, back to China, when suddenly my devilish active mind hit right on the explanation of her conduct! Bores me, you know, the way things come to me at times when I am not looking for them at all. Still, this time, I was rather glad.

Might confound her and put her on the run if she knew that a shrewd, eagle-eyed man of the world had penetrated her mask.

So I coughed significantly in lieu of using her dashed name, and lifted my monocle so I could bore her sidewise through narrowed eyes.

"Dare say you've put up with Frances though for _Jack's_ sake!" I let her have it coldly, deliberately. "Brother Jack has been a sort of compensation--_that's_ it, eh?"

And I shot her a foxy wink!

That is, I _almost_ did--pulled up, though, just on the brink. By Jove, gave me cold marrows for an instant, thinking how I might have compromised myself, you know. Besides, I could spare her _that_--had rubbed it in so devilish raw, anyhow. That is, you would have thought so; for that sort of thing said to a normal Yankee girl would have stirred her pride or unchained the jolly lightnings from her eyes--_you_ know!

But dashed if this imported freak didn't suddenly nod with a sort of chokey snuffle and reach out her hand for mine.

"How you _do_ understand!" she crooned unblushingly, and she leaked a big cold tear down upon my hand and let another splash my cuff--and Jenkins hadn't come with my things yet, dash it! "I _do_ try to be patient about Francis for Jacky's sake--he asked me to: and I do try not to mind the way things are run, but oh, Mr. Lightnut, what this place needs is a _head_!" She almost squeezed my hand, and blinked damply at me out of her pasty face. "And then," she snuffled, "I do so want to make a home for my father and my brothers. They have _never_ known what it was to have a _home_--think of it!"

I didn't want to think of it--besides, I didn't believe it. I knew people _have_ to have homes, dash it--it's the law. If they go in for that sort of thing--not having homes, you know--they're arrested. Still, in a rum country like China, it might be different, of course. However, I didn't take time to give this much thought, for I was so devilish floored--irritated, you know--at the girl's cold-blooded, brazen effrontery.

By Jove, I wondered if I _could_ pink her!

I wasn't sure. I had gone at her in a cunning, subtle way: the hand of steel in the glove of what's-its-name, you know; the curving, velvet thrust of the needle rapier--all that sort of rot--and she had merely given me back a Roland for my what's-its-name. I felt a bit dashed, you know.

Idea seized me that perhaps, though, something more brutally direct would--

"See here," I said, fixing my monocle sternly and folding my arms--for I had got back my hand under pretense of fixing my part. "You don't mean to say that Jack would ever ask _you_ to take charge here!"

Rather plain and direct, that, don't you think? Sort of heavy broadsword stroke, you know. But she took it full and clean--never winced or turned a hair. Just looked thoughtful.

"Yes," she said slowly. "Jacky says it'll have to come to that some day--_some_ arrangement. Neither of us ever want to marry."

"Oh!"

And my monocle dropped!

Couldn't chirp another word, you know! Just stood there, round-mouthed and staring blankly--kind of fascinated, too, dash it--and wondering what particular freak cult _hers_ was. And I felt myself getting redder and redder every second! Then the awful thought came to me that this advanced and emanc.i.p.ated dowd had been the friend and companion of my darling--that her poisonous influence had been felt for months; was being exerted still. I wondered how she could look me in the face, but she _wasn't_. No, she had switched her head around and was glaring at the servants down the hall. So I just swayed there, trying to think, and boring at the back of her head, till it came to me dully that her hair didn't match her what-you-call-'ems, and my dashed brain just seized on and clung to this like a drowning man does to a what-you-may-call-it.

"_Thom_-as!" the frump exploded.

One of the footmen who was doubled over, red-faced and writhing, in the exercise of some pleasantry with his companion, straightened with an aggrieved air. He ambled toward us.

"Some specimens that Mr. Billings gathered--plants and foliage; he left them in the car," jerked the frump. "See they are cared for."

The man nodded indifferently and slouched away.

Her frown gloomed after him and her voice snapped at his laggard heels:

"And Flora--send Flora to me. Is she asleep somewhere?"

She faced me with an acid grimace and shrug.

"You see how it is here, Mr. Lightnut," she grumbled querulously; "but _you_ understand!"

Understand! By Jove, yes--I thought I _did_! I could see that the fellow was just sullen under the too free and easy a.s.sumptions of a guest from whom little had been experienced in the way of an occasional douceur.

And dashed if I blamed him!

But I murmured some jolly rubbish, hoping every instant that Wilkes would come and lead me away.

"That's the way with them all here, from the housekeeper down," she went on gloomily. "They take advantage of the fact that the mistress of the house is abroad and the master absorbed and busy." Her voice quickened sharply: "Then do you think they care two pins about the authority of a silly girl who has been allowed to grow up untrained and ignorant of the first a b c of anything practical?"

I felt my face tingling.

"See here--Oh, dash it all!" I protested. "That's not _fair_, you know!"

"Fair?" She bit the word out of the air and just glared at me. "Why, they know she's a _fool_!"

I opened my mouth two or three times; then swallowed helplessly and grew red. Somehow, it came back to me--a time when I was a little boy and my nurse had been so shocked when I said "shucks!" I remembered how that night she read to me a tract about swear words and told me how when I grew up to be a big man, I would have to choose whether I was ever going to learn to swear or not. She said that if I didn't choose right, a day would come when I would be--oh, _so_ sorry!

And now, dash it, the day had come and I knew that she was right! For I _was_ sorry, by Jove!

CHAPTER XXIII

A MESSAGE AND A WARNING

"It's all right, miss," Wilkes reported; "at least, I hope so. Perkins is with him--we've been trying to persuade him to have a bath and lie down. But I don't know--"

He shook his head gloomily, then turned to me.

"If you will come with me, sir--" Then he added, and it seemed a question: "You must have made a quick run, sir. Seems like only a few minutes since we got Mr. Jack's 'phone message." His voice dropped: "From the station house, you know."

"Eh--what's that?" I paused with my foot on the first tread of the stairway. "Jack's 'phone message--from the station house?" I repeated blankly. "What are you talking about?"