And yet--"It may be he will serve you better. But, oh, it isn't possible that he should love you more than I," said Colonel Musgrave of Matocton.

The man was destined to remember that utterance--and, with the recollection, to laugh not altogether in either scorn or merriment.

PART FOUR - APPRECIATION

"You have chosen; and I cry content thereto, And cry your pardon also, and am reproved In that I took you for a woman I loved Odd centuries ago, and would undo That curious error. Nay, your eyes are blue, Your speech is gracious, but you are not she, And I am older--and changed how utterly!-- I am no longer I, you are not you.

"Time, destined as we thought but to befriend And guerdon love like ours, finds you beset With joys and griefs I neither share nor mend Who am a stranger; and we two are met Nor wholly glad nor sorry; and the end Of too much laughter is a faint regret."

R.E. TOWNSEND. _Sonnets for Elena._

I

Next morning Rudolph Musgrave found the world no longer an impa.s.sioned place, but simply a familiar habitation,--no longer the wrestling-ground of big emotions, indeed, but undoubtedly a spot, whatever were its other pretensions to praise, wherein one was at home. He breakfasted on ham and eggs, in a state of tolerable equanimity; and mildly wondered at himself for doing it.

The colonel was deep in a heraldic design and was whistling through his teeth when Patricia came into the Library. He looked up, with the outlines of a frown vanishing like pencilings under the india-rubber of professional courtesy,--for he was denoting _or_ at the moment, which is fussy work, as it consists exclusively of dots.

Then his chair sc.r.a.ped audibly upon the floor as he pushed it from him.

It occurred to Rudolph Musgrave after an interval that he was still half-way between sitting and standing, and that his mouth was open....

He could hear a huckster outside on Regis Avenue. The colonel never forgot the man was crying "Fresh oranges!"

"He kissed me, Olaf. Yes, I let him kiss me, even after he had asked me if he could. No sensible girl would ever do that, of course. And then I knew--"

Patricia was horribly frightened.

"And afterwards the jacka.s.s-fool made matters worse by calling me 'his darling.' There is no more hateful word in the English language than 'darling.' It sounds like castor-oil tastes, or a snail looks after you have put salt on him."

The colonel deliberated this information; and he appeared to understand.

"So Parkinson has gone the way of Pevensey,--. and of I wonder how many others? Well, may Heaven be very gracious to us both!" he said. "For I am going to do it."

Then composedly he took up the telephone upon his desk and called Roger Stapylton.

"I want you to come at once to Dr. Rabbet's,--yes, the rectory, next door to St. Luke's. Patricia and I are to be married there in half an hour. We are on our way to the City Hall to get the license now.... No, she might change her mind again, you see.... I have not the least notion how it happened. I don't care.... Then you will have to be rude to him or else not see your only daughter married.... Kindly permit me to repeat, sir, that I don't care about that or anything else. And for the rest, Patricia was twenty-one last December."

The colonel hung up the receiver. "And now," he said, "we are going to the City Hall."

"Are you?" said Patricia, with courteous interest. "Well, my way lies uptown. I have to stop in at Greenberg's and get a mustard plaster for the parrot."

He had his hat by this. "It isn't cool enough for me to need an overcoat, is it?"

"I think you must be crazy," she said, sharply.

"Of course I am. So I am going to marry you."

"Let me go--! Oh, and I had thought you were a gentleman--."

"I fear that at present I am simply masculine." He became aware that his hands, in gripping both her shoulders, were hurting the girl.

"Come now," he continued, "will you go quietly or will I have to carry you?"

She said, "And you would, too--." She spoke in wonder, for Patricia had glimpsed an unguessed Rudolph Musgrave.

His hands went under her arm-pits and he lifted her like a feather. He held her thus at arm's length.

"You--you adorable whirligig!" he laughed. "I am a stronger animal than you. It would be as easy for me to murder you as it would be for you to kill one of those flies on the window-pane. Do you quite understand that fact, Patricia?"

"Oh, but you are an idiot--."

"In wanting you, my dear?"

"Please put me down."

She thoroughly enjoyed her helplessness. He saw it, long before he lowered her.

"Why, not so much in that," said Miss Stapylton, "because inasmuch as I am a woman of superlative charm, of course you can't help yourself. But how do you know that Dr. Rabbet may not be somewhere else, harrying a defenseless barkeeper, or superintending the making of dress-shirt protectors for the Hottentots, or doing something else clerical, when we get to the rectory?"

After an irrelevant interlude she stamped her foot.

"I don't care what you say, I won't marry an atheist. If you had the least respect for his cloth, Olaf, you would call him up and arrange--Oh, well! whatever you want to arrange--and permit me to powder my nose without being bothered, because I don't want people to think you are marrying a second helping to b.u.t.ter, and I never did like that Baptist man on the block above, anyhow. And besides," said Patricia, as with the occurrence of a new view-point, "think what a delicious scandal it will create!"

II

Patricia spoke the truth. By supper-time Lichfield had so industriously embroidered the Stapylton dinner and the ensuing marriage with hypotheses and explanations and unparented rumors that none of the partic.i.p.ants in the affair but could advantageously have exchanged reputations with Benedict Arnold or Lucretia Borgia, had Lichfield believed a t.i.the of what Lichfield was repeating.

A duel was of course antic.i.p.ated between Mr. Parkinson and Colonel Musgrave, and the colonel indeed offered, through Major Wadleigh, any satisfaction which Mr. Parkinson might desire.

The engineer, with garnishments of profanity, considered dueling to be a painstakingly-described absurdity and wished "the old popinjay" joy of his bargain.

Lichfield felt that only showed what came of treating poor-white trash as your equals, and gloried in the salutary moral.

III