"So they dared you?"

"So they dared me. And I took the dare."

"Why?"

Her eyes met mine gravely, but behind her pretty _moue_ a smile lurked delightfully.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Her eyes met mine gravely.]

"If I should tell you now it would be flirting, which is a sin."

"I had imagined, Mr. Ames, that that sort of thing came easy to you.

But if it's sinful, of course"--

"But you do not rule me out! You will give me a chance"--

My earnestness caused her manner to change suddenly. Her beautiful gravity came like a swift falling of starlit twilight. I had never been so happy as at this moment. Preposterous as were the circ.u.mstances of my presence in the house, the juxtaposition of Cecilia Hollister gave me unalloyed delight. The animosity of the gentlemen at the Prescott Arms--an animosity which the interview in my office had doubtless intensified--quickened my satisfaction in thus being within the walls that guarded the lady of their adoration. She had not answered me, and I felt my heart pounding in the silence.

"I want to serve you, now, hereafter, and always," I added. "These men can have no claim upon you greater than that of any other man who dares!"

"No, none whatever," she replied firmly.

"And the mystery, the whole story, is in the little silver book!"

She started, flushed, and then laughter visited her lips and eyes. The book was not in her hands nor in sight anywhere, but I felt that I was on the right track, and that the little trinket had to do with her plight and her compact with her aunt. Best of all, the fact that I had chanced upon this clue gave her happiness. There was no debating that.

"You had best have a care, Mr. Ames. You have spoken words that would be treasonable if they came from me, and I must not countenance them."

"But you will tolerate from me words that you would not permit another to speak? Do I go too far?"

She bent her head to one side,--with the slightest inclination, as of a rose touched by a vagrant wind.

"If I could only half believe in you," she said, "you might really serve me. So those gentlemen warned you away! Their presumption is certainly astounding."

"They know nothing of the silver book!"

"They know less than you do,--and you have a good deal to learn, you know."

"I am dull enough, but I have no ambition but to read the riddle of the sibyl's leaves. That and the laying of the ghost are my immediate business. As for the gentlemen at the Prescott, including my old friend Hartley Wiggins, I am not in the least afraid of them. My hand is raised against them. If it's a case of the test of Ulysses over again, I 'm as likely as any of them to bend the bow."

I thought this well spoken, but she seemed amused, though without unkindness, by the earnestness of my speech.

"If your wit is equal to your valor, you may go far. But"--and she turned her eyes full upon me--"we must play the game according to the rules."

"And as for Hartley Wiggins"--

She sat up very straight, and the sudden disdain in her face startled me. I had forgotten my eavesdropping in the clump of raspberries on the day of my arrival. Certainly Wiggins had been decidedly in the race then, and my heart thumped in resentment as I recalled her own message, all compact of encouragement, which I had borne to Wiggins at the Prescott Arms.

"I will tell you something, Mr. Ames. This afternoon, as I drove from the station, I came round by the lake, merely to cool my eyes on the water, and I saw Mr. Wiggins and my sister seated on a wall in an old orchard. They were so busily engaged that they did not see me. At least he did not; but I think Hezekiah did."

"Hezekiah," I answered, relieved by the nature of her disclosure, which could not but prejudice Wiggins' case, "Hezekiah is fond of orchards.

I dare say this was the same one in which I had a charming talk with her myself. Doubtless she was amusing herself with Wiggins just as she did with me. She finds the genus h.o.m.o entertaining."

"She is the dearest girl in the world,--the sweetest, the loveliest, the brightest. Mr. Wiggins has treated her outrageously. He has taken advantage of her youth and susceptible nature."

"His punishment is sure," I answered complacently. "Hezekiah laughed when I mentioned his name. And you frown to-day at the thought of him."

"Aunt Octavia is coming," she remarked, feigning at once a careless air; but I was content that she let my remark pa.s.s unchallenged.

Miss Octavia's entrances were always effective. She appeared to-night charmingly gowned, but the bright twinkle in her eyes made it clear that no matter of dress could affect her humor or spirit. She greeted me, as she always did, as though our acquaintance were a matter of years rather than of days. I even imagined that she seemed pleased to find me back again. She asked no questions as to my day's occupations, but as we went in to dinner sallied forth cheerfully upon a description of her own activities.

"After I had baked my required quota of pies this morning, I sought recreation at the traps. The stable-boy who has been pulling the string for me having struck-work, it most providentially happened that I espied Lord Arrowood hanging on the edge of the maple tangle beyond the barn. I summoned him at once and put him to work managing the traps for me, finding him most efficient. He seemed extremely despondent, and after I had satisfied myself that two out of three was not an impossible record for one of my years, I brought him to the house and made tea for him. I left the room for a moment--I had taken him into the kitchen where, during the inc.u.mbency of the regular cook I hardly dare venture myself, and he made himself comfortable quite near the range. The pies on which I had been engaged all morning lay cooling near him. I had composed twenty-nine pies,--I am an excellent mathematician, and I could not have been mistaken in the count. What was my amazement to find, after his lordship's departure, that one pie was missing! The pan in which it was baked I discerned later, jammed into a barrel of excellent Minnesota flour. My absence from the room was the briefest; his lordship must indeed be a prestidigitateur to have made way with the pie so expeditiously."

"His lordship was doubtless hungry," I suggested. "Even n.o.bility must eat. I pa.s.sed Lord Arrowood in the highway early this morning, sitting upon a stone, with sundry items of hand-baggage reposing beside him. I have rarely seen any one so depressed."

"He belongs to an ancient house," remarked Miss Octavia. "He is descended from either Hengist or Horsa,--I forget which, but it does not greatly matter. The missing pie, I may add, was an effect in Westchester pippin; and as our American experiment in self-government bores him, I take it as significant that he chanced upon food that is the veritable sacrament of democracy."

"Now that the little matter of the servants has been adjusted, we must have a care lest the newly-arrived phalanx, which Providence so kindly sent to you to-day, is not stampeded by any further manifestations of the troubled spirit of the unfortunate Briton who was hanged on the site of this house."

"Mr. Ames," replied Miss Octavia impressively, "that matter is entirely in your hands."

"But if I could see the plans of this house, I should be better able to grapple with his ghostship."

I had thrown this out in the hope of eliciting some remark from her touching the Swedish maid's visit to Pepperton's office; but Miss Octavia met my gaze unflinchingly.

"You are a clever man, Mr. Ames, and I have every confidence that you will not only solve the mystery of the library chimney but find the ghost that switched off the lights on the stair last night. I prefer that you should accomplish these feats without any help from the plans.

I myself have no suggestions. I am gratified that you are meeting the emergencies that have risen here with so much determination, but it is what I should expect of the son of Arnold Ames of Hartford.

Opportunity is all that any of us need to find ourselves truly great, and if, in the ordinary course of our lives, the gate does not open freely, we are justified in picking the lock. When I determined to seek adventures in my old age, I resolved that I should miss no chance, and that I should be prepared for any beckoning of the hand of fate.

An odd fancy struck me at the beginning of my new life that Boston would some day be the starting-point of some interesting experience.

This has not yet developed, but in order that I may be prepared for anything that may occur I keep a blue-silk umbrella constantly checked at the Parker House. The presence of the little bra.s.s check in my purse is a constant reminder that Boston may one day call me."

A discussion of the Parker House umbrella followed, Cecilia and I joining, and it proved so fruitful a topic that it carried us to our coffee.

Coffee-making, in a machine she had herself contrived, was always attended with rites that required deliberation, and while she performed them Miss Hollister continued to amuse us.

"You may not know," she remarked, in one of her charming irrelevant outbursts, "that the most important furniture transactions effected in this country are those negotiated daily by the head-waiters of the Fifth Avenue restaurants. Such is, I a.s.sure you, the fact. These gentlemen, who have attained front rank among our predatory rich, allow no one to dine at the inns they dominate who does not first purchase a table and chairs at a profit of at least two hundred per cent over the original Grand Rapids cost, the furniture thus purchased reverting in every case to the party of the first part after the purchasers have eaten to their satisfaction. The Fifth Avenue head-waiters are not only the most absolute autocrats of our time, but the most acute students of human nature among us. The sale of the tables by the lords of the dining-rooms is alone worth a fortune every season at our fashionable victualing houses and, in addition, the humbler members of the minor orders of waiters, who merely fetch and carry, are obliged to share their gratuities with their august chiefs."

"The system is iniquitous," I declared. "It's enough to pay two prices for the food without buying the hotel furniture."

"The system, Mr. Ames, is wholly admirable, if you will pardon me for expressing a difference of opinion. We cannot do less than admire the austere genius before which mere plutocrats and men of affairs meekly bow. In making my own investments I would rather have the advice of Alphonse at the Hotel Pallida than that of the president of the strongest trust company on Manhattan Island. The varying size of the sums he receives for the dining-room furniture is the best possible indication of the condition of the market. When a citizen of Pittsburg will pay no more than one hundred dollars for the use of a table to eat from at the Pallida you may be sure that a panic impends. By the way, I proposed to Alphonse last winter the organization of a limited company of leading head-waiters to control the waiting industry of Fifth Avenue. It was my idea that some special forms of torture might be devised for calculating persons--usually readers of New York letters in provincial newspapers--who think a waiter ent.i.tled to only ten per cent of the bill, and this could best be managed by an arrangement between the five or six magnates who control the more gilded and imposing refectories. I suggested the placing of a special mark in the hats of the ten-per-cent fiends, so that wherever they dine the symbol of their indiscreet frugalities would be apparent to the initiated eye.

It is another of my notions that the head-waiter and his humble slave should present a formal bill for their services, while the hotel or restaurant should merely be tipped. In this way the more important service would receive its due consideration. The sole office of the proprietor is to provide the head-waiter a place in which to follow his profession. Alphonse is impressed with my ideas, and has even offered to make me a director of the company."

"I suppose that you won the regard of Alphonse, the magnificent, only by the most princely tips through many years of acquaintance, Miss Hollister."

"On the other hand, Mr. Ames, I never gave him a cent in my life; but last Christmas, in recognition of his friendliness in warning me against an alligator-pear salad, at a moment when that vegetable was at the turn of the season, I knit him a pair of blue worsted bed-room slippers, which he received with the liveliest expressions of delight."

Three suitors were announced at this moment, and I slipped away without excuses, while Miss Octavia and Cecilia adjourned to the library.