"I see you are taken with that picture," said Harlowe, pausing with the champagne bottle in his hand. "You show your good taste. It's been much admired. Observe how splendidly that firelight plays over the sleeping face of that figure, yet brings out by very contrast its almost death-like repose. Those rocks are powerfully handled; what a suggestion of mystery in those shadows! You know the painter?"

Thatcher murmured, "Miss De Haro," with a new and rather odd self-consciousness in speaking her name.

"Yes. And you know the story of the picture of course?"

Thatcher thought he didn't. Well, no; in fact, he did not remember.

"Why, this rec.u.mbent figure was an old Spanish lover of hers, whom she believed to have been murdered there. It's a ghastly fancy, isn't it?"

Two things annoyed Thatcher: first the epithet "lover," as applied to Concho by another man; second, that the picture belonged to him: and what the d---l did she mean by--

"Yes," he broke out finally, "but how did YOU get it?"

"Oh, I bought it of her. I've been a sort of patron of her ever since I found out how she stood towards us. As she was quite alone here in Washington, my mother and sister have taken her up, and have been doing the social thing."

"How long since?" asked Thatcher.

"Oh, not long. The day she telegraphed you, she came here to know what she could do for us, and when I said nothing could be done except to keep Congress off, why, she went and DID IT. For SHE, and she alone, got that speech out of the Senator. But," he added, a little mischievously, "you seem to know very little about her?"

"No!--I--that is--I've been very busy lately," returned Thatcher, staring at the picture. "Does she come here often?"

"Yes, lately, quite often; she was here this evening with mother; was here, I think, when you came."

Thatcher looked intently at Harlowe. But that gentleman's face betrayed no confusion. Thatcher refilled his gla.s.s a little awkwardly, tossed off the liquor at a draught, and rose to his feet.

"Come, old fellow, you're not going now. I shan't permit it," said Harlowe, laying his hand kindly on his client's shoulder. "You're out of sorts! Stay here with me to-night. Our accommodations are not large, but are elastic. I can bestow you comfortably until morning. Wait here a moment while I give the necessary orders."

Thatcher was not sorry to be left alone. In the last half hour he had become convinced that his love for Carmen de Haro had been in some way most dreadfully abused. While HE was hard at work in California, she was being introduced in Washington society by parties with eligible brothers who bought her paintings. It is a relief to the truly jealous mind to indulge in plurals. Thatcher liked to think that she was already beset by hundreds of brothers.

He still kept staring at the picture. By and by it faded away in part, and a very vivid recollection of the misty, midnight, moonlit walk he had once taken with her came back, and refilled the canvas with its magic. He saw the ruined furnace; the dark, overhanging ma.s.ses of rock, the trembling intricacies of foliage, and, above all, the flash of dark eyes under a mantilla at his shoulder. What a fool he had been! Had he not really been as senseless and stupid as this very Concho, lying here like a log? And she had loved that man. What a fool she must have thought him that evening! What a sn.o.b she must think him now!

He was startled by a slight rustling in the pa.s.sage, that ceased almost as he turned. Thatcher looked towards the door of the outer office, as if half expecting that the Lord Chancellor, like the commander in Don Juan, might have accepted his thoughtless invitation. He listened again; everything was still. He was conscious of feeling ill at ease and a trifle nervous. What a long time Harlowe took to make his preparations.

He would look out in the hall. To do this it was necessary to turn up the gas. He did so, and in his confusion turned it out!

Where were the matches? He remembered that there was a bronze something on the table that, in the irony of modern decorative taste, might hold ashes or matches, or anything of an unpicturesque character. He knocked something over, evidently the ink,--something else,--this time a champagne gla.s.s. Becoming reckless, and now groping at random in the ruins, he overturned the bronze Mercury on the center table, and then sat down hopelessly in his chair. And then a pair of velvet fingers slid into his, with the matches, and this audible, musical statement:

"It is a match you are seeking? Here is of them."

Thatcher flushed, embarra.s.sed, nervous,--feeling the ridiculousness of saying, "Thank you" to a dark somebody,--struck the match, beheld by its brief, uncertain glimmer Carmen de Haro beside him, burned his fingers, coughed, dropped the match, and was cast again into outer darkness.

"Let me try!"

Carmen struck a match, jumped briskly on the chair, lit the gas, jumped lightly down again, and said: "You do like to sit in the dark,--eh? So am I--sometimes--alone."

"Miss De Haro," said Thatcher, with sudden, honest earnestness, advancing with outstretched hands, "believe me I am sincerely delighted, overjoyed, again to meet--"

She had, however, quickly retreated as he approached, ensconcing herself behind the high back of a large antique chair, on the cushion of which she knelt. I regret to add also that she slapped his outstretched fingers a little sharply with her inevitable black fan as he still advanced.

"We are not in California. It is Washington. It is after midnight. I am a poor girl, and I have to lose--what you call--'a character.' You shall sit over there,"--she pointed to the sofa,--"and I shall sit here;" she rested her boyish head on the top of the chair; "and we shall talk, for I have to speak to you, Don Royal."

Thatcher took the seat indicated, contritely, humbly, submissively.

Carmen's little heart was touched. But she still went on over the back of the chair.

"Don Royal," she said, emphasizing each word at him with her fan, "before I saw you,--ever knew of you,--I was a child. Yes, I was but a child! I was a bold, bad child;--and I was what you call a--a--'forgaire'!"

"A what?" asked Thatcher, hesitating between a smile and a sigh.

"A forgaire!" continued Carmen demurely. "I did of myself write the names of ozzer peoples;" when Carmen was excited she lost the control of the English tongue; "I did write just to please myself;--it was my onkle that did make of it money;--you understand, eh? Shall you not speak?

Must I again hit you?"

"Go on," said Thatcher laughing.

"I did find out, when I came to you at the mine, that I had forged against you the name of Micheltorena. I to the lawyer went, and found that it was so--of a verity--so! so! all the time. Look at me not now, Don Royal;--it is a 'forgaire' you stare at."

"Carmen!"

"Hoosh! Shall I have to hit you again? I did overlook all the papers. I found the application: it was written by me. There."

She tossed over the back of her chair an envelope to Thatcher. He opened it.

"I see," he said gently, "you repossessed yourself of it!"

"What is that--'r-r-r-e--possess'?"

"Why!"--Thatcher hesitated--"you got possession of this paper,--this innocent forgery,--again."

"Oh! You think me a thief as well as a 'forgaire.' Go away! Get up. Get out."

"My dear girl--"

"Look at the paper! Will you? Oh, you silly!"

Thatcher looked at the paper. In paper, handwriting, age, and stamp it was identical with the formal, clerical application of Garcia for the grant. The indors.e.m.e.nt of Micheltorena was unquestionably genuine. BUT THE APPLICATION WAS MADE FOR ROYAL THATCHER. And his own signature was imitated to the life.

"I had but one letter of yours wiz your name," said Carmen apologetically; "and it was the best poor me could do."

"Why, you blessed little goose and angel," said Thatcher, with the bold, mixed metaphor of amatory genius, "don't you see--"

"Ah, you don't like it,--it is not good?"

"My darling!"

"Hoosh! There is also an 'old cat' up stairs. And now I have here a character. WILL you sit down? Is it of a necessity that up and down you should walk and awaken the whole house? There!"--she had given him a vicious dab with her fan as he pa.s.sed. He sat down.

"And you have not seen me nor written to me for a year?"

"Carmen!"