"That's it," I cried shrewishly, with my back against the door. "Leave her to me, all of you, and pat each other on the back, and say it's gone splendidly! Oh, I know you, every one!" Mr. Harbison got up and pulled out a chair, but I couldn't sit; I folded my arms on the back. "After a while, I suppose, you'll slip upstairs, the four of you, and have your game." They looked guilty. "But I will block that right now. I am going to stay--here. If Aunt Selina wants me, she can find me--here!"

The first indication those men had that Mr. Harbison didn't know the state of affairs was when he turned and faced them.

"Mrs. Wilson is quite right," he said gravely. "We're a selfish lot. If Miss Caruthers is a responsibility, let us share her."

"To arms!" Jim said, with an affectation of lightness, as they put their gla.s.ses down, and threw open the door. Dal's retort, "Whose?" was lost in the confusion, and we went into the library. On the way Dallas managed to speak to me.

"If Harbison doesn't know, don't tell him," he said in an undertone.

"He's a queer duck, in some ways; he mightn't think it funny."

"Funny," I choked. "It's the least funny thing I ever experienced.

Deceiving that Harbison man isn't so bad--he thinks me crazy, anyhow.

He's been staring his eyes out at me--"

"I don't wonder. You're really lovely tonight, Kit, and you look like a vixen."

"But to deceive that harmless old lady--well, thank goodness, it's nine, and she leaves in an hour or so."

But she didn't and that's the story.

Chapter IV. THE DOOR WAS CLOSED

It was infuriating to see how much enjoyment every one but Jim and myself got out of the situation. They howled with mirth over the feeblest jokes, and when Max told a story without any point whatever, they all had hysteria. Immediately after dinner Aunt Selina had begun on the family connection again, and after two bad breaks on my part, Jim offered to show her the house. The Mercer girls trailed along, unwilling to lose any of the possibilities. They said afterward that it was terrible: she went into all the closets, and ran her hand over the tops of doors and kept getting grimmer and grimmer. In the studio they came across a life study Jim was doing and she shut her eyes and made the girls go out while he covered it with a drapery. Lollie! Who did the Bacchante dance at three benefits last winter and was learning a new one called "Eve"!

When they heard Aunt Selina on the second floor, Anne, Dal and Max sneaked up to the studio for cigarettes, which left Mr. Harbison to me.

I was in the den, sitting in a low chair by the wood fire when he came in. He hesitated in the doorway.

"Would you prefer being alone, or may I come in?" he asked. "Don't mind being frank. I know you are tired."

"I have a headache, and I am sulking," I said unpleasantly, "but at least I am not actively venomous. Come in."

So he came in and sat down across the hearth from me, and neither of us said anything. The firelight flickered over the room, bringing out the faded hues of the old j.a.panese prints on the walls, gleaming in the mother-of-pearl eyes of the dragon on the screen, setting a grotesque G.o.d on a cabinet to nodding. And it threw into relief the strong profile of the man across from me, as he stared at the fire.

"I am afraid I am not very interesting," I said at last, when he showed no sign of breaking the silence. "The--the illness of the butler and--Miss Caruthers' arrival, have been upsetting."

He suddenly roused with a start from a brown reverie.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "I--oh, of course not! I was wondering if I--if you were offended at what I said earlier in the evening; the--Brushwood Boy, you know, and all that."

"Offended?" I repeated, puzzled.

"You see, I have been living out of the world so long, and never seeing any women but Indian squaws"--so there were no Spanish girls!--"that I'm afraid I say what comes into my mind without circ.u.mlocution. And then--I did not know you were married."

"No, oh, no," I said hastily. "But, of course, the more a woman is married--I mean, you can not say too many nice things to married women.

They--need them, you know."

I had floundered miserably, with his eyes on me, and I half expected him to be shocked, or to say that married women should be satisfied with the nice things their husbands say to them. But he merely remarked apropos of nothing, or following a line of thought he had not voiced, that it was trite but true that a good many men owed their success in life to their wives.

"And a good many owe their wives to their success in life," I retorted cynically. At which he stared at me again.

It was then that the real complexity of the situation began to develop.

Some one had rung the bell and been admitted to the library and a maid came to the door of the den. When she saw us she stopped uncertainly.

Even then it struck me that she looked odd, and she was not in uniform.

However, I was not informed at that time about bachelor establishments, and the first thing she said, when she had asked to speak to me in the hall, knocked her and her clothes clear out of my head. Evidently she knew me.

"Miss McNair," she said in a low tone. "There is a lady in the drawing room, a veiled person, and she is asking for Mr. Wilson."

"Can you not find him?" I asked. "He is in the house, probably in the studio."

The girl hesitated.

"Excuse me, miss, but Miss Caruthers--"

Then I saw the situation.

"Never mind," I said. "Close the door into the drawing room, and I will tell Mr. Wilson."

But as the girl turned toward the doorway, the person in question appeared in it, and raised her veil. I was perfectly paralyzed. It was Bella! Bella in a fur coat and a veil, with the most tragic eyes I ever saw and entirely white except for a dab of rouge in the middle of each cheek. We stared at each other without speech. The maid turned and went down the hall, and with that Bella came over to me and clutched me by the arm.

"Who was being carried out into that ambulance?" she demanded, glaring at me with the most awful intensity.

"I'm sure I don't know, Bella," I said, wriggling away from her fingers.

"What in the world are you doing here? I thought you were in Europe."

"You are hiding something from me!" she accused. "It is Jim! I see it in your face."

"Well, it isn't," I snapped. "It seems to me, really, Bella, that you and Jim ought to be able to manage your own affairs, without dragging me in." It was not pleasant, but if she was suffering, so was I. "Jim is as well as he ever was. He's upstairs somewhere. I'll send for him."

She gripped me again, and held on while her color came back.

"You'll do nothing of the kind," she said, and she had quite got hold of herself again. "I do not want to see him: I hope you don't think, Kit, that I came here to see James Wilson. Why, I have forgotten that there IS such a person, and you know it."

Somebody upstairs laughed, and I was growing nervous. What if Aunt Selina should come down, or Mr. Harbison come out of the den?

"Why DID you come, then, Bella?" I inquired. "He may come in."

"I was pa.s.sing in the motor," she said, and I honestly think she hoped I would believe her, "and I saw that am--" She stopped and began again.

"I thought Jim was out of town, and I came to see Takahiro," she said brazenly. "He was devoted to me, and Evans is going to leave. I'll tell you what to do, Kit. I'll go back to the dining room, and you send Taka there. If any one comes, I can slip into the pantry."

"It's immoral," I protested. "It's immoral to steal your--"

"My own butler!" she broke in impatiently. "You're not usually so scrupulous, Kit. Hurry! I hear that hateful Anne Brown."

So we slid back along the hall, and I rang for Takahiro. But no one came.

"I think I ought to tell you, Bella," I said as we waited, and Bella was staring around the room--"I think you ought to know that Miss Caruthers is here."