A Fool For Love | Page 2

straight and lithe;
a charming embodiment of health and strength and beauty:
clear-skinned, brown-eyed--a very goddess fresh from the bath, in
Winton's instant summing up of her, and her crown of red-gold hair
helped out the simile.
Now, thus far in his thirty-year pilgrimage John Winton, man and boy,
had lived the intense life of a working hermit, so far as the social gods
and goddesses were concerned. Yet he had a pang--of disappointment
or pointless jealousy, or something akin to both--when Adams lifted his
hat to this particular goddess, was rewarded by a little cry of
recognition, and stepped up to the platform to be presented to the elder
and younger Bisques.
So, as we say, Winton turned and walked away as one left out, feeling
one moment as though he had been defrauded of a natural right, and
deriding himself the next, as a sensible man should. After a bit he was
able to laugh at the "sudden attack," as he phrased it, but later, when he
and Adams were settled for the day-long run in the Denver sleeper, and
the Limited was clanking out over the switches, he brought the talk
around with a carefully assumed air of lack-interest to the party in the

private car.
"She is a friend of yours, then?" he said, when Adams had taken the
baited hook open-eyed.
The Technologian modified the assumption.
"Not quite in your sense of the word, I fancy. I met her a number of
times at the houses of mutual friends in Boston. She was studying at the
Conservatory."
"But she isn't a Bostonian," said Winton confidently.
"Miss Virginia?--hardly. She is a Carteret of the Carterets;
Virginia-born-bred-and-named. Stunning girl, isn't she?"
"No," said Winton shortly, resenting the slang for no reason that he
could have set forth in words.
Adams lighted another of the scented villainies, and his clean-shaven
face wrinkled itself in a slow smile.
"Which means that she has winged you at sight, I suppose, as she does
most men." Then he added calmly, "It's no go."
"What is 'no go'?"
Adams laughed unfeelingly, and puffed away at his cigarette.
"You remind me of the fable about the head-hiding ostrich. Didn't I see
you staring at her as if you were about to have a fit? But it is just as I
tell you: it's no go. She isn't the marrying kind. If you knew her, she'd
be nice to you till she got a good chance to flay you alive--"
"Break it off!" growled Winton.
"Presently. As I was saying, she would miss the chance of marrying the
best man in the world for the sake of taking a rise out of him. Moreover,
she comes of old Cavalier stock with an English earldom at the back of

it, and she is inordinately proud of the fact; while you--er--you've given
me to understand that you are a man of the people, haven't you?"
Winton nodded absently. It was one of his minor fads to ignore his
lineage, which ran decently back to a Colonial governor on his father's
side, and to assert that he did not know his grandfather's middle
name--which was accounted for by the very simple fact that the elder
Winton had no middle name.
"Well, that settles it definitely," was the Bostonian's comment. "Miss
Carteret is of the sang azur. The man who marries her will have to
know his grandfather's middle name--and a good bit more besides."
Winton's laugh was mockingly good-natured.
"You have missed your calling by something more than a hair's-breadth,
Morty. You should have been a novelist. Give you a spike and a
cross-tie and you'd infer a whole railroad. But you pique my curiosity.
Where are these American royalties of yours going in the Rosemary?"
"To California. The car belongs to Mr. Somerville Darrah, who is
vice-president and manager in fact of the Colorado and Grand River
road: the 'Rajah,' they call him. He is a relative of the Carterets, and the
party is on its way to spend the winter on the Pacific coast."
"And the little lady in the widow's cap: is she Miss Carteret's mother?"
"Miss Bessie Carteret's mother and Miss Virginia's aunt. She is the
chaperon of the party."
Winton was silent while the Limited was roaring through a village on
the Kansas side of the river. When he spoke again it was not of the
Carterets; it was of the Carterets' kinsman and host.
"I have heard somewhat of the Rajah," he said half-musingly. "In fact, I
know him, by sight. He is what the magazinists are fond of calling an
'industry colonel,' a born leader who has fought his way to the front. If
the Quartz Creek row is anything more than a stiff bluff on the part of

the C. G. R.