A Fool For Love | Page 2

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. it will be quite as well for us if Mr. Somerville Darrah is safely at the other side of the continent--and well out of ordinary reach of the wires."
Adams came to attention with a half-hearted attempt to galvanize an interest in the business affair.
"Tell me more about this mysterious jangle we are heading for," he rejoined. "Have