An Amiable Charlatan | Page 7

he should have made your acquaintance. It isn't that at all. But I do not think he should have made use of you in the way he did. He is utterly reckless sometimes and forgets what he is doing. It is all very well for himself, but he has no right to expose you to--to--"
"To what risk did he expose me?" I demanded. "Tell me, Miss Parker--was he absolutely honest when he told me he was an adventurer?"
"Absolutely!"
"Was I, then, an accomplice in anything illegal to-night?"
"Worse than illegal--criminal!" she told me.
Now my father had been a judge and I had a brother who was a barrister; but the madness was upon me and I spoke quickly and convincingly.
"Then all I have to say about it is that I am glad!" I declared.
"Why?" she murmured, looking at me wonderingly.
"Because he is your father and I have helped him," I answered under my breath.
For a few moments she was silent. She looked at me however; and as I watched her eyes grow softer I suddenly held out my hand, and for a moment she suffered hers to rest in it. Then she drew away a little.
She was still looking at me steadfastly; but something that had seemed to me inimical had gone from her expression.
"Mr. Walmsley," she said slowly, "I want to tell you I think you are making a mistake. Please listen to me carefully. You do not belong to the order of people from whom the adventurers of the world are drawn. What you are is written in your face. I am perfectly certain you possess the ordinary conventional ideas as to right and wrong--the ideas in which you have been brought up and which have been instilled into you all your life. My father and I belong to a different class of society. There is nothing to be gained for you by mixing with us, and a great deal to be lost."
"May I not judge for myself?" I asked.
"I fear," she answered, looking me full in the face and smiling at me delightfully, "you are just a little prejudiced."
"Supposing," I whispered, "I have discovered something that seems to me better worth living for than anything else I have yet found in the world I know of--if that something belongs to a world in which I have not yet lived--do you blame me if for the sake of it I would be willing to climb down even into----"
She held out her finger warningly. I heard heavy footsteps outside and the rattle of the doorhandle.
"You are very foolish!" she murmured. "Please let my father in."
Mr. Parker returned in high good humor. He had met a host of acquaintances and declared that he had not had a dull moment. As for the performance he seemed to have forgotten there was one going on at all.
"I am for supper," he suggested. "I owe our friend here a supper in return for his interrupted dinner."
"Supper, by all means!" I agreed.
"Remember that I am wearing a hat," Eve said. "We must go to one of the smaller places."
In the end we went back to Stephano's. We sat at the table at which I had so often watched Eve and her father sitting alone, and by her side I listened to the music I had so often heard while I had watched her from what had seemed to me to be an impossible distance.
Mr. Parker talked wonderfully. He spoke of gigantic financial deals in Wall Street; of operations which had altered the policy of nations; of great robberies in New York, the details of which he discussed with amazing technical knowledge.
He played tricks with the knives and forks, balanced the glasses in extraordinary fashion, and reduced our waiters to a state of numbed and amazed incapacity. Every person who entered he seemed to have some slight acquaintance with. All the time he was acknowledging and returning greetings, and all the time he talked.
We spoke finally of gambling; and he laughed heartily when I made mild fun of the gambling scare that was just then being written up in all the papers and magazines.
"So you don't believe in baccarat tables in London!" he said. "Very good! We shall see. After we have supped we shall see!"
We stayed until long past closing time. Mr. Parker continued in the highest good humor, but Eve was subject at times to moods of either indifference or depression. The more intimate note which had once or twice crept into our conversation she seemed now inclined to deprecate. She avoided meeting my eyes. More than once she glanced toward the clock.
"Haven't you an appointment to-night, father?" she asked, almost in an undertone.
"Sure!" Mr. Parker answered readily. "I have an appointment, and I am going to take you and Mr. Walmsley along."
"I am delighted