Half a Rogue | Page 5

tell me a ghost story?" with an effort at
lightness. What misery the girl's tones conveyed to his ears!
"The ghosts of things that ought to, and should, have been; are not
those the most melancholy?" She pressed a button and flooded the
hallway with light.
His keen eyes roving met nothing but signs of luxury. She led him into
the library and turned on the lights. Not a servant anywhere in sight; the
great house seemed absolutely empty. Not even the usual cat or dog
came romping inquisitively into the room. The shelves of books stirred
his sense of envy; what a den for a literary man to wander in! There
were beautiful marbles, splendid paintings, taste and refinement visible
everywhere.
Warrington stood silently watching the girl as she took off her hat and
carelessly tossed it on the reading-table. The Russian sables were
treated with like indifference. The natural abundance of her hair
amazed him; and what a figure, so elegant, rounded, and mature! The
girl, without noticing him, walked the length of the room and back
several times. Once or twice she made a gesture. It was not addressed
to him, but to some conflict going on in her mind.
He sat down on the edge of a chair and fell to twirling his hat, a sign
that he was not perfectly at his ease.
"I am wondering where I shall begin," she said.
Warrington turned down his coat-collar, and the action seemed to
relieve him of the sense of awkwardness.
"Luxury!" she began, with a sweep of her hand which was full of
majesty and despair. "Why have I chosen you out of all the thousands?
Why should I believe that my story would interest you? Well, little as I

have seen of the world, I have learned that woman does not go to
woman in cases such as mine is." And then pathetically: "I know no
woman to whom I might go. Women are like daws; their sympathy
comes but to peck. Do you know what it is to be alone in a city? The
desert is not loneliness; it is only solitude. True loneliness is to be
found only in great communities. To be without a single friend or
confidant, when thousand of beings move about you; to pour your
sorrows into cold, unfeeling ears; to seek sympathy in blind eyes--that
is loneliness. That is the loneliness that causes the heart to break."
Warrington's eyes never left hers; he was fascinated.
"Luxury!" she repeated bitterly. "Surrounding me with all a woman
might desire--paintings that charm the eye, books that charm the mind,
music that charms the ear. Money!"
"Philosophy in a girl!" thought Warrington. His hat became motionless.
"It is all a lie, a lie!" The girl struck her hands together, impotent in her
wrath.
It was done so naturally that Warrington, always the dramatist, made a
mental note of the gesture.
"I was educated in Paris and Berlin; my musical education was
completed in Dresden. Like all young girls with music-loving souls, I
was something of a poet. I saw the beautiful in everything; sometimes
the beauty existed only in my imagination. I dreamed; I was happy. I
was told that I possessed a voice such as is given to few. I sang before
the Emperor of Austria at a private musicale. He complimented me.
The future was bright indeed. Think of it; at twenty I retained all my
illusions! I am now twenty-three, and not a single illusion is left. I saw
but little of my father and mother, which is not unusual with children of
wealthy parents. The first shock that came to my knowledge was the
news that my mother had ceased to live with my father. I was recalled.
There were no explanations. My father met me at the boat. He greeted
my effusive caresses--caresses that I had saved for years!--with careless
indifference. This was the second shock. What did it all mean? Where

was my mother? My father did not reply. When I reached home I found
that all the servants I had known in my childhood days were gone.
From the new ones I knew that I should learn nothing of the mystery
which, like a pall, had suddenly settled down upon me."
She paused, her arms hanging listless at her sides, her gaze riveted
upon a pattern in the rug at her feet. Warrington sat like a man of stone;
her voice had cast a spell upon him.
"I do not know why I tell you these things. It may weary you. I do not
care. Madness lay in silence. I had to tell some one. This morning I
found out all. My mother left my father because he was ... a thief!"
"A thief!" fell mechanically from