Harriet and the Piper | Page 3

was there, life to her was more radiant, more full, more glowing with colour and fragrance. The books he touched, the chair he had at breakfast, his young, lithe body in its golfing knickerbockers, or his sleek black head above the dull black of evening wear, haunted her oddly. He troubled her, but she had neither quite the power nor quite the desire to banish him.
She looked down at him now, content to be alone with her and at her feet, and a hundred mixed emotions stirred her. His feeling for her was not only pitiable and absurd in him, but it was rapidly reaching the point when it would make her absurd and pitiable, too. Nina, instinctively scenting the affair, had already expressed herself as "hating that idiot"; Ward had scowled, of late, at the mere mention of Tony's name. Even her husband, the patient Richard, seeing the youth ensconce himself firmly beside her in the limousine, had had aside his mild comment: "Is this young man a fixture in our family, dear?"
"You should be playing tennis, Tony," said Isabelle.
"Tennis!" He laughed; there was a slight movement of his broad shoulders.
"I think Miss Betty Allen was a little disappointed," the woman pursued. A look of distaste crossed Anthony's face.
"Please--CHERIE!" he begged.
There was a silence brimming with sweetness and colour. Tony laid his hand against her knee, groped until her own warm, smooth fingers were in his own.
"Does Mr. Carter play golf to-morrow?" he asked, presently.
"I suppose so!"
"And you--what do you do?"
"Oh, I have a full day! People to lunch, friends of Madame Carter- "
The boy laughed triumphantly.
"I knew you'd say that!" he said. "Now, I'll tell YOU about to- morrow. You and I are going to slip away, at about one o'clock, and go off in the gray car. We'll go up to--well, somewhere, and we'll have our lunch under the trees. I'll have Hansen pack us something at the club. We'll be back at about four, for the tea callers, and they may have you until I come back for dinner. After dinner we'll walk on the terrace--as we did two wonderful, wonderful nights ago, and perhaps--" His voice had fallen to a rich and tender note, his eyes were rapt. "Perhaps," he said, "just before we go in, at the end of the terrace, you'll look up at the stars again--"
"Tony!" Isabelle interrupted, her face brilliant with colour. "My dear boy--my dear boy, listen to me--"
"Well?" he asked, looking up, as she paused.
"My dear," she said, with difficulty, "think where this is going to end."
He jerked his head impatiently.
"Oh, if you are going to begin THAT again!"
"My dear, I have to begin that again! In all reason--in all REASON----"
"Isabelle, what in God's name has reason to do with it!" He knelt before her, and caught her hands, and Isabelle had a terrified fear that Ward, or Nina, or any one else, might start up or down the terrace steps and see him. "The instant you realize what you and I are to each other, my darling," he said, "you begin to talk of reason. Love isn't reason, Cherie. It's the divinest unreason in the world! Cherie, there's never been another woman for me; there never will be! It's nothing to me that there are obstacles-- I love them--I glory in them! I can't live without you; I don't want to! You're frightened now, you don't know how we can manage it. But I'll find the way. The only thing that matters is that you must belong to me--you SHALL belong to me--as I to you in every fibre of my being--"
"Tony--for Heaven's sake--!" Isabelle was in an agony. Somebody was approaching. He had gotten to his feet, and was gloomily staring at the river, when Nina Carter, followed by a great white Russian hound, came flying down the steps.
"Mother--" Nina, a tall, overgrown girl, with spectacles on her straight nose, and straight, light-brown hair in thick braids, stopped short and gave her mother's companion a look of withering distaste. "Mother," she began again, "aren't you coming up for tea? Granny's there, and the others, from tennis, and Mrs. Bellamy telephoned that she's bringing some people over, and there's nobody there but Granny and me!"
Nina was like her New England father, conscientious, serious, gravely condemnatory of the lax and the unconventional.
"Ask Betty Allen to pour," said Mrs. Carter, regaining her composure rapidly, and assuming the air of hostess at once.
"Betty went home for a tub," Nina explained. "She's coming back. But, Mother," she added, with a faintly reproachful and whining intonation, "really, you ought to be there--"
Mrs. Carter knew this as well as Nina. But she found the child extremely trying in this puritanical mood. Granting that this affair with Tony did her, Isabelle, small credit, at least