His Own People | Page 8

so to me?"
"I beg your pardon!" he exclaimed, almost incoherently. "I didn't mean
to hurt your feelings. I wouldn't do anything you'd think ungentlemanly
for the world!"
Her eyes lifted again to his with what he had no difficulty in
recognizing as a look of perfect trust; but, behind that, he perceived a
darkling sadness.
"I know it is true," she murmured-- "I know. But you see there are time'
when a woman has sorrow--sorrow of one kind--when she mus' be sure
that there is only--only rispec' in the hearts of her frien's."
With that, the intended revelation was complete, and the young man
understood, as clearly as if she had told him in so many words, that she
was not a widow and that her husband was the cause of her sorrow. His
quickened instinct marvelously divined (or else it was conveyed to him
by some intangible method of hers) that the Count de Vaurigard was a
very bad case, but that she would not divorce him.
"I know," he answered, profoundly touched. "I understand."
In silent gratitude she laid her hand for a second upon his sleeve. Then
her face brightened, and she said gayly:
"But we shall not talk of ~me!~ Let us see how we can keep you out of
mischief at leas' for a little while. I know very well what you will do
to-night: you will go to Salone Margherita an' sit in a box like all the
wicked Americans--"
"No, indeed, I shall not!"
"Ah, yes, you will!" she laughed. "But until dinner let me keep you
from wickedness. Come to tea jus' wiz me, not at the hotel, but at the

little apartment I have taken, where it is quiet. The music is finish', an'
all those pretty girl' are goin' away, you see. I am not selfish if I take
you from the Pincio now. You will come?

III. Glamour
It was some fair dream that would be gone too soon, he told himself, as
they drove rapidly through the twilight streets, down from the Pincio
and up the long slope of the Quirinal. They came to a stop in the gray
courtyard of a palazzo, and ascended in a sleepy elevator to the fifth
floor. Emerging, they encountered a tall man who was turning away
from the Countess' door, which he had just closed. The landing was not
lighted, and for a moment he failed to see the American following
Madame de Vaurigard.
"Eow, it's you, is it," he said informally. "Waitin' a devil of a long time
for you. I've gawt a message for you. ~He's~ comin'. He writes that
Cooley--"
~"Attention!"~ she interrupted under her breath, and, stepping forward
quickly, touched the bell. "I have brought a frien' of our dear, droll
Cooley with me to tea. Monsieur Mellin, you mus' make acquaintance
with Monsieur Sneyd. He is English, but we shall forgive him because
he is a such ole frien' of mine."
"Ah, yes," said Mellin. "Remember seeing you on the boat, running
across the pond."
"Yes, ev coss," responded Mr. Sneyd cordially. "I wawsn't so fawchnit
as to meet you, but dyuh eold Cooley's talked ev you often. Heop I sh'll
see maw of you hyuh."
A very trim, very intelligent-looking maid opened the door, and the two
men followed Madame de Vaurigard into a square hall, hung with
tapestries and lit by two candles of a Brobdingnagian species Mellin
had heretofore seen only in cathedrals. Here Mr. Sneyd paused.
"I weon't be bawthring you," he said. "Just a wad with you, Cantess,
and I'm off."
The intelligent-looking maid drew back some heavy curtains leading to
a salon beyond the hall, and her mistress smiled brightly at Mellin.
"I shall keep him to jus' his one word," she said, as the young man
passed between the curtains.
It was a nobly proportioned room that he entered, so large that, in spite

of the amount of old furniture it contained, the first impression it gave
was one of spaciousness. Panels of carved and blackened wood lined
the walls higher than his head; above them, Spanish leather gleamed
here and there with flickerings of red and gilt, reflecting dimly a small
but brisk wood fire which crackled in a carved stone fireplace. His feet
slipped on the floor of polished tiles and wandered from silky rugs to
lose themselves in great black bear skins as in unmown sward. He went
from the portrait of a "cinquecento" cardinal to a splendid tryptich set
over a Gothic chest, from a cabinet sheltering a collection of old glass
to an Annunciation by an unknown Primitive. He told himself that this
was a "room in a book," and became dreamily assured that he was a
man in a book. Finally he stumbled