The Fighting Chance | Page 5

as amusing, and the outlook at Shotover House had been
unpromising with only the overgrateful Page twins to practise on--the
other men collectively and individually boring her. And suddenly,
welcome as manna from the sky, behold this highly agreeable boy to
play with--until Quarrier arrived. Her telegram had been addressed to
Mr. Quarrier.
“What was it you were saying about selfishness?” she asked. “Oh, I
remember. It was nonsense.”
“Certainly.”
She laughed, adding: “Selfishness is so simply defined you know.”
“Is it? How.”
“A refusal to renounce. That covers everything,” she concluded.
“Sometimes renunciation is weakness--isn’t it?” he suggested.
“In what case for example?”
“Well, suppose we take love.”
“Very well, you may take it if you like it.”
“Suppose you loved a man!” he insisted.
“Let him beware! What then?”
“--And, suppose it would distress your family if you married him?”
“I’d give him up.”

“If you loved him?”
“Love? That is the poorest excuse for selfishness, Mr. Siward.”
“So you would ruin your happiness and his--”
“A girl ought to find more happiness in renouncing a selfish love than
in love itself,” announced Miss Landis with that serious conviction
characteristic of her years.
“Of course,” assented Siward with a touch of malice, “if you really do
find more happiness in renouncing love than in love itself, it would be
foolish not to do it--”
“Mr. Siward! You are derisive. Besides, you are not acute. A woman is
always an opportunist. When the event takes place I shall know what to
do.”
“You mean when you want to marry the man you mustn’t?
“Exactly. I probably shall.”
“Marry him?
“Wish to!”
“I see. But you won’t, of course.”
She drew rein, bringing the horse to a walk at the foot of a long hill.
“We are going much too fast,” said Miss Landis, smiling.
“Driving too fast for--”
“No, not driving, going--you and I.”
“Oh, you mean--”
“Yes I do. We are on all sorts of terms, already.”

“In the country, you know, people--”
“Yes I know all about it, and what old and valued friends one makes at
a week’s end. But it has been a matter of half-hours with us, Mr.
Siward.”
“Let us sit very still and think it over,” he suggested. And they both
laughed.
It was perhaps the reaction of her gaiety that recalled to her mind her
telegram. The telegram had been her promised answer after she had had
time to consider a suggestion made to her by a Mr. Howard Quarrier.
The last week at Shotover permitted reflection; and while her telegram
was no complete answer to the suggestion he had made, it contained
material of interest in the eight words: “I will consider your request
when you arrive.
“I wonder if you know Howard Quarrier?” she said.
After a second’s hesitation he replied: “Yes--a little. Everybody does.”
“You do know him?”
“Only at--the club.”
“Oh, the Lenox?”
“The Lenox--and the Patroons.”
Preoccupied, driving with careless, almost inattentive perfection, she
thought idly of her twenty-three years, wondering how life could have
passed so quickly leaving her already stranded on the shoals of an
engagement to marry Howard Quarrier. Then her thoughts, errant,
wandered half the world over before they returned to Siward; and when
at length they did, and meaning to be civil, she spoke again of his
acquaintance with Quarrier at the Patroons Club--the club itself being
sufficient to settle Siward’s status in every community.
“I’m trying to remember what it is I have heard about you,” she

continued amiably; “you are--”
An odd expression in his eyes arrested her--long enough to note their
colour and expression--and she continued, pleasantly; “--you are
Stephen Siward, are you not? You see I know your name perfectly
well--” Her straight brows contracted a trifle; she drove on, lips
compressed, following an elusive train of thought which vaguely,
persistently, coupled his name with something indefinitely unpleasant.
And she could not reconcile this with his appearance. However, the
train of unlinked ideas which she pursued began to form the semblance
of a chain. Coupling his name with Quarrier’s, and with a club, aroused
memory; vague uneasiness stirred her to a glimmering comprehension.
Siward? Stephen Siward? One of the New York Siwards then;--one of
that race--
Suddenly the truth flashed upon her,--the crude truth lacking definite
detail, lacking circumstance and colour and atmosphere,--merely the
raw and ugly truth.
Had he looked at her--and he did, once--he could have seen only the
unruffled and very sweet profile of a young girl. Composure was one of
the masks she had learned to wear--when she chose.
And she was thinking very hard all the while; “So this is the man? I
might have known his name. Where were my five wits?
Siward!--Stephen Siward! … He is very young, too … much too young