The Fighting Chance | Page 7

dwindling already into insignificance.
Theory had almost decided her to answer Mr. Quarrier’s suggestion
with a ‘Yes.’ However, he was coming from the Lakes in a day or two.
She could decide definitely when she had discussed the matter with
him.
“I wish that I owned this dog,” observed Siward, as the phaeton entered
the macadamised drive.

“I wish so, too,” she said, “but he belongs to Mr. Quarrier.”
CHAPTER II
IMPRUDENCE
A house of native stone built into and among weather-scarred rocks,
one massive wing butting seaward, others nosing north and south
among cedars and outcropping ledges--the whole silver-grey mass of
masonry reddening under a westering sun, every dormer, every leaded
diamond pane aflame; this was Shotover as Siward first beheld it.
Like the craggy vertebrae of a half-buried fossil splitting the sod, a
ragged line of rock rose as a barrier to inland winds; the foreland, set
here and there with tiny lawns and pockets of bright flowers, fell away
to the cliffs; and here, sheer wet black rocks fronted the eternal
battering of the Atlantic.
As the phaeton drew up under a pillared porte-cochere, one or two
servants appeared; a rather imposing specimen bowed them through the
doors into the hall where, in a wide chimney place, the embers of a
drift-wood fire glimmered like a heap of dusty jewels. Bars of sunlight
slanted on wall and rug, on stone floor and carved staircase, on the
bronze foliations of the railed gallery above, where, in the golden
gloom through a high window, sun-tipped tree tops against a sky of
azure stirred like burnished foliage in a tapestry.
“There is nobody here, of course,” observed Miss Landis to Siward as
they halted in front of the fire-place; “the season opens to-day in this
county, you see.” She shrugged her pretty shoulders: “And the women
who don’t shoot make the first field-luncheon a function.”
She turned, nodded her adieux, then, over her shoulder, casually: “If
you haven’t an appointment with the Sand-Man before dinner you may
find me in the gun-room.”
“I’ll be there in about three minutes,” he said; “and what about this
dog?”--looking down at the Sagamore pup who stood before him,

wagging, attentive, always the gentleman to the tips of his toes.
Miss Landis laughed. “Take him to your room if you like. Dogs have
the run of the house.”
So he followed a servant to the floor above where a smiling and very
ornamental maid preceded him through a corridor and into that heavy
wing of the house which fronted the sea.
“Tea is served in the gun-room, sir,” said the pretty maid, and
disappeared to give place to a melancholy and silent young man who
turned on the bath, laid out fresh raiment, and whispering, “Scotch or
Irish, sir?” presently effaced himself.
Before he quenched his own thirst Siward filled a bowl and set it on the
floor, and it seemed as though the dog would never finish gulping and
slobbering in the limpid icy water.
“It’s the salt air, my boy,” commented the young man, gravely refilling
his own glass as though accepting the excuse on his own account.
Then man and beast completed ablutions and grooming and filed out
through the wide corridor, around the gallery, and down the broad
stairway to the gun-room--an oaken vaulted place illuminated by the
sun, where mellow lights sparkled on glass-cased rows of fowling
pieces and rifles, on the polished antlers of shaggy moose heads.
Miss Landis sat curled up in a cushioned corner under the open
casement panes, offering herself a cup of tea. She looked up, nodding
invitation; he found a place beside her. A servant whispered, “Scotch or
Irish, sir,” then set the crystal paraphernalia at his elbow.
He said something about the salt air, casually; the girl gazed
meditatively at space.
The sound of wheels on the gravel outside aroused her from a silence
which had become a brown study; and, to Siward, presently, she said:
“Here endeth our first rendezvous.”

“Then let us arrange another immediately,” he said, stirring the ice in
his glass.
The girl considered him with speculative eyes: “I shouldn’t exactly
know what to do with you for the next hour if I didn’t abandon you.”
“Why bother to do anything with me? Why even give yourself the
trouble of deserting me? That solves the problem.”
“I really don’t mean that you are a problem to me, Mr. Siward,” she
said, amused; “I mean that I am going to drive again.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t see at all. There’s a telegram; I’m not driving for
pleasure--”
She had not meant that either, and it annoyed her that she had
expressed herself in such terms. As a matter of fact, at the telegraphed
request of Mr. Quarrier, she was going to