The Golden Slipper | Page 2

signal he had given her.
This might be in character but it hardly suited his views; and, being a
man of resolution, he took advantage of an absorbing minute on the
stage to lean forward and whisper in her ear:
"It's my daughter for whom I request your services; as fine a girl as any
in this house. Give me a hearing. You certainly can manage it."
She was a small, slight woman whose naturally quaint appearance was
accentuated by the extreme simplicity of her attire. In the tier upon tier
of boxes rising before his eyes, no other personality could vie with hers
in strangeness, or in the illusive quality of her ever-changing
expression. She was vivacity incarnate and, to the ordinary observer,
light as thistledown in fibre and in feeling. But not to all. To those who
watched her long, there came moments--say when the music rose to
heights of greatness--when the mouth so given over to laughter took on
curves of the rarest sensibility, and a woman's lofty soul shone through
her odd, bewildering features.
Driscoll had noted this, and consequently awaited her reply in secret
hope.
It came in the form of a question and only after an instant's display of
displeasure or possibly of pure nervous irritability.
"What has she done?"

"Nothing. But slander is in the air, and any day it may ripen into public
accusation."
"Accusation of what?" Her tone was almost pettish.
"Of--of theft," he murmured. "On a great scale," he emphasized, as the
music rose to a crash.
"Jewels?"
"Inestimable ones. They are always returned by somebody. People say,
by me."
"Ah!" The little lady's hands grew steady,--they had been fluttering all
over her lap. "I will see you to-morrow morning at my father's house,"
she presently observed; and turned her full attention to the stage.
Some three days after this Mr. Driscoll opened his house on the
Hudson to notable guests. He had not desired the publicity of such an
event, nor the opportunity it gave for an increase of the scandal secretly
in circulation against his daughter. But the Ambassador and his wife
were foreign and any evasion of the promised hospitality would be sure
to be misunderstood; so the scheme was carried forward though with
less eclat than possibly was expected.
Among the lesser guests, who were mostly young and well acquainted
with the house and its hospitality, there was one unique figure,--that of
the lively Miss Strange, who, if personally unknown to Miss Driscoll,
was so gifted with the qualities which tell on an occasion of this kind,
that the stately young hostess hailed her presence with very obvious
gratitude.
The manner of their first meeting was singular, and of great interest to
one of them at least. Miss Strange had come in an automobile and had
been shown her room; but there was nobody to accompany her
down-stairs afterward, and, finding herself alone in the great hall, she
naturally moved toward the library, the door of which stood ajar. She
had pushed this door half open before she noticed that the room was

already occupied. As a consequence, she was made the unexpected
observer of a beautiful picture of youth and love.
A young man and a young woman were standing together in the glow
of a blazing wood-fire. No word was to be heard, but in their faces,
eloquent with passion, there shone something so deep and true that the
chance intruder hesitated on the threshold, eager to lay this picture
away in her mind with the other lovely and tragic memories now fast
accumulating there. Then she drew back, and readvancing with a less
noiseless foot, came into the full presence of Captain Holliday drawn
up in all the pride of his military rank beside Alicia, the accomplished
daughter of the house, who, if under a shadow as many whispered,
wore that shadow as some women wear a crown.
Miss Strange was struck with admiration, and turned upon them the
brightest facet of her vivacious nature all the time she was saying to
herself: "Does she know why I am here? Or does she look upon me
only as an additional guest foisted upon her by a thoughtless parent?"
There was nothing in the manner of her cordial but composed young
hostess to show, and Miss Strange, with but one thought in mind since
she had caught the light of feeling on the two faces confronting her,
took the first opportunity that offered of running over the facts given
her by Mr. Driscoll, to see if any reconcilement were possible between
them and an innocence in which she must henceforth believe.
They were certainly of a most damaging nature.
Miss Driscoll and four other young ladies of her own station in life had
formed themselves, some