The Lighted Match | Page 6

backward, then turning on his heel went silently down the stairs.
She stood hesitant for a moment, with both hands pressed against the door at her back, and her brow drawn in a deep furrow, then she threw her chin upward and shook her head with that resolute gesture which meant, with her, shaking off at least the outward seeming of annoyance.
Benton came out from his hiding-place behind the palms, and she looked up at him with a momentary clearing of her brow.
"Where were you?" she asked.
"I unintentionally played eavesdropper," he said humbly, handing her the rose. "I was lying in wait to decorate you."
"It is wonderful," she exclaimed. "I think it is the wonderfulest rose that any little girl ever had for a magic gift." She held it for a moment, softly against her cheek.
He bent forward. "Cara!" he whispered. No answer. "Cara!" he repeated.
"Yeth, thir," she lisped in a whimsical little-girl voice, looking up with a smile stolen from a fairy-tale.
"I am just lending you that rose. I had meant to give it to you, but now I want it back--when you are through with it. May I have it?"
She held it out teasingly. "Do you want it now--Indian-giver?" she demanded.
"You know I don't," in an injured tone.
"I'm glad, because you couldn't have it--yet." And she was gone, leaving him to make his appearance from the direction of his own apartments.
CHAPTER III
THE MOON OVERHEARS
At dinner the talk ran for a course or two with the hounds, then strayed aimlessly into a dozen discursive channels.
"My boy," whispered Mrs. Van from her end of the table, to Pagratide on her right, "I relinquish you to the girl on your other side. You have made a very brave effort to talk to me. Ah, I know--" raising a slender hand to still his polite remonstrance--"there is no Cara but Cara, and Pagratide is--" She let her mischief-laden smile finish the comment.
"Her satellite," he confessed.
"One of them," she wickedly corrected him.
The foreigner turned his head and nodded gravely. Cara was listening to something that Benton was saying in undertone, her lips parted in an amused smile.
Through a momentary lull as the coffee came, rose the voice of O'Barreton, the bore, near the head of the table; O'Barreton, who must be tolerated because as a master of hounds he had no superior and a bare quorum of equals.
"For my part," he was saying, "I confess an augmented admiration for Van because he's distantly related to near-royalty. If that be snobbish, make the most of it."
Van laughed. "Related to royalty?" he scornfully repeated. "Am I not myself a sovereign with the right on election day to stand in line behind my chauffeur and stable-boys at the voting-place?"
"How did it happen, Van? How did you acquire your gorgeous relatives?" persisted O'Barreton.
"Some day I'll tell you all about it. Do you think the Elkridge hounds will run--"
"I addressed a question to you. That question is still before the house," interrupted O'Barreton, with dignity. "How did you acquire 'em?"
"Inherited 'em!" snapped Van, but O'Barreton was not to be turned aside.
"Quite true and quite epigrammatic," he persisted sweetly. "But how?"
Van turned to the rest of the table. "You don't have to listen to this," he said in despair. "I have to go through it with O'Barreton every time he comes here. It's a sort of ritual." Then, turning to the tormenting guest, he explained carefully: "Once upon a time the Earl of Dundredge had three daughters. The eldest--my mother--married an American husband. The second married an Englishman--she is the mother of my fair cousin, Cara, there; the third and youngest married the third son of the Grand Duke of Maritzburg, at that time a quiet gentleman who loved the Champs Elys��es and landscape-painting in Southern Spain."
Van traced a family-tree on the tablecloth with a salt-spoon, for his guest's better information.
"That doesn't enlighten me on the semi-royal status of your Aunt Maritzburg," objected O'Barreton. "How did she grow so great?"
"Vicissitudes, Barry," explained the host patiently. "Just vicissitudes. The father and the two elder brothers died off and left the third son to assume the government of a grand duchy, which he did not want, and compelled him to relinquish the mahl-stick and brushes which he loved. My aunt was his grand-duchess-consort, and until her death occupied with him the ducal throne. If you'd look these things up for yourself, my son, in some European 'Who's Who,' you'd remember 'em--and save me much trouble."
After dinner Cara disappeared, and Benton wandered from room to room with a seemingly purposeless eye, keenly alert for a black gown, a red rose, and a girl whom he could not find. Von Ritz also was missing, and this fact added to his anxiety.
In the conservatory he came upon Pagratide, likewise stalking about with restlessly roving eyes,