The Palace of Darkened Windows | Page 4

minx. She was the daughter of
unreason and the granddaughter of folly. She needed, emphatically
needed, to be shown. But this Englishman, with his harsh and violently
antagonizing way of putting things, was clearly not the man for the
need. It took a lighter touch--the hand of iron in the velvet glove, as it
were. It took a keener spirit, a softer humor.
Billy threw out his chest and drew himself up to his full five feet eleven
and one-half inches, as he passed indoors and sought the hotel register,
for he felt within himself the true equipment for that delicate mission.
He fairly panted to be at it.
Fate was amiable. The hotel clerk, coerced with a couple of
gold-banded ones with the real fragrance, permitted Billy to learn that
the blue-eyed one's name was Beecher, Arlee Beecher, and that she was
in the company of two ladies entitled Mrs. and Miss Eversham. The
Miss Eversham was quite old enough to be entitled otherwise. They
were occupied, the clerk reported, with nerves and dissatisfaction. Miss
Beecher appeared occupied in part--with a correspondence that would
swamp a foreign office.
* * * * *
Now it is always a question whether being at the same hotel does or
does not constitute an introduction. Sometimes it does; sometimes it
does not. When the hotel is a small and inexpensive arrangement in
Switzerland, where the advertised view of the Alpenglühen is obtained
by placing the chairs in a sociable circle on the sidewalk, then usually it
does. When the hotel is a large and expensive affair in gayest Cairo,
where the sunny and shady side rub elbows, and gamesters and
débutantes and touts and school teachers and vivid ladies of

conspicuous pasts and stout gentlemen of exhilarated presents abound,
in fact where innocent sightseers and initiated traffickers in human
frailties are often indistinguishable, then decidedly it does not.
But fate, still smiling, dropped a silver shawl in Billy's path as he was
trailing his prey through the lounge after dinner. The shawl belonged,
most palpably, to a German lady three feet ahead of him, but gripping it
triumphantly, he bounded over the six feet which separated him from
the Eversham-Beecher triangle and with marvelous self-restraint he
touched Miss Eversham on the arm.
"You dropped this?" he inquired.
Miss Eversham looked surprisedly at Billy and uncertainly at the shawl,
which she mechanically accepted. "Why I--I didn't remember having it
with me," she hesitated.
"I noticed you were wearing one other evenings," said Billy, the Artful,
"so I thought----"
"You know whether this is yours or not, don't you, Clara?" interposed
the mother.
"They all look alike," murmured Clara Eversham, eying helplessly the
silver border.
Billy permitted himself to look at Miss Beecher. That young person
was looking at him and there was a disconcerting gaiety in her
expression, but at sight of him she turned her head, faintly coloring. He
judged she recalled his unmannerly eavesdropping that afternoon.
"Pardon--excuse me--but that is to me belonging," panted an agitated
but firm voice behind them, and two stout and beringed hands seized
upon the glittering shawl in Miss Eversham's lax grasp. "It but just now
off me falls," and the German lady looked belligerent accusation upon
the defrauding Billy.
There was a round of apologetic murmurs, unacknowledged by the

recipient, who plunged away with her shawl, as if fearing further
designs upon it. Billy laughed down at the Evershams.
"I feel like a porch climber making off with her belongings. But I had
seen you with----"
"I do think I had mine this evening, after all," murmured Clara, with a
questioning glance after the departing one.
"An uncultured person!" stated Mrs. Eversham.
Miss Beecher said nothing at all. Her faint smile was mockingly
derisive.
"Anyway you must let me get you some coffee," Billy most
inconsequentially suggested, beckoning to the red-girdled Mohammed
with his laden tray, and because he was young and nice looking and
evidently a gentleman from their part of the world and his evening
clothes fitted perfectly and had just the right amount of braid, Mrs.
Eversham made no objection to the circle of chairs he hastily collected
about a taborette, and let him hand them their coffee and send
Mohammed for the cream which Miss Eversham declared was
indispensable for her health.
"If I take it clear I find it keeps me awake," she confided, and Billy
deplored that startling and lamentable circumstance, and passed Mrs.
Eversham the sugar and wondered if they could be the Philadelphia
Evershams of whom he had heard his mother speak, and regretted that
they were not, for then they would know who he was--William B. Hill
of Alatoona, New York. He found it rather stupid traveling alone. Of
course one met many Americans, but----
Mrs. Eversham took