The Purchase Price | Page 2

to live; and that nature had given her confidence in
herself was evidenced now in the carriage of head and body as she
walked to and fro, pausing to turn now and then, impatient, uneasy, like
some caged creature, as lithe, as beautiful, as dangerous and as
puzzling in the matter of future conduct. Even as he removed his cap,
Carlisle turned to her, a man's admiration in his eyes, a gentleman's
trouble also there.
[Illustration: Carlisle turned, a man's admiration in his eyes]
"My dear Countess St. Auban," said he, more formally, "I wish that you
might never use that word with me again,--jailer! I am only doing my
duty as a soldier. The army has offered to it all sorts of unpleasant tasks.
They selected me as agent for your disappearance because I am an
army officer. I had no option, I must obey. In my profession there is not
enough fighting, and too much civilian work, police work, constable
work, detective work. There are fools often for officers, and over them
politicians who are worse fools, sometimes. Well, then, why blame a
simple fellow like me for doing what is given him to do? I have not
liked the duty, no matter how much I have enjoyed the experience.
Now, with puzzles ended and difficulties beginning, you threaten to
make my unhappy lot still harder!"
"Why did you bring me here?"
"That I do not know. I could not answer you even did I know."
"And why did I come?" she mused, half to herself.
"Nor can I say that. Needs must when the devil drives; and His Majesty
surely was on the box and using his whip-hand, two days ago, back in
Washington. Your own sense of fairness will admit as much as that."
She threw back her head like a restless horse, blooded, mettlesome, and
resumed her pacing up and down, her hands now clasped behind her

back.
"When I left the carriage with my maid Jeanne, there," she resumed at
length; "when I passed through that dark train shed at midnight, I felt
that something was wrong. When the door of the railway coach was
opened I felt that conviction grow. When you met me--the first time I
ever saw you, sir,--I felt my heart turn cold."
"Madam!"
"And when the door of the coach closed on myself and my
maid,--when we rolled on away from the city, in spite of all I could do
or say--, why, then, sir, you were my jailer. Have matters changed since
then?"
"Madam, from the first you were splendid! You showed pure courage.
'I am a prisoner!' you cried at first--not more than that. But you said it
like a lady, a noblewoman. I admired you then because you faced
me--whom you had never seen before--with no more fear than had I
been a private and you my commanding officer."
"Fear wins nothing."
"Precisely. Then let us not fear what the future may have for us. I have
no directions beyond this point,--Pittsburg. I was to take boat here, that
was all. I was to convey you out into the West, somewhere, anywhere,
no one was to know where. And someway, anyway, my instructions
were, I was to lose you--to lose you. Madam, in plain point of fact. And
now, at the very time I am indiscreet enough to tell you this much, you
make my cheerful task the more difficult by saying that you must be
regarded only as a prisoner of war!"
Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever
showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning
had no terrors for youth and health like hers. She put back a truant curl
from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked
him full in the face now, drawing a deep breath which caused the round
of her bosom to lift the lace at her throat. Then, woman-like, she did

the unlocked for, and laughed at him, a low, full ripple of wholesome
laughter, which evoked again a wave of color to his sensitive face.
Josephine St. Auban was a prisoner,--a prisoner of state, in fact, and
such by orders not understood by herself, although, as she knew very
well, a prisoner without due process of law. Save for this tearful maid
who stood yonder, she was alone, friendless. Her escape, her safety
even, lay in her own hands. Yet, even now, learning for the first time
this much definitely regarding the mysterious journey into which she
had been entrapped--even now, a prisoner held fast in some stern and
mysterious grasp whose reason and whose nature she could not
know--she laughed, when she should have wept!
"My instructions were to take you out beyond this point,"