The Triflers | Page 5

in another machine. And"--she paused to look up and smile--"for all I know, he may still be following her round and round. I came on to the opera."
"Kind of tough on Marie," he commented, with his blue eyes reflecting a hearty relish of the situation.
"Marie will undoubtedly enjoy a nap," she said. "As for Teddy--well, he is generally out of funds, so I hope he may get into difficulties with the driver."
"He won't," declared Monte. "He'll probably end by borrowing a pour-boire of the driver."
She nodded.
"That is possible. He is very clever."
"The fact that he is still out of jail--" began Monte.
Then he checked himself. He was not a man to talk about other men--even about one so little of a man as Teddy Hamilton.
"Tell me what you know of him," she requested.
"I'd rather not," he answered.
"Is he as bad as that?" she queried thoughtfully. "But what I don't understand is why--why, then, he can sing like a white-robed choir-boy."
Monte looked serious.
"I've heard him," he admitted. "But it was generally after he had been sipping absinthe rather heavily. His specialty is 'The Rosary.'"
"And the barcarole from the 'Contes d'Hoffmann.'"
"And little Spanish serenades," he added.
"But if he's all bad inside?"
She raised those deep, dark eyes as a child might. She had been for ten years like one in a convent.
Covington shook his head.
"I can't explain it," he said. "Perhaps, in a way, it's because of that--because of the contrast. But I 've heard him do it. I 've heard him make a room full of those girls on Montmartre stop their dancing and gulp hard. But where--"
"Did I meet him?" she finished. "It was on the boat coming over this last time. You see-- I 'm talking a great deal about myself."
"Please go on."
He had forgotten that her face was so young. The true lines of her features were scarcely more than sketched in, though that much had been done with a sure hand. Whatever was to come, he thought, must be added. There would be need of few erasures. Up to a certain point it was the face of any of those young women of gentle breeding that he met when at home--the inheritance of the best of many generations.
As she was sitting now, her head slightly turned, the arch of one brow blended in a perfect curve into her straight, thin nose. But the mouth and chin--they were firmer than one might have expected. If, not knowing her, he had seen her driving in the Bois or upon Rotten Row, he would have been curious about her title. It had always seemed to him that she should by rights have been Her Royal Highness Something or Other.
This was due partly to a certain air of serene security and a certain aloofness that characterized her. He felt it to a lesser degree to-night than ever before, but he made no mistake. He might be permitted to admire those features as one admires a beautiful portrait, but somewhere a barrier existed. There are faces that reflect the soul; there are faces that hide the soul.
"Please go on," he repeated, as she still hesitated.
She was trying to explain why it was that she was tempted at all to talk about herself to-night. Perhaps it was because she had been so long silent--for many years silent. Perhaps it was because Monte was so very impersonal that it was a good deal like talking out loud to herself, with the advantage of being able to do this without wondering if she were losing her wits. Then, too, after Teddy, Monte's straight-seeing blue eyes freshened her thoughts like a clean north wind. She always spoke of Monte as the most American man she knew; and by that she meant something direct and honest--something four-square.
"I met Teddy on the boat," she resumed. "I was traveling alone because--well, just because I wanted to be alone. You know, Aunt Kitty was very good to me, but I'd been with her every minute for more than ten years, and so I wanted to be by myself a little while. Right after she died, I went down to the farm--her farm in Connecticut--and thought I could be alone there. But--she left me a great deal of money, Monte."
Somehow, she could speak of such a thing to him. She was quite matter-of-fact about it.
"It was a great deal too much," she went on. "I did n't mind myself, because I could forget about it; but other people--they made me feel like a rabbit running before the hounds. Some one put the will in the papers, and people I'd never heard of began to write to me--dozens of them. Then men with all sorts of schemes--charities and gold mines and copper mines and oil wells and I don't know what all, came