“Well, I guess we don’t need to see any more of these fellows for a week, Dan,” Ruggles yawned with relief. “I’m blamed if it isn’t as hard to take care of money as to get it. I was a poor man once, and so was your father. Those were the days we had fun.”

Ruggles took out a big cigar, struck a match sharply, and when he had lit his Henry Clay he fixed his gaze on the flying London fog, whose black curtain drew itself across their window.

“There’s a lot of excitement,” Ruggles said, “in not knowing what you’re going to get; may turn out to be anything when you’re young and on the trail. That’s the way your father and me felt. And when we started out on the spot that’s Blairtown on the map to-day, your father had forty dollars a week to engineer a busted mine and to pull the company into shape.”

Dan knew the story of his father’s rise by heart, but he listened.

“He took on with the mine a lot of discontented half-hearted rapscallions—a whole bunch, who had failed all along the line. He didn’t chuck ’em out. ‘There’s no life in old wood, Josh,’ he said to me, ‘but sometimes there’s fire in it, and I’m going to light up,’ and he did. He won over the whole lot of them in eighteen months, and within two years he had that darned mine paying dividends. Meanwhile something came his way and he took it.”

From his chair Dan asked: “You mean the Bentley claim?”

“Measles,” his friend said comically, with a grin. “Your father was sick to death with them. When he was sitting up for the first time, peeling in his room, there was a fellow, an Englishman, a total stranger, come in to see him. ‘Better clear out of here,’ your father says to him. ‘I’m shedding the damnedest disease for a grown man that ever was caught.’ ‘I’m not afraid of it,’ the Englishman said, ‘I’m shedding worse.’ When your father asked him what that was, he said the idea that he could make any money in the West. He told your father that he was going back to England and give up his western schemes, and that he had a claim to sell, and he told Blair where it lay. ‘Who has seen it?’ your father asked. ‘Any of my men?’ And the Englishman told your father that nobody had wanted to buy it and that was why he had come to him. He said he thought his only chance to sell was to hold up some blind man on his dying bed and that he had heard that Blair was too sick to stir out of his room and to prospect. Your father liked the fellow’s cheek and when he found out that he had the maps with him, your father bought the whole blooming sweep at the man’s price, which was a mere song.

“Your father never went near his purchase for a year or more, and when he had turned the mine he was managing over to the original company, with me as manager in his place, at a salary of twenty thousand dollars a year, he said to me one day, ‘Ruggles, you’ll be sorry to know that the fun is all over, I’ve struck oil.’ But the oil was copper. The whole blooming business that he’d bought of that Englishman was rich with ore. Well, that’s the story of Blairtown,” Ruggles said. “You were born there and your mother died there.”

Dan said: “Galorey told me what dad did later for the man that sold him the mine, and it was just like everything else he did, for dad was all right, just as good as they come.”

Ruggles agreed. He left his reminiscences abruptly. “Your dad and me had the fun in our time; now you are going to get the other kind; you’re going to make the dust fly that he dug up.”

And the rich young man said musingly: “I’ll bet it isn’t half as good at my end.”

And Ruggles agreed: “Not by a jugful.” And followed: “What’s on to-night? Mandalay?”

Dan’s fury at Prince Poniotowsky came back. “I guess you thought I was a little loose in the lid, didn’t you, Josh, going so often to the same play?”

“You wouldn’t have been the first rich man that had the same disease,” Ruggles answered.

“There is nothing the matter with Mandalay, but I’m not gone on any actress living, Josh; you are in the wrong pew.”

Dan altered his indolent pose and sat forward. “But I am thinking of getting married,” he said.

“I hope it’s to the right girl, Dan.”

And with young assurance Blair answered: “It will be if I marry her. I know what I want all right.”

“I hope she knows what she wants, Dan.”

“How do you mean?”

“You or your money. You have the darnedest handicap, my boy.”

Blair flushed. “I’ll get to hate the whole thing,” he said ferociously. “It meets me everywhere—bonds—stocks—figures—dividends —coupons—deeds—it’s too much!” he said suddenly, with resentment. “It is too much for me. Why, sometimes I feel a hundred years old, and like a hunk of gold.”

Ruggles, in answer to this, said: “Why, that reminds me of what a man remarked about your father once. It was the same English chap your father bought the claim of. Speaking of Blair, he said to me: ‘You know there’s all kinds of metal bars, and when you cut into them some is bullion and some’s coated with aluminum, and there’s others that when you cut down, cut a clean yellow all along the line.’ If, as you say, you feel like a hunk of metal, it ain’t bad if it is that kind.”

“It’s got to stop coming in between me and the woman I marry, all right, though.” Dan did not pursue his subject further, for his feelings about the duchess were too unreal to give him the sincere heartiness with which he would have liked to answer Ruggles.

He went over to the window, and, with his hands in his pockets, stood looking out at the fog. Ruggles, at the table, opened the cover of the book of Mandalay and took out the four checks made out to Lady Galorey and which he had forgotten. He hurriedly thrust them into his pocket.

“Come away, Dannie,” he said cheerfully, “let’s do something wild. I feel up to most anything with this miserable fog down on me. If it had any nerve it would take some form or shape, so a man could choke it back.”

Ruggles blew his nose violently.

“There’s nothing to do,” said Dan in a bored tone.

“Why don’t you see who your telegram is from?” Ruggles asked him. It proved to be a suggestion from Gordon Galorey that Dan should meet him at five o’clock at the club.

“What will you do, Rug?”

“Sleep,” said the Westerner serenely; “I’m nearly as happy in London as I am in Philadelphia. It’s four o’clock now and I can’t sleep more than four hours anyway. Let’s have a real wild time, Dannie.”

Dan looked at him doubtfully, but Ruggles’ eyes were keen.

“What kind of a time do you mean?”

“Let’s ask the Gaiety girl for dinner—for supper after the theater.”

“Letty Lane? She wouldn’t go.”

“Why not?”

“She is awfully delicate; it is all she can do to keep her contracts.”

He knows that, Ruggles thought. “Let’s ask her and see.” He went over to the table and drew out the paper. “Come on and write and ask her to go out with us to supper.”

“See here, Rug, what’s this for?”

“What’s strange in it? She is from our state, and if you don’t hustle and ask her I am going to ask her all alone.”

Dan was puzzled as he sat down to the table, reflecting that it was perfectly possible that old Ruggles had fallen a prey to the charms of an actress. She wouldn’t come, of course. He wrote a formal invitation without thinking very much of what he said or how, folded and addressed his note.

“What did you say?” Ruggles asked eagerly.

“Why, that two boys from home wanted to give her a supper.”

“Well,” said Ruggles, “if the answer comes while you are at the club I’ll open it and give the orders. Think she’ll come?”

“I do not,” responded Dan rather brutally. “She’s got others to take her out to supper, you bet your life.”

“Well, there’s none of them as rich as you are, I reckon, Dan.”

And the boy turned on him violently.

“See here, Josh, if you speak to me again of my money, when there’s a woman in the question—”

He did not finish his threat, but snatched up his coat and hat and gloves and went out of the door, slamming it after him.

Mr. Ruggles’ profound and happy snore was cut short by the page boy, who fetched in a note, with the Savoy stamping on the back. Ruggles opened it not without emotion.

“Dear boy,” it ran, “I haven’t yet thanked you for the primroses; they were perfectly sweet. There is not one of them in any of my rooms, and I’ll tell you why to-night. I am crazy to accept for supper”—here she had evidently struck out her intended refusal, and closed with, “I’m coming, but don’t come after me at the Gaiety, please. I’ll meet you at the Carlton after the theater. Who’s the other boy? L. L.”

The “other boy” read the note with much difficulty, for it was badly written. “He’ll have to stop sending her flowers and going every night to the theater unless he wants a row with the duchess,” he said dryly. And with a certain interest in his rôle, Ruggles rang for the head waiter, and with the man’s help ordered his first midnight supper for an actress.

CHAPTER XI—RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER

They could tell by the interest in the room when the actress was coming, and both men rose as Letty Lane floated in at flood tide with a crowd of last arrivals.

She had not dressed this evening with the intention that her dark simplicity of attire should be conspicuous. The cloak which Dan took from her shed the perfume of orris and revealed the woman in a blaze of sparkling paillettes. She seemed made out of sparkle, and her blond head, from which a bright ornament shook, was the most brilliant thing about her, though her dress from hem to throat glistened with discs of gold like moonshine on a starry sea. The actress’ look of surprise when she saw Ruggles indicated that she had not expected a boy of his age.

“The other boy?” she asked. “Well, this is the nicest supper party ever! And you are awfully good to invite me.”

Ruggles patted his shirt front and adjusted his cravat.

“My idea,” he told her, “all the blame on me, Miss Lane. Charge it up to me! Dan here had cold feet from the first. He said you wouldn’t come.”

She laughed deliciously.

“He did? Hasn’t got much faith, has he?”

Miss Lane drew her long gloves off, touched the orchids with her little hands, on which the ever present rings flashed, and went on talking to Ruggles, to whom she seemed to want to address her conversation.

“I’m simply crazy over these flowers.”

The older man showed his pleasure. “My choice again! Walked up myself and chose the bunch, blame me again; ditto dinner; mine from start to finish—hope you’ll like it. I would have added some Montana peas and some chocolate soda-water, only I thought you might not understand the joke.”

Miss Lane beamed on him. Although he was unconscious of it, she was not fully at ease: he was not the kind of man she had expected to see. Accustomed to young fellows like the boy and their mad devotion, accustomed to men with whom she could be herself, the big, bluff, middle-aged gentleman with his painfully correct tie, his rumpled iron-gray hair, and his deference to her, though an unusual diversion, was a little embarrassing.

“Oh, I know your dinner is ripping, Mr. Ruggles. I’m on a diet of milk and eggs myself, and I expect your order didn’t take in those.” But at his fallen countenance she hurried to say: “Oh, I wouldn’t have told you that if I hadn’t been intending to break through.”

And with childlike anticipation she clapped her hands and said: “We’re going to have ‘lots of fun.’ Just think, they don’t know what that means here in London. They say ‘heaps of sport, you know.’” She imitated the accent maliciously. “It’s just we Americans who know what ‘lots of fun’ is, isn’t it?”

Near her Dan Blair’s young eyes were drinking in the spectacle of delicate beauty beautifully gowned, of soft skin, glorious hair, and he gazed like a child at a pantomime. Under his breath he exclaimed now, with effusion, “You bet your life we are going to have lots of fun!” And turning to him, Miss Lane said:

“Six chocolate sodas running?”

“Oh, don’t,” he begged, “not that kind of jag.”

She shook with laughter.

“Are you from Blairtown, Mr. Ruggles? I don’t think I ever saw you there.”

And the Westerner returned: “Well, from what Dan tells me, you’re not much of a fixture yourself, Miss Lane. You were just about born and then kidnapped.”

Her gay expression faded. And she repeated his word, “Kidnapped? That’s a good word for it, Mr. Ruggles.”

She picked up between her fingers a strand of the green fern, and looked at its delicate tracery as it lay on the palm of her hand.

“I sang one day after a missionary sermon in the Presbyterian Church.” She interrupted herself with a short laugh. “But I guess you’re not thinking of writing my biography, are you?”

And it was Dan’s voice that urged her. “Say, do go on. I was there that day with my father, and you sang simply out of sight.”

“Yes,” she accepted, “out of sight of Blairtown and everybody I ever knew. I went away the next day.” She lifted her glass of champagne to her lips. “Here’s one thing I oughtn’t to do,” she said, “but I’m going to just the same. I’m going to do everything I want this evening. Remember, I let you drink six glasses of chocolate soda once.” She drained her glass and her friends drank with her. “I like this soup awfully. What is it?”—just touching it with her spoon.

“Why,” Ruggles hastened to tell her, “it ain’t a party soup, it’s Scotch broth. But somehow it sounded good on the bill of fare. I fixed the rest of the dinner up for you and Dan, but I let myself go on the soup, it’s my favorite.”

She did not eat it, however, although she said it was splendid and that she was crazy about it.

“Did you come East then?” Dan returned to what she had been saying.

“Yes, that week; went to Paris and all over the place.”

She instantly fell into a sort of melancholy. It was easy to be seen that she did not want to talk about her past and yet that it fascinated her.

“Just think of it!” he exclaimed. “I never heard a word about you until I heard you sing the other night.”

The actress laughed and told him that he had made up for lost time, and that he was a regular “sitter” now at the Gaiety.

Ruggles said, “He took me every night to see you dance until I balked, Miss Lane.”

“Still, it’s a perfectly great show, Mr. Ruggles, don’t you think so? I like it better than any part I ever had. I am interested about it for the sake of the man who wrote it, too. It’s his first opera; he’s an invalid and has a wife and five kids to look after.”

And Ruggles replied, “Oh, gracious! I feel better than ever, having gone ten times, although I wasn’t very sore about it before! Ain’t you going to eat anything?”

She only picked at her food, drinking what they poured in her glass, and every time she spoke to Dan a look of charming kindness crossed her face, an expression of good fellowship which Ruggles noted with interest.

“I wish you could have seen this same author to-day at the rehearsal of the play,” Letty Lane went on. “He’s too ill to walk and they had to carry him in a chair. We all went round to his apartments after the theater. He lives in three rooms with his whole family and he’s had so many debts and so much trouble and such a poor contract that he hasn’t made much out of Mandalay, but I guess he will out of this new piece. He hugged and kissed me until I thought he would break my neck.”

London had gone mad over Letty Lane, whose traits and contour were the admiration of the world at large and well-known even to the news-boys, and whose likeness was nearly as familiar as that of the Madonnas of old. Her face was oval and perfectly formed, with the reddest of mouths—the most delicious and softest of mouths—the line of her brows clear and straight, and her gray eyes large and as innocent and appealing as a child’s; under their long lashes they opened up like flowers. It was said that no man could withstand their appeal; that she had but to look to make a man her slave; and as more than once she turned to Dan, smiling and gracious, Ruggles watched her, mutely thinking of what he had heard this day, for after her letter came accepting their invitation he had taken pains to find out the things he wanted to know. It had not been difficult. As her face and form were public, on every post-card and in every photographer’s shop, so the actress’ reputation was the property of the public.

As Ruggles repeated these things to himself, he watched her beside the son of his old friend. They were talking—rather she was—and behind the orchids and the ferns her voice was sweet and enthralling. Ruggles tried to appreciate his bill of fare while the two appreciated each other. It was strange to Dan to have her so near and so approachable. His sights of her off the stage had been so slight and fleeting. On the boards she had seemed to be an unreal creation made for the public alone. Her dress, cut fearlessly low, displayed her lovely young bosom—soft, bloomy, white as a shell—and her head and ears were as delicate as the petals of a white rose. Low in the nape of her neck, her golden hair lay lightly, and from its soft masses fragrance came to him.

Ruggles could hear her say: “Roach came to the house and told my people that I had a fortune in my voice. I was living with my uncle and my step-aunt and working in the store. And that same day your father sent down a check for five hundred dollars. He said it was ‘for the little girl with the sweet voice,’ and it gives me a lot of pleasure to think that I began my lessons on that money.”

The son of old Dan Blair said earnestly: “I’m darned glad you did—I’m darned glad you did!”

Letty Lane nodded. “So am I. But,” with some sharpness, “I don’t see why you speak that way. I’ve earned my way. I made a fortune for Roach all right.”

“You mean the man you married?”

“Married—goodness gracious, what made you think that?” She threw back her pretty head and laughed—a laugh with the least possible merriment in it. “Oh, Heavens, marry old Job Roach! So they say that, do they? I never heard that. I hear a lot, but I never heard that fairy tale.” She put her hands to her checks, which had grown crimson. “That’s not true!”

Dan swore at himself for his tactless stupidity.

Ruggles had heard both sides. She was adored by the poor, and, as far as rumor knew, she spent thousands on the London paupers, and the Westerner, who had never been given to reveling in scandals and to whom there was something wicked in speaking ill of a woman, no matter whom she might be, listened with embarrassment to tales he had been told in answer to his other questions; and turned with relief to the stories of Letty Lane’s charity, and to the stories of her popularity and her success. They were more agreeable, but they couldn’t make him forget the rest, and now as he looked at her face across the bouquet of orchids and ferns, it was with a sinking of heart, a great pity for her, and still a decided enmity. He disapproved of her down to the ground. He didn’t let himself think how he felt, but it was for the boy. Ruggles was not a man of the world in any sense; he was simple and Puritan in his judgments, and his gentle nature and his big heart kept him from pharisaical and strenuous measures. He had been led in what he was doing to-night by a diplomacy and a common sense that few men east of the Mississippi would have thought out under the circumstances.

“Tell Mr. Ruggles,” he heard Dan say to her, “tell him—tell him!”

And she answered:

“I was telling Mr. Blair that, as he is so frightfully rich, I want him to give me some money.”

Ruggles gasped, but answered quietly:

“Well, he’s a great giver, Miss Lane.”

“I guess he is if he’s like his father!” she returned. “I am trying to get a lot, though, out of him, and when you asked me to dine to-night I said to myself, ‘I’ll accept, for it will be a good time to ask Mr. Blair to help me out in what I want to do.’”

At Ruggles’ face she smiled sweetly and said graciously:

“Oh, don’t think I wouldn’t have come anyway. But I’m awfully tired these days, and going out to supper is just one thing too much to do! I want Mr. Blair,” she said, turning to Ruggles as if she knew a word from him would make the thing go through, “to help me build a rest home down on the English coast, for girls who get discouraged in their art. When I think of the luck I have had and how these things have been from the beginning, and how money has just poured in, why,” she said ardently, “it just makes my heart ache to think of the girls who try and fail, who go on for a little while and have to give up. You can’t tell,”—she nodded to Ruggles, as though she were herself a matron of forty,—“you can not tell what their temptations are or what comes up to make them go to pieces.”

Ruggles listened with interest.

“I haven’t thought it all out yet, but so many come to me tired out and discouraged, and I think a nice home taken care of by a good creature like my Higgins, let us say, would be a perfect blessing to them. They could go there and rest and study and just think, and perhaps,” she said slowly, as though while she spoke she saw a vision of a tired self, for whom there had been no rest home and no place of retreat, “perhaps a lot of them would pull through in a different way. Now to-day”—she broke her meditative tone short—“I got a letter from a hospital where a poor thing that used to sing with me in New York was dying with consumption—all gone to pieces and discouraged, and there is where your primroses went to—” she nodded to Dan. “Higgins took them. You don’t mind?” And Blair, with a warmth in his voice, touched by her pity more than by her charity, said:

“Why, they grew for you, Miss Lane; I don’t care what you do with them.”

Letty Lane sank her head on her hands, her elbows leaned on the table. She seemed suddenly to have lost interest even in her topic. She looked around the room indifferently. The orchestra was softly playing The Dove Song from Mandalay, and very softly under her breath the star hummed it, her eyes vaguely fixed on some unknown scene. To Dan and to Ruggles she had grown strange. The music, her brilliancy, her sudden indifference, put her out of their commonplace reach. Ruggles to himself thought with relief:

“She doesn’t care one rap for the boy anyway, thank God. She’s got other fish to land.”

And Dan Blair thought: “It’s my infernal money again.” But he was generous at heart and glad to be of service to her, and was perfectly willing to be “touched” for her poor. Then two or three men came up and joined them. She greeted them indolently, bestowing a word or a look on this one or on that; all fire and light seemed to have gone out of her, and Dan said:

“You are tired. I guess I had better take you home.”

She did not appear to hear him. Indeed she was not looking at him, and Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky making his way toward their table across the room.

Letty Lane rose. Dan put her cloak about her shoulders, and glancing toward Ruggles and toward the boy as indifferently as she had considered the new-comers, who formed a small group around the brilliant figure of the actress, she nodded good night to both Ruggles and Blair and went up to the Hungarian as though he were her husband, who had come to take her home. However, at the door she sufficiently shook off her mood to smile slightly at Dan:

“I have had ‘lots of fun,’ and the Scotch broth was great! Thank you both so much.”

Until they were up in their sitting-room her hosts did not exchange a word. Then Ruggles took a book up from the table and sat down with his cigar. “I am going to read a little, Dan. Slept all day; feel as wide-awake as an owl.”

Dan showed no desire to be communicative, however, to Ruggles’ disappointment, but he exclaimed abruptly:

“I’ll be darned, Ruggles, if I can guess what you asked her for!”

“Well, it did turn out to be a pretty expensive party for you, Dannie, didn’t it?” Ruggles returned humorously. “I’ll let you off from any more supper parties.”

And Dan fumed as he turned his back. “Expensive! There you are again, Ruggles, with your infernal intrusion of money into everything I do.”

When the older man found himself alone, he read a little and then put his book down to muse. And his meditations were on the tide of life and the beds it runs over; the living whirlpool as Ruggles himself had seen it coursing through London under fog and mist. It seemed now to surge up in the dark to his very windows, and the flow mysteriously passed under his windows in these silent hours when no one can see the muddy, muddy bottom over which the waters go. Out of the sound, as it flowed on, the cries rose, he thought, kindly to his ears: “God bless her—God bless Letty Lane!” And with this sound he closed his meditations, thinking of a more peaceful stream, the brighter, sweeter waters of the boy’s nature, translucent and clear. The vision was happier, and with it Ruggles rose and yawned, and shut his book.

CHAPTER XII—THE GREEN KNIGHT

When Dan got up well on in the morning, Ruggles had gone to the bank. Dan’s thoughts turned from everything to Letty Lane. With irritation he put her out of his mind. There had come up between himself and the girl he had known slightly in his own town years ago a wall of partition. Every time he saw her Poniotowsky was there, condescending, arrogant, rude and proud. The prince the night before had given the tips of his fingers to Dan, nodded to Ruggles as if the Westerner had been his tailor, and had appropriated Letty Lane, and she had gone away under his shadow. The simplicity of Dan’s life, his decent bringing up, his immaculate youth, for such it was, his aloofness from the world, made him naïve, but he was not dull. He waited—not like a skeptic who would fit every one into his pigeonholes—on the contrary, he waited to find every one as perfect as he knew they must be, and every time he tried to think of Letty Lane, Poniotowsky troubled him horribly and seemed to rise before him, and sardonically look at him through his eye-glass, making the boy’s belief in good things ridiculous.

He wrote a note to Ruggles, saying that he would be back late and not to wait for him, and set out in his own car for Blankshire, where the duchess was to meet him at Stainer Court at noon. On his way out he decided that he had been a fool to discuss Letty Lane with the Duchess of Breakwater, and that it had been none of his business to put her duty before her, and that he had judged her quickly and unfairly. He fell in love with the lovely English country over which his motor took him, and it made him more affectionate toward the English woman. He sat back in his car, looking over the fine shooting land, the misty golden forests, as through the misty country his motor took its way. The breath of England was on his cheeks, he breathed in its odors fresh and sweet, the windless air was cool and fragrant. His cheeks grew red, his eyes shone like stars, and he was content with his youth and his lot. When they stopped at Castelene, the property belonging to Stainer Court, he felt something of proprietorship stir in him, and at Stainer Arms ordered a drink, bought petroleum, and then pushed up the avenue under the leafless giant trees, whose roots were older than his father’s name or than any state of the Union. And he felt admiration and something like emotion as he saw the first towers of Stainer Court finally appear.

The duchess waited for him in the room known as the “Green Knight’s Room,” because of a figure in tapestry on the walls. The legend in wool had been woven in Spain, somewhere about the time when Isabella was kind, and when in turn a continent loomed up for the world in general out of the mist. The subject of the Green Knight’s tapestry was simple and convincing. On a sheer-cut village of low ferns, where daisies stood up like trees, a slender lady poised, her dark sandaled feet on the pin-like turf. Her figure was all swathed round with a spotless dress of woolly white, softened by age into a golden misty tone, and a pair of friendly and confidential rabbits sat close to her golden slippers. The lady’s face was candid and mild; her eyes were soft, and around her head was wound a fillet of woven threads, mellow in tone, a red, no doubt, originally, but softened to a coral pink by time. This lady in all her grace and virginal sweetness was only half of the woven story. To her right stood a youth in forest green, his sword drawn, and his intention evidently to kill a creature which, near to the gentle rabbits, out of the daisied grass lifted its cruel snakelike head. For nearly five hundred years the serpent’s venom had been poised, and if the serpent should start the Green Knight would strike, too, at the same magic moment.

Close to the tapestry a fire had been laid in the broad fireplace, and the duchess had ordered the luncheon table for Dan and herself spread with the cold things England knows how to combine into a delectable feast. The room was full of mediæval furnishings, but the Green Knight was the best of all. The Duchess of Breakwater took him for granted. She had known him all her life, and she had only been struck by his expensive beauty when the offer came to her from the National Museum to buy him, and she wondered how long she could afford to stick to her price.

When Dan came in he found her in a short tweed skirt, a mannish blouse, looking boyish and wholly charming, and she mixed him a cocktail under the Green Knight’s very nose and offered it with the wisdom of the serpent itself, and the duchess didn’t in the least suggest the white-robed, milk-white lady.

The friends drank their cocktails in good spirits, and Dan presented the lady with the flowers he had brought her, and he felt a strong sentiment stir at the sight of her in this old room, alone and waiting for him. The servants left them, the duchess put her hands on the boy’s broad shoulders. Nearly as tall as he, she was a good example of the best-looking English woman, straight and strong, and her eyes were level, and Dan met them with his own.

“I am so glad you came,” she murmured. “I’ve been ragging myself every minute since you went away from Osdene.”

“You have? What for?”

“Because I was such a perfect prig. I’ll do anything you like for Miss Lane. I mean to say, I’ll arrange for a musicale and ask her to sing.”

The color rushed into Dan’s face. How bully of her! What a brick this showed her to be! He said: “You are as sweet as a peach!”

The duchess’ hands were still on his shoulders. She could feel his rapid breath.

“I don’t make you think of a box of candy now?” she murmured, and the boy covered her hand with his own.

“I don’t know what you make me think of—it is bully, whatever it is!”

If the Spanish tapestry could only have reversed its idea, and if the immaculate lady, or even one of the rabbits, could have drawn a sword to protect the Green Knight, it would have been passing well. But the woven work, when it first had been embroidered, was done for ever; it was irrevocable in its mistaken idea, that it is only the woman who needs protection!

CHAPTER XIII—THE FACE OF LETTY LANE

The other note, which he opened more slowly, was from Ruggles, and it began in just the same way as the dancer’s had begun:

“Dear Boy: I have been suddenly called back to the United States. As I didn’t know how to get at you, I couldn’t. I had a cable that takes me right back. I get the Lusitania at Liverpool and you can send me a Marconi. Better make the first boat you can and come over.

“Joshua Ruggles.”

Ruggles left no word of advice, and unconscious of this master stroke on the part of the old man, whose heart yearned for him as for his own son, Dan folded the note up and thought no more about Ruggles.

When an hour later he came out of the Carlton he was prepared for the life of the evening. He stopped at the telephone desk and sent a telegram to Ruggles on the Lusitania:

“Can’t come yet a while; am engaged to be married to the Duchess of Breakwater.”

He wrote this out in full and the man at the Marconi “sat up” and smiled as he wrote. With Letty Lane’s badly written note in his pocket, and wondering very much at her summons of him, Dan drove to the Gaiety, and at the end of the third act went back of the scenes. There were several people in her dressing-room. Higgins was lacing her into a white bodice and Miss Lane, before her glass, was putting the rouge on her lips.

“Hello, you,” she nodded to Dan.

“I am awfully sorry not to have shown up at five. Just got your note. Just got in at the hotel; been out of town all day.”

Dan saw that none of the people in the room was familiar to him, and that they were out of place in the pretty brocaded nest. One of them was a Jew, a small man with a glass eye, whose fixed stare rested on Miss Lane. He had kept on his overcoat, and his derby hat hung on the back of his head.

“Give Mr. Cohen the box, Higgins,” Miss Lane directed, and bending forward, brought her small face close to the glass, and her hands trembled as she handled the rouge stick.

Mr. Cohen in one hand held a string of pearls that fell through his fat fingers, as if eager to escape from them. Higgins obediently placed a small box in his hand.

“Take it and get out of here,” she ordered Cohen. “Miss Lane has only got five minutes.”

Cohen turned the stub of his cigar in his mouth unpleasantly without taking the trouble to remove it. “I’ll take the box,” he said rapidly, “and when I get good and ready I’ll get out of here, but not before.”

“Now see here,” Blair began, but Miss Lane, who had finished her task, motioned him to be quiet.

“Please go out, Mr. Blair,” she said. “Please go out. Mr. Cohen is here on business and I really can’t see anybody just now.”

Behind the Jew Higgins looked up at Dan and he understood—but he didn’t heed her warning; nothing would have induced him to leave Letty Lane like this.

“I’m not going, though, Miss Lane,” he said frankly. “I’ve got an appointment with you and I’m going to stay.”

As he did so the other people in the room took form for him: a blind beggar with a stick in his hand, and by his side a small child wrapped in a shawl. With relief Dan saw that Poniotowsky was absent from the party.

Cohen opened the box, took its contents out and held up the jewels. “This,” he said, indicating a string of pearls, “is all right, Miss Lane, and the ear-drops. The rest is no good. I’ll take or leave them, as you like.”

She was plainly annoyed and excited, and, as Higgins tried to lace her, moved from her dressing-table to the sofa in a state of agitation.

“Take them or leave them, as you like,” she said, “but give me the money and go.”

The Jew took from his wallet a roll of banknotes and counted them.

“Six,” he began, but she waved him back.

“Don’t tell me how much it is. I don’t want to know.”

“Let the other lady count it,” the Jew said. “I don’t do business that way.”

Dan, who had laid down his overcoat and hat on a chair, came quietly forward, his hands in his pockets, and standing in front of the Jew, he said again:

“Now you look here—”

Letty Lane threw the money down on the dressing-table. “Please,” she cried to Dan, “let me have the pleasure of sending this man out of my room. You can go, Cohen, and go in a hurry, too.”

The Jew stuffed the pearls in his pocket and went by Dan hurriedly, as though he feared the young man intended to help him. But Dan stopped him:

“Before this deal goes through I want you to tell me why you are—”

Miss Lane broke in: “My gracious Heavens! Can’t I even sell my jewels without being bossed? What business is it of yours, Mr. Blair? Let this man go, and go all of you—all of you. Higgins, send them out.”

The blind man and the child stirred, too, at this outburst. The little girl wore a miserable hat, a wreck of a hat, in which shook a feather like a broken mast. The rest of her garments seemed made of the elements—of dirt and mud—mere flags of distress, and the odor of the poor filled the room: over the perfume and scent and smell of stage properties, this miserable smell held its own.

“Come, Daddy,” whispered the child timidly, “come along.”

“Oh, no, not you, not you,” Letty Lane said.

Job Cohen crawled out with ten thousand pounds’ worth of pearls in his pockets, and as soon as the door had closed the actress took up the roll of notes.

“Come here,” she said to the child. “Now you can take your father to the home I told you of. It is nice and comfortable—they will treat his eyes there.”

“Miss Lane—Miss Lane!” called the page boy.

“Never mind that,” said the actress, “it is a long wait this act. I don’t go on yet.”

Higgins went to the door and opened it and stood a moment, then disappeared into the side scenes.

Letty Lane ruffled the pile of banknotes and without looking drew out two or three bills, putting them into the child’s hands. “Don’t you lose them; stuff them down; this will keep you and your father for a couple of years. Take care of it. You are quite rich now. Don’t get robbed.”

The child tremblingly folded the notes and hid them among her rags. The tears of happiness were straggling over her face. She said finally, finding no place to stow away her riches, “I expect I’d best put them in daddy’s pocket.”

And Dan came to her aid; taking the notes from her, he folded and put them inside the clothes of the old beggar.

“Miss Lane,” said Higgins, who had come in, “it is time you went on.”

“I’ll see your friends out of the theater,” Blair offered. And as he did so, for the first time she looked at him, and he saw the fever in her brilliant eyes.

“Thanks awfully,” she accepted. “It is perfectly crazy to give them so much money at once. Will you look after it like a good boy and see something or other about them?”

He thought of her, however, and caught up a great soft shawl from the chair, wrapped it around her tenderly, and she flitted out, Higgins after her, leaving the rest of the money scattered on her dressing-table.

“Come along,” said Blair kindly to the two who stood awaiting his orders with the docility of the poor, the obedience of those who have no right to plan or suggest until told to move on. “Come, I’ll see you home.” And he didn’t leave them until he had taken them in a cab to their destination—until he had persuaded the girl to let him have the money, look after it for her, come to see her the next day and tell her what to do.

Then he went back to the theater and stood up in the rear, for the house was crowded, to hear Letty sing. It was souvenir night; there were post-cards and little coral caps with feathers as bonbonnières. They called her out before the curtain a dozen times, and each time Dan wanted to cry “Mercy” for her. He felt as though this little act had established a friendship between them; and his hands clenched as he thought of Poniotowsky, and he tried to recall that he was an engaged man. He had an idea that Letty Lane was looking for him through the performance. She finished in a storm of applause, and flowers were strewn upon her, and Dan found himself, in spite of his resolution, going back into the wings.

This time two or three cards were sent in. One by one he saw the visitors refused, and Dan, without any formality, himself knocked at Letty Lane’s small door, which Higgins opened, looked back over her shoulder to give his name to her mistress, and said to Dan confidently, “Wait, sir; just wait a bit.” Her lips were affable. And in a few moments, to Dan’s astonished delight, the actress herself appeared, a big scarf over her head and her body enveloped in her snowy cloak, and he understood with a leap of his heart that she had singled him out to take her home.

She went before him through the wings to the stage entrance, which he opened for her, and she passed out before him into the fog and the mist. For the first time Blair followed her through the crowd, which was a big one on this night. On the one side waited the poor, who wished her many blessings, and on the other side her admirers, whose thoughts were quite different. Something of this flashed through Dan’s mind,—and in that moment he touched the serious part of life for the first time.

In Letty Lane’s motor, the small electric light lit over their heads and the flower vase empty, he sat beside the fragrant human creature whom London adored, and knew his place would have been envied by many a man.

“I took your friends to their place all right,” he told her, “and I’m going to see them myself to-morrow. I advised the girl not to get married for her money. Say, this is awfully nice of you to let me take you home!”

She seemed small in her corner. “You were great to-night,” Dan went on, “simply great! Wasn’t the crowd crazy about you, though! How does it feel to stand there and hear them clap like a thunderstorm and call your name?”

She replied with effort. “It was a nice audience, wasn’t it? Oh, I don’t know how it feels. It is rather stimulating. How’s the other boy?” she asked abruptly, and when Dan had said that Ruggles had left him alone in London, she turned and laughed a little.

Dan asked her why she had sent for him to-day. “I’m mighty sorry I was out of town,” he said warmly. “Just to think you should have wanted me to do something for you and I didn’t turn up. You know I would be glad to do anything. What was it? Won’t you tell me what it was?”

“The Jew did it for me.”

And Dan exclaimed: “It made me simply sick to see that animal in your room. I would have kicked him out if I hadn’t thought that it would make an unpleasant scene for you. We have passed the Savoy.” He looked out of the window, and Letty Lane replied:

“I told the driver to go to the Carlton first.”

She was taking him home then!

“Well, you’ve got to come in and have some supper with me in that case,” he cried eagerly, and she told him that she had taken him home because she knew that Mr. Ruggles would approve.

“Not much you won’t,” he said, and put his hand on the speaking tube, but she stopped him.

“Don’t give any orders in my motor, Mr. Blair. You sit still where you are.”

“Do you think that I am such a simple youth that I—”

Letty Lane with a gesture of supreme ennui said to him impatiently:

“Oh, I just think I am pretty nearly tired to death; don’t bother me. I want my own way.”

Her voice and her gesture, her beauty and her indifference, her sort of vague lack of interest in him and in everything, put the boy, full of life as he was, out of ease, but he ventured, after a second:

“Won’t you please tell me what you wanted me to do this afternoon?”

“Why, I was hard up, that’s all. I have used all my salary for two months and I couldn’t pay my bill at the Savoy.”

“Lord!” he said fervently, “why didn’t you—”

“I did. Like a fool I sent for you the first thing, but I was awfully glad when five o’clock came you didn’t turn up. Please don’t bother or speak of it again.”

And burning with curiosity as to what part Poniotowsky played in her life, Dan sat quiet, not venturing to put to her any more questions. She seemed so tired and so overcome by her own thoughts. When they had turned down toward the hotel, however, he decided that he must in honor tell her his news.

“Got some news to tell you,” he exclaimed abruptly. “Want you to congratulate me. I’m engaged to be married to the Duchess of Breakwater. She happens to be a great admirer of your voice.”

The actress turned sharply to him and in the dark he could see her little, white face. The covering over her head fell back and she exclaimed:

“Heavens!” and impulsively put her hands out over his. “Do you really mean what you say?”

“Yes.” He nodded surprisedly. “What do you look like that for?”

Letty Lane arranged her scarf and then drew back from him and laughed.

“Oh, dear, dear, dear,” she exclaimed, “and I ... and I have been....”

She looked up at him swiftly as though she fancied she might detect some new quality in him which she had not observed before, but she saw only his clear, kind eyes, his charming smile and his beautiful, young ignorance, and said softly to him:

“No use to cry, little boy, if it’s true! But that woman isn’t half good enough for you—not half, and I guess you think it funny enough to hear me say so! What does the other boy from Montana say?”

“Don’t know,” Dan answered indifferently. “Marconied him; didn’t tell him about it before he left. You see he doesn’t understand England—doesn’t like it.”

A little dazed by the way each of the two women took the mention of the other, he asked timidly:

“You don’t like the Duchess of Breakwater, then?”

And she laughed again.

“Goodness gracious, I don’t know her; actresses don’t sit around with duchesses.” Then abruptly, her beautiful eyes, under their curled dark lashes, full on him, she asked:

“Do you like her?”

“You bet!” he said ardently. “Of course I do. I am crazy about her.” Yet he realized, as he replied, that he didn’t have any inclination to begin to talk about his fiancée.

They had reached the Carlton and the door of Letty Lane’s motor was held open.

“Better get out,” he urged, “and have something to eat.”

And she, leaning a little way toward him, laughed.

“Crazy! Your engagement would be broken off to-morrow.” And she further said: “If I really thought it would, why I’d come like a shot.”

As she leaned forward, her cloak slipping from her neck, revealing her throat above the dark collar of the simple dress she wore, he looked in her dove-gray eyes, and murmured:

“Oh, say, do come along and risk it. I’m game, all right.”

She hesitated, then bade him good night languidly, slipping back into her old attitude of indifference.

“I am going home to rest. Good night. I don’t think the duchess would let you go, no matter what you did!”

Dan, standing there at her motor door, this beautiful, well-known woman bantering him, leaning toward him, was conscious of her alone, all snowy and small and divine in her enveloping scarf, lost in the corner of her big car.

“I hate to have you go back alone to the Savoy. I really do. Please let me—”

But she shook her head. “Tell the man the Savoy,” and as Dan, carrying out her instructions, closed the door, he said: “I don’t like that empty vase in there. Would you be very good and put some flowers in it if they came?”

She wouldn’t promise, and he went on:

“Will you put only my flowers in that vase always hereafter?”

Then, “Why, of course not, goose,” she said shortly. “Will you please let me close the door and go home?”

Dan walked into the Carlton when her bright motor had slipped away, his evening coat long and black flying its wings behind him, his hat on the back of his blond head, light of foot and step, a gay young figure among the late lingering crowd.

He went to his apartments and missed Ruggles in the lonely quiet of the sitting-room, but as the night before Ruggles had done, Dan in his bedroom window stood looking out at the mist and fog through which before his eyes the things he had lately seen passed and repassed, specter-like, winglike, across the gloom. Finally, in spite of the fact that he was an engaged man with the responsibilities of marriage before him, he could think of but one thing to take with him when he finally turned to sleep. The face of the woman he was engaged to marry eluded him, but the face under the white hood of Letty Lane was in his dreams, and in his troubled visions he saw her shining, dovelike eyes.

CHAPTER XIV—FROM INDIA’S CORAL STRANDS

Something fetched her, for in a few minutes she came languidly in, and by the way she smiled at her visitor it might be thought Dan Blair’s name alone had brought her in. The actress had been ill for a fortnight with what the press notices said was influenza. She wore a teagown, long and white as foam, her hair rolled in a soft knot, and her face was pale as death. Frail and small as she was, she was more ethereal than when in perfect health.

“Don’t stand a minute.” And by the hand she gave him Dan led her over to the lounge where the pillows were piled and a fur-lined silk cover thrown across the sofa.

“Don’t give me that heavy rug, there’s that little white shawl.” She pointed to it, and Dan, as he gave it to her, recognized the shawl in which she wrapped herself when she crossed the icy wings.

“It’s in those infernal side scenes you get colds.”

He sat down by her. She began to cough violently and he asked, troubled, “Who’s taking care of you, anyway?”

“Higgins and a couple of doctors.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes. Why, who should be?”

Dan didn’t follow up his jealous suspicion, but asked in a tone almost paternal and softly confidential:

“How are your finances getting on?”

Her lips curved in a friendly smile. But she made a dismissing gesture with her frail little hand.

“Oh, I’m all right; Higgins told me you had some news about my poor people.”

The fact that she did not take up the financial subject made him unpleasantly sure that her wants had been supplied.

“Got a whole bunch of news,” Dan replied cheerfully. “I went to see the old man and the girl in their diggings. Gosh, you couldn’t believe such things were true.”

She drew her fine brows together. “I guess there are a good many things that would surprise you. But you don’t need to tell me about hard times. That’s the way I am. I’ll do anything, give anything, so long as I don’t have to hear hard stories.” She turned to him confidentially. “Perhaps it’s acting in false scenes on the stage; perhaps it’s because I’m lazy and selfish, but I can’t bear to hear about tales of woe.”

What she said somewhat disturbed his idea of her big-hearted charity.

“I don’t believe you’re lazy or selfish,” he said sincerely, “but I’ve got an idea that not many people really know you.”

This amused her. Looking at him quizzically, she laughed. “I expect you think you do.”

Dan answered: “Well, I guess the people that see you when you are a kid, who come from your own part of the country, have a sort of friendship.” And the girl on the sofa from the depths of her shawl put out a thin little hand to him and said in a voice as lovely in tone as when she sang in Mandalay:

“Well, I guess that’s right! I guess that’s about true.”

After the tenth of a second, in which she thought best to take her little cold hand away from those big warm ones, she asked:

“Now please do tell me about the poor people.”

In this way giving him to understand how really true his better idea of her had been.

“Why, the old duffer is as happy as a house afire,” said the boy. “Not to boast, I’ve done the whole thing up as well as I knew how. I’ve got him into that health resort you spoke of, and the girl seems to have got a regular education vice! She wants to study something, so she’s going to school.”

“Go on talking,” the actress invited languidly. “I love to hear you talk Montana! Don’t change your twang for this beastly English drawl, whatever you do.”

“You have, though, Miss Lane. I don’t hear a thing of Blairtown in the way you speak.”

And the girl said passionately: “I wish to God I spoke it right through! I wish I had never changed my speech or anything in me that was like home.”

And the boy leaning forward as eagerly exclaimed: “Oh, do you mean that? Think how crazy London is about you! Why, if you ever go back to Montana, they will carry you from the cars in a triumphal chair through the town.”

She waited until she could control the emotion in her voice.

“Go on telling me about the little girl.”

“She was so trusting as to give the money up to me and I guess it will draw interest for her all right.”

“Thank you,” smiled the actress, “you are terribly sweet. The child got Higgins to let her into my dressing-room one day after a matinée. I haven’t time to see anybody except then.”

Here Higgins made her appearance in the room, with an egg-nog for her lady, which, after much coaxing, Dan succeeded in getting the actress to drink. Higgins also had taken away the flowers, and Letty Lane said to Dan:

“I send them to the hospital; they make me sick.” And Dan timidly asked:

“Mine, too?”

This brought a flush across the ivory pallor of her cheek. “No, no, Higgins keeps them In the next room.” And with an abrupt change of subject she asked: “Is the Duchess of Breakwater very charitable?” And Blair quickly replied:

“Anyhow she wants you to sing for her at a musicale in Park Lane when you’re fit.”

Miss Lane gave a soft little giggle. “Is that what you call being charitable?”

Dan blushed crimson and exclaimed: “Well, hardly!”

“Did you come here to ask me that?”

“I came to tell you about ‘our mutual poor.’ You’ll let me call them that, won’t you, because I happened to be in your dressing-room when they struck their vein?”

Miss Lane had drawn herself up in the corner of the sofa, and sat with her hands clasped around her knees, all swathed around and draped by the knitted shawl, her golden head like a radiant flower, appearing from a bank of snow. Her fragility, her sweetness, her smallness, appealed strongly to the big young fellow, whose heart was warm toward the world, whose ideals were high, and who had the chivalrous longing inherent in all good men to succor, to protect, and above all to adore. No feeling in Dan Blair had been as strong as this, to take her in his arms, to lift her up and carry her away from London and the people who applauded her, from the people that criticized her, and from Poniotowsky.

He was engaged to the Duchess of Breakwater. And as far as his being able to do anything for Letty Lane, he could only offer her this politeness from the woman he was going to marry.

“I never sing out of the theater.” Her profile was to him and she looked steadily across the room. “It’s a perfect fight to get the manager to consent.”

Blair interrupted and said: “Oh, I’ll see him; I’ll make it all right.”

“Please don’t,” she said briskly, “it’s purely a business affair. How much will she pay?”

Dan was rather shocked. “Anything you like.”

And her bad humor faded at his tone, and she smiled at him. “Well, I’ll tell Roach that. I guess it’ll make my singing a sure thing.”

She changed her position and drew a long sigh as though she were very tired, leaned her blond head with its soft disorder back on the pillow, put both her folded hands under her cheek and turned her face toward Dan. The most delicate coral-like color began to mount her cheeks, and her gray eyes regained their light.

“Will two thousand dollars be too much to ask?” she said gently.

If she had said two million to the young fellow who had not yet begun to spend his fortune, which as far as he was concerned was nothing but a name, it would not have been too much to him; not too much to have given to this small white creature with her lovely flushed face, and her glorious hair.

“Whatever is your price, Miss Lane, goes.”

“I’ll sing three songs: one from Mandalay, an English ballad and something or other, I don’t know what now, and I expect you don’t realize how cheaply you are getting them.” She laughed, and began to hum a familiar air.

“I wish you would sing just one song for me.”

“For another thousand?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows. “What song is it?”

And as Dan hesitated, as if unwilling to give form to words that were so full of spell to him, she said deliciously: “Why, can you see a London drawing-room listening to me sing a Presbyterian hymn tune?” Without lifting her head from the pillow she began in a charming undertone, her gray eyes fixed on his:

    “From  Greenland’s  icy  mountains,
        From  India’s  coral  strands,
    Where  Afric’s  sunny  fountains
        Roll  down  their  golden  sands.”