The Adventures of a Widow Part 17

She extended her hand, and as she did so he literally sprang forward, seizing it. The next instant he had stooped and kissed it. After that he sank into a near chair.

"If you had not forgiven me," he said, "I should have been a very miserable man. Your pardon makes me happy. Now I am ready to turn over a new page of--of friends.h.i.+p--yes, friends.h.i.+p, of course. I shall never say those absurd, accusatory things again. What right have I to say them? What right have I to anything more than the honor of your notice, as long as you choose to bestow it? I have thought everything over; I've realized that the fact of your being willing to know me at all is an immense extended privilege!"

Pauline still remained standing. She had half turned from him while he thus impetuously spoke; she was staring down into the ruddy turmoil of the fire.

"Don't say anything more with regard to the little disagreement," she answered. "It is all ended. Now let us talk of other things."

He did not answer, and she let quite a long pause ensue while she still kept her eyes upon the snapping coal-blocks. At length she continued,--

"I shall have the full list of Mrs. Dares's guests quite soon. It has been promised me."

"Yes?" she heard him say, a little absently.

"I shall, no doubt, have it by to-morrow morning," she went on. "Then I shall begin my arrangements. I shall issue invitations to those whom I wish for my guests. And I shall expect you to help me. You promised to help me, as you know. There will be people on the list whom I have not yet met--a good many of them. You shall tell me all about these, or, if you prefer, you shall simply draw your pen through their names--Why don't you ask me how I shall obtain this boasted list?"

"You mean that Mrs. Dares will send it?" she heard him ask.

"No, I mean that I shall secure it from her daughter."

"Her daughter?"

"Yes--Cora. I have been to see Cora. I visited her studio--By the way, what a good portrait she has there of you. It is really an excellent likeness."

She slowly turned and let a furtive look sweep his face. It struck her that he was confused and discomfited in a wholly new way.

"I think it a fair likeness," he returned. "But I did not sit for it,"

he added quickly. "She painted it from memory. It--it is for sale like her other things."

"Oh, no, it is not for sale," said Pauline. She saw his color alter a little as her gaze again found stealthy means of scrutinizing it. "Miss Cora told me that very decidedly. She wants to keep it--no doubt as a precious memento. I thought the wish very flattering--I--I wondered why you did not ask Cora Dares to marry you."

She perceived that he had grown pale, now, as he rose and said,--

"I think I shall never ask any woman to marry me." He walked slowly toward the door, pausing at a little distance from its threshold. "When you want me," he now proceeded, "will you send for me? Then I will most gladly come."

"You mean--about the _salon_?" she questioned.

"Yes--about the _salon_. In that and all other ways I am yours to command--"

When he had gone she sat musing before the fire for nearly an hour. That night, at a little after nine o'clock, she was surprised to receive a copious list of names from Cora Dares, accompanied by a brief note.

She sent for Kindelon on the following day, and they spent the next evening together from eight until eleven. He was his old, easy, gay, brilliant self again. What had occurred between them seemed to have been absolutely erased from his memory. It almost piqued her to see how perfectly he played what she knew to be a part.

Soon afterward her invitations were sent out for the following Thursday.

Each one was a simple "At Home." She awaited Thursday with much interest and suspense.

X.

By nine o'clock on Thursday evening all her guests had arrived. They comfortably filled her two smart and brilliant drawing-rooms, but quite failed to produce the crowded effect noticeable in Mrs. Dares's less ample quarters.

Pauline saw with pleasure that the fine pictures, bronzes, and bric-a-brac which she had brought from Europe were most admiringly noticed. Small groups were constantly being formed before this canvas or that cabinet, table, and pedestal. She had kept for some time quite close to Mrs. Dares, having a practical sense of the little lady's valuable social a.s.sistance on an occasion like the present, apart from all personal feelings of liking.

"You make it much easier for me," she said at length, after the a.s.semblage appeared complete and no new arrivals had occurred for at least ten minutes. "It was so kind of you to come, when I know that you make a rule of not going anywhere."

"This was a very exceptional invitation, my dear," answered Mrs. Dares.

"It was something wholly out of the common, you know."

"I understand," said Pauline, with her sweetest laugh. "You wanted to see your mantle descend, after a manner, upon my younger shoulders. You wanted to observe whether I should wear it gracefully or not."

"I had few doubts on that point," was the slow, soft reply.

"So you really think me a worthy pupil?" continued Pauline, glancing about her with an air of pretty and very pardonable pride.

"You have a most lovely home," said Mrs. Dares, "and one exquisitely designed for the species of entertainment which you are generous enough to have resolved upon."

"Ah, don't say 'generous,'" broke in Pauline. "You give me a twinge of conscience. I am afraid my motive has been quite a selfishly ambitious one. At least, I sometimes fancy so. How many human motives _are_ thoroughly disinterested? But if I succeed with my _salon_--which before long I hope to make as fixed and inevitable a matter as the day of the week on which it is held--the result must surely be a most salutary and even reformatory one. In securing my guerdon for work accomplished I shall have done society a solid benefit; and when I wear my little crown I shall feel, unlike most royal personages, that it is blessed by friends and not stained by the blood of enemies."

Her tone was one of airy jest, but a voice at her side instantly said, as she finished,--

"Do not be too sure of that. Very few crowns are ever won without some sort of bloodshed."

She turned and saw Kindelon, who had overheard nearly all her last speech to Mrs. Dares. Something in his manner lessened the full smile on Pauline's lips without actually putting it to flight.

"You speak as if you bore gloomy tidings," she said.

Kindelon's eyes twinkled, though his mouth preserved perfect sobriety.

"You have done precisely what I expected you would do," he said, "in undertaking an arbitrary selection of certain guests and an arbitrary exclusion of certain others. You have raised a growl."

"A growl!" murmured Mrs. Dares, with a slight dismayed gesture.

Pauline's face grew serious. "Who, pray, are the growlers?" she asked.

"Well, the chief one is that incorrigible and irrepressible Barrowe. He has his revolutionary opinions, of course. He is always having revolutionary opinions. He makes me think of the Frenchman who declared that if he ever found himself in Heaven his first impulse would be to throw up barricades."

Pauline bit her lip. "Barricades are usually thrown up in streets," she said, with a faint, ired ring of the voice. "Mr. Barrowe probably forgets that fact."

"Do you mean that you would like to show him the street now?" asked Kindelon.

"I have not heard of what his alleged growl consists."

"I warned you against him, but you thought it best that he should be invited. Since you had decided upon weeding, there was no one whom you could more profitably weed."

"Mr. Barrowe has a very kind heart," here a.s.serted Mrs. Dares, with tone and mien at their gentlest and sweetest. "He is clad with bristles, if you please, but the longer you know him the more clearly you recognize that his savage irritability is external and superficial."

"I think it very appropriate to say that he is clad with bristles,"