The Streets of Ascalon Part 70

"Of course not."

"Don't you want to know?"

She began to laugh again:

"Why, if you wish to tell me of course it will interest me _most_ profoundly." And she made him a graceful little bow.

"I'm thirty-three," he said.

"Thank you so much for telling me."

"You are welcome," he returned gravely. "Do you think I'm too old?"

"Too old for what?"

"Oh, for anything interesting."

"What do you mean by 'interesting'?"

But Lord Dankmere apparently did not know what he did mean for he made no answer.

After a little while he said: "Wouldn't it be odd if I ever have income enough to pay off my debts?"

"What?"

He repeated the observation.

"I don't know what you mean. You naturally expect to pay them, don't you?"

"I saw no chance of doing so before Mr. Quarren took hold of these pictures."

She was sorry for him:

"Are you very deeply in debt?"

He named the total of his liabilities and she straightened her young shoulders, horrified.

"Oh, that's nothing," he said. "I know plenty of chaps in England who are far worse off."

"But--that is terrible!" she faltered.

Dankmere waved his hand:

"It's not so bad. That show business let me in for a lot."

"Why did you ever do it?"

"I like it," he explained simply.

She flushed: "It seems strange for a--a man of your kind to sing comic songs and dance before an audience."

"Not at all. I've a friend, Exford by name--who goes about grinding a barrel-organ."

"Why?"

"He likes to do it.... I've another pal of sorts who chucked the Guards to become a milliner. He always did like to crochet and trim hats. Why not?--if he likes it!"

"It is not," said Jessie Vining, "my idea of a British peer."

"But for Heaven's sake, consider the peer! Now and then they have an idea of what they'd like to do. Why not let them do it and be happy?"

"Then they ought not to have been born to the peerage," she said firmly.

"Many of them wouldn't have been had anybody consulted them."

"You?"

"It's brought me nothing but debt, ridicule, abuse, and summonses."

"You couldn't resign, could you?" she said, smiling.

"I _am_ resigned. Oh, well, I'd rather be what I am than anything else, I fancy.... If the Topeka Museum trustees purchase that Gainsborough I'll be out of debt fast enough."

"And then?" she inquired, still smiling.

"I don't know. I'd like to start another show."

"And leave Mr. Quarren?"

"What use am I? We'd share alike; he'd manage the business and I'd manage a musical comedy I'm writing after hours----"

He jumped up and went to the piano where for the next ten minutes he rattled off some lively and very commonplace music which to Jessie Vining sounded like everything she had ever before heard.

"Do you like it?" he asked hopefully, swinging around on his stool.

"It's--lively."

"You _don't_ like it!"

"I--it seems--very entertaining," she said, reddening.

The Earl sat looking at her in silence for a moment; then he said:

"To care for anything and make a failure of it--can you beat it for straight misery, Miss Vining?"

"Oh, please don't speak that way. I really am no judge of musical composition."

He considered the key-board gloomily; and resting one well-shaped hand on it addressed empty s.p.a.ce: