The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary Part 14

"Young Denham?"

"Yes."

With that she threw her head up and looked very straightly at her caller whose visage shaded ever so slightly in spite of himself.

"Have _his_ wounds proved serious?" he asked, smiling, but unable to altogether do away with a species of parenthetical inflection in his voice.

"It wasn't over his wounds that I cried."

"Did you really cry at all for him?"

"I cried more for him than I did for Bob," she admitted boldly.

"He is a fortunate boy! But why the tears in his case?"

"I felt so badly to be disappointed in him."

"Did you expect to work a miracle there, my dear? Did you think to reform such an inveterate young reprobate with a glance?"

"I'm not sure that I ever asked myself either of those questions," she replied, slowly; "but he promised me something, and I expected him to keep his word."

"Men don't keep such promises, Bertha," the visitor said. "You shouldn't have expected it."

"I don't know why not."

"Because a man who drinks will drink again."

"I didn't refer to drinking," she said quietly. "It was quite another thing."

"Ah!"

She looked down at her rings and seemed to consider how much of her confidence she should give him, and the consideration led her to look up presently and say:

"He promised me that if he could not call any week he would write me a line instead. He came to town last week, and he neither called nor wrote.

That wasn't like the man I saw in him. That was a direct breaking of his word. I can't understand, and I'm disappointed."

Holloway took out his cigarette case and turned it over and over thoughtfully in his hands.

"He's nothing but a boy," he said at last, with an effort.

"He's no boy," she said. "He's almost twenty-two years old. He's a man."

"Some are men at twenty-two, and some are boys," Holloway remarked. "I was a man before I was eighteen-a man out in the world of men. But Denham's a boy."

He rose as he spoke, and she held out her hand for him to raise her, too.

"It's early to go," she remarked parenthetically.

"I know," he replied; "but I hear someone being shown into the drawing-room. I don't feel formal to-day, and if I can't lounge in here alone with you I'd rather go."

"How egotistical!" she commented.

"I am egotistical," he admitted.

And went.

The footman pa.s.sed him in the hall; he had a card upon his silver salver, and was seeking his mistress in the library. But when he entered there the room was empty. Mrs. Rosscott had slipped through the blue velvet portieres, expecting to see a friend, and had stopped short on the other side, amazed at finding herself face to face with an utter stranger.

"I gave the man my card," said the stranger, in a tone as faded as his mustache. He was a long, thin man, but what the Germans style "_sehr korrect_."

"I didn't wait to get it," the hostess said. "I supposed that, of course, it was somebody that I knew."

"That was natural," he admitted.

There was a slight pause of awkwardness.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked.

"Certainly," said the caller, and sat down.

Then she sat down, too, and another awkward pause ensued.

"You didn't expect to see me, did you?" said the stranger, smiling.

"No, I didn't," said Mrs. Rosscott frankly. "I expected to see someone else-someone that I knew. Nearly all my visitors are people whom I know."

Her eyes rather demanded an observance of the conventionalities while her words were putting the best face possible on the queer five minutes. The stranger smiled.

"My name is Clover," he said then. "Of course, as you never saw me before, you want to know that first of all."

"I'd choose to know," she said. And then the uncompromising neutrality of her expression deepened so plainly that he hastened to add:

"I'm H. Wyncoop Clover."

"Oh!" she said. And then smiled, too; having heard the name before.

"Why don't you ask me my business?" went on H. Wyncoop Clover. "I must have come for some reason, you know."

"I didn't know it," said Mrs. Rosscott-"I don't know anything about you yet."

They both smiled-and then H. Wyncoop resumed his colorless sobriety at once.

"It's about Jack," he said-"these terrible new developments-" he stopped short, seeing his _vis-a-vis_ turn deathly white, "it's nothing to be frightened over," he said rea.s.suringly.

Mrs. Rosscott was furious with herself for having paled. She became instantly haughty.

"I was alarmed for my brother," she said. "I always think of them both as together."

"Oh, in that case, I can rea.s.sure you instantly," said the caller.