The Girl From His Town Part 14

"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 fiancee.

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 att.i.tude of indifference.

"I am going home to rest. Good night. I don't think the d.u.c.h.ess 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 pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, 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 s.h.i.+ning, dovelike eyes.

CHAPTER XIV-FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS

Mrs. Higgins, in Miss Lane's apartment at the Savoy, was adjusting the photographs and arranging the flowers when she was surprised by a caller, who came up without the formality of sending his name.

"Do you think," Blair asked her, "that Miss Lane would see me half a minute? I called yesterday, and the day before, as soon as I saw that there was a subst.i.tute singing in _Mandalay_. Tell her I'm as full of news as a charity report, please, and I rather guess that will fetch her."

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 friends.h.i.+p."

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 tw.a.n.g 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."