Isham Frederic Stewart
The Strollers

“Roué or sham,” he said the first time.

“Rake or hypocrite,” he exclaimed the second time.

“Devil or Pharisee,” he cried the third time.

He peered over the coin and sent for his attorney. His soul passed away, mourned by Little Thunder until the will was read, when his lamentations ceased; he soundly berated Mynheer, the Patroon, in his coffin and refused to go to his burying. Then he became an ardent anti-renter, a leader of “bolters,” a thunderer of the people’s cause, the devoted enemy of land barons in general, and one patroon in particular, the foreign heir of the manor.

“But let him thunder away, sir,” said Scroggs, soothingly. “The estate’s yours now, for the old patroon can’t come back to change his mind. He’s buried sure enough in the grove, a dark and sombrous spot as befitted his disposition, but restful withal. Aye, and the marble slab’s above him, which reminds me that only a month before he took to his bed he was smoking his pipe on the porch, when his glance fell upon the lifting-stone. Suddenly he strode towards it, bent his back and raised it a full two inches. ‘So much for age!’ said he, scoffing-like. But age heard him and now he lies with a stone on him he can not lift, while you, sir”–to his listener, deferentially–“are sole heir to the estate and to the feud.”

“A feud goes with the property?” remarked Mauville carelessly.

“The tenants object to paying rent,” replied Scroggs, sadly. “They’re a sorry lot!”

“Evade their debts, do they?” said the land baron languidly. “What presumption to imitate their betters! That won’t do; I need the money.”

“They claim the rights of the landlord originated in fraud–”

“No doubt!” Yawning. “My ancestors were rogues!”

“Oh, sir”–deprecatorily.

“If the tenants don’t pay, turn them out,” interrupted Mauville, listlessly, “if you have to depopulate the country.”

Having come to an understanding with his client, the lawyer arose to take his departure.

“By the way,” he said, obsequiously, selecting a yellow, well-worn bit of paper from his bundle of documents, “it may interest you to keep this yourself. It is the original deed for all these lands from the squaw Pewasch. You can see they were acquired for a few shillings’ worth of ‘wet and dry goods’ and seventeen and a half ells of duffels.”

“The old patroons could strike a rare bargain,” muttered the heir, as he casually surveyed the ancient deed, and then, folding it, placed it in his breast pocket. “For a mere song was acquired–”

“A vast principality,” added the solicitor, waving his hand toward the fields and meadows far in the distance.

CHAPTER IX
SAMPLING THE VINTAGES

Having started the wheels of justice fairly moving, with Scroggs at the throttle, the new land baron soon discovered that he was not in consonance with the great commoner who said he was savage enough to prefer the woods and wilds of Monticello to all the pleasures of Paris. In other words, those rural delights of his forefathers, the pleasures of a closer intimacy with nature, awoke no responsive chord in Mauville’s breast, and he began to tire before long of a patriarchal existence and crullers and oly-koeks and playing the fine lord in solitary grandeur.

The very extent of the deserted manor carried an overwhelming sense of loneliness, especially at this season when nature was dying and triumphal tints of decay were replacing the vernal freshness of the forests, flaunting gaudy vestments that could not, however, conceal the sadness of the transition. The days were growing shorter and the leaden-colored vapors, driven by the whip of that taskmaster, the wind, replaced the snow-white clouds becalmed in the tender depths of ether. Soon would the hoar frost crystallize on grass and fence, or the autumn rains descend, dripping mournfully from the water spouts and bubbling over the tubs. Already the character of the dawn was changed to an almost sullen awakening of the day, denoting a seeming uneasiness of the hidden forces, while an angry passing of the glowing orb replaced the Paphian sunset.

In nook and cranny, through the balustrades and woody screens of the ancient house, penetrated the wandering currents of air. The draperies waved mysteriously, as by a hidden hand, and, at nightfall, the floor of satin and rosewood creaked ominously as if beneath the restless footsteps of former inmates, moving from the somber hangings of the windows to the pearl-inlaid harpsichord whose melody was gone, and thence up the broad staircase, pausing naturally at the landing, beneath which had assembled gay gatherings in the colonial days. And such a heedless phantom group–fine gentlemen in embroidered coats, bright breeches, silk stockings and peruke, and, peeping through ethereal lace wristbands, a white hand fit for no sterner toil than to flourish with airy grace a gold-headed cane; ladies with gleaming bare shoulders, dressed in “cumbrous silk that with its rustling made proud the flesh that bore it!” The imaginative listener could almost distinguish these footfalls, as the blind will recognize the tread of an unseen person.

To further add to the land baron’s dissatisfaction over his heritage, “rent-day”–that all-important day in the olden times; when my lord’s door had been besieged by the willing lease-holders, cheerful in rendering unto Caesar what was due Caesar!–seemed to have been dropped from the modern calendar, as many an ancient holiday has gradually been lost in the whirligig of time. No long procession now awaited the patroon’s pleasure, when it should suit him to receive the tribute of guilders, corn or meal; the day might have been as obsolete as an Hellenic festival day to Zeus, for all the observance it was accorded.

“Your notices, Scroggs, were wasted on the desert air,” said the patroon, grimly, to that disappointed worthy. “What’s the use of tenants who don’t pay? Playing at feudal lord in modern times is a farce, Scroggs. I wish we had lived about four hundred years ago.”

“Yes, if four hundred years ago were now,” assented the parasite, “I’d begin with Dick, the tollman! He’s a regular Goliath and,”–his face becoming purple–“when I threatened him with the law, threw me out of the barn on an obnoxious heap of refuse.”

“You weren’t exactly a David, then?” laughed the patroon, in spite of his bad humor.

“I’ll throw the stone yet,” said the little man, viciously showing his yellow teeth. “The law’s the sling.”

That evening, when the broad meadows were inundated by the shadow of the forest that crept over it like an incoming tide, the land baron ordered lights for every room. The manor shone in isolated grandeur amid the gloomy fields, with the forest-wall around it; radiant as of old, when strains of music had been heard within and many figures passed the windows. But now there was light, and not life, and a solitary anti-renter on the lonely road regarded with surprise the unusual illumination.

“What does it mean?” asked Little Thunder–for it was he–waiting and watching, as without the gates of Paradise.

Well might he ask, for the late Mynheer, the Patroon, had been a veritable bat for darkness; a few candles answered his purpose in the spacious rooms; he played the prowler, not the grand lord; a recluse who hovered over his wine butts in the cellar and gloated over them, while he touched them not; a hermit who lived half his time in the kitchen, bending over the smoky fireplace, and not a lavender-scented gentleman who aired himself in the drawing-room, a fine fop with nothing but the mirrors to pay him homage. Little Thunder, standing with folded arms in the dark road, gloomy as Lucifer, almost expected to see the brilliant fabric vanish like one of those palaces of joy built by the poets.

Hour after hour passed, midnight had come and gone, and still the lights glowed. Seated in the library, with the curtains drawn, were the land baron and Scroggs, a surveyor’s map between them and a dozen bottles around them. Before Mauville stood several glasses, containing wines of various vintages which the land baron compared and sipped, held to the light and inhaled after the manner of a connoisseur sampling a cellar. He was unduly dignified and stately, but the attorney appeared decidedly groggy. The latter’s ideas clashed against one another like pebbles in a child’s rattle, and, if the round table may be supposed to represent the earth, as the ancient geographers imagined it, Scrogg’s face was surely the glowing moon shining upon it.

Readily had the attorney lent himself to the new order of procedure. With him it was: “The king is dead! Long live the king!” He, who had found but poor pickings under the former master–dry crust fees for pleadings, demurrers or rejoinders–now anticipated generous booty and spoil. Alert for such crumbs as might fall from a bountiful table; keen of scent for scraps and bits, but capable of a mighty mouthful, he paid a courtier’s price for it all; wheedling, pandering, ready for any service, ripe for any revelry. With an adulator’s tact, he still strove strenuously to hold the thread of his companion’s conversation, as Mauville said:

“Too old, Scroggs; too old!” Setting down a glass of burgundy in which fine particles floated through the magenta-hued liquid. “It has lost its luster, like a woman’s eyes when she has passed the meridian. Good wine, like a woman, has its life. First, sweetly innocent, delicately palatable, its blush like a maiden of sixteen; then glowing with a riper development, more passionate in hue, a siren vintage; finally, thin, waning and watery, with only memories of the deeper, rosy-hued days. Now here, my good, but muddled friend, is your youthful maiden!” Holding toward the lamp a glass, clear as crystal, with luster like a gem. “Dancing eyes; a figure upright as a reed; the bearing of a nymph; the soul of a water lily before it has opened its leaves to the wooing moonlight!”

“Lord! How you go on!” exclaimed Scroggs. “What with a sampling this and sampling that, my head’s going round like a top. If there’s anything in the cellar the old patroons put down we haven’t tried, sir, I beg to defer the sampling. I am of the sage’s mind–‘Of all men who take wine, the moderate only enjoy it,’ says Master Bacon, or some one else.”

“Pass the bottle!” answered the other. “Gently, man! Don’t disturb its repose, and remember it disdains the perpendicular.”

“So will I soon,” muttered Scroggs. “I hope you’ll excuse me, sir, but that last drop of Veuve Cliquot was the whip-cord that started the top going, and, on my word”–raising his hands to his head–“I feel like holding it on to keep it from spinning off.”

“Spinning or not, you shall try this vintage”–the young man’s eyes gleamed with such fire as shone in the glass–“and drink to Constance Carew!”

“Constance Carew!” stammered the other, desperately swallowing the toast.

Mauville slowly emptied the glass. “A balsamic taste, slightly piquant but agreeable,” he observed. “A dangerous wine, Scroggs! It carries no warning; your older kind is like a world-worn coquette whose glances at once place you on the defensive. This maiden vintage, just springing into glorious womanhood, comes over you like a springtime dream.”

“Who–who is she?” muttered Scroggs.

“She is not in the scroll you prepared for my lamented kinsman, eh? They are, for the most part, deep red, dark scarlet–that list of fair dames! She doesn’t belong to them–yet! No title, man; not even a society lady. A stroller, which is next door to a vagrant.”

“Well, sir, she’s a woman and that’s enough,” replied the lawyer. “And my opinion is, it’s better to have nothing to do with ’em.”

This sententious remark seemed to arouse Scroggs to momentary vivacity.

“Now there was my Lord Hamerton, whose picture is upstairs,” he went on quickly, like a man who is bent on grasping certain ideas before they escape him. “He brought a beautiful woman here–carried her off, they say from England–and installed her as mistress of the manor. I have heard my father say that his great-grandfather, who was my lord’s solicitor, said that before his death my lord desired to make her his wife, having been brought to a sense of the sinful life he had led by a Puritan preacher. But at that, this woman straightened herself up, surveyed him with scorn, and, laughing like a witch, answered: ‘They say marriages are made in heaven, my lord–and you are the devil!’ So my lord died without having atoned, and, as for my lady who refused to become an honest woman, I am sure she was damned!” concluded Scroggs triumphantly.

“No doubt! So this wicked lord abducted her, Scroggs?” he added thoughtfully. “A man of spirit, until the Puritans got after him and showed him the burning pit and frightened him to that virtue which was foreign to his inclinations. My lady was right in refusing to honor such a paltry scoundrel with her hand. But it takes courage, Scroggs, to face everlasting damnation.”

“They say, too, there was a spice of revenge about her unwillingness to give her hand to my lord,” resumed the narrator, unmindful of the interruption. “This Puritan father said nothing but marriage with her would save Hamerton from the sulphurous flames and so my lady refused to sanctify their relations and rescue her lord from perdition!”

“A pleasant revenge!” laughed the land baron. “He made life a hell for her and she gave him an eternity of it. But take a little of this white wine, man. We’ve drunk to the roses of desire, and now should drink to the sanctified lilies. Her neck, Scroggs, is like a lily, and her hand and her brow! Beneath that whiteness, her eyes shine with a tenderness inviting rays of passion to kindle them. Drink!”

But the other gave a sudden lurch forward. “My lady–refused–perdition!” he muttered, and his head dropped to the board.

“Wake up, man, and drink!” commanded the master.

“Jush same–they ought to have been married,” said his companion drowsily. “They lived together so–so ill!” And then to place himself beyond reach of further temptation from the bottle, he quietly and naturally slid under the table.

The patroon arose, strode to the window, which he lifted, and the night air entered, fanning his hot brow. The leaves, on high, rustled like falling rain. The elms tossed their branches, striking one another in blind confusion. The long grass whispered as the breeze stirred it like the surface of an inland lake. Withering flowers gave up their last perfume, while a storm-cloud fled wildly across the heavens. Some of the restlessness of the external world disturbed that silent dark figure at the window; within him, conflicting passions jarred like the boughs of the trees and his fancies surged like the eddying leaves.

“The roses of desire–the sanctified lilies!” he muttered.

As he stood there the stars grew pale; the sky trembled and quivered before the advent of morn. A heavy footstep fell behind him, and, turning, he beheld the care-taker.

“Not in bed yet, Oly-koeks?” cheerfully said the land baron.

“I am just up.”

“In that case, it is time for me to retire,” returned the master, with a yawn. “This is a dull place, Oly-koeks; no life; no variety. Nothing going on!”

The servant glanced at the formidable array of bottles. “And he calls this a quiet life!” thought the care-taker, losing his impassiveness and viewing the table with round-eyed wonder.

“Nothing going on?” he said aloud. “Mynheer, the Patroon, complained of too much life here, with people taking farms all around. But, if you are dull, a farmer told me last night there was a company of strolling players in Vanderdonkville–”

“Strollers!” exclaimed Mauville, wheeling around. “What are they called?”

“Lord; I don’t know, sir. They’re show-folks, and that’s all–”

“Do many strolling players come this way?”

“Not for weeks and months, sometimes! The old patroon ordered the schout to arrest them if they entered the wyck.”

“Is Vanderdonkville in the wyck?” asked the land baron quickly.

“No. It was separated from the wyck when Rickert Jacobus married–”

“Never mind the family genealogy! Have the coach ready at nine–”

“To-night?”

“This morning,” replied Mauville, lightly. “And, meanwhile, put this to bed,” indicating Scroggs, who was now snoring like a bag-pipe with one arm lovingly wound around a leg of the library table.

The care-taker hoisted the attorney on his broad shoulders, his burden still piping as they crossed the hall and mounted the stairway. Having deposited his load within the amazing depths of a Dutch feather mattress, where he lay well-nigh lost to sight, but not unheard, the wacht-meester of the steyn left him to well-earned slumber and descended to the kitchen.

At the appointed hour, the land baron, freshly shaven, not a jaded line in his face, and elastic in step, appeared on the front porch before which his carriage was waiting.

“When shall I expect you back?” asked Oly-koeks, who had reappeared at the sound of his master’s footsteps.

“Any time or never!” laughed the patroon, springing into the vehicle.

But as he drove through a bit of wood, wrapped in pleasing reflections, he received startling proof that the warfare between landlord and tenants had indeed begun in earnest, for a great stone suddenly crashed through the window of the vehicle, without, however, injuring the occupant. Springing from his carriage, Mauville dashed through the fringe of wood, discharging his revolver at what he fancied was a fleeing figure. But a fluttering in the trees from the startled birds was the only result.

Little Thunder was too spry to be caught by even a pursuing bullet.

CHAPTER X
SEALING THE COMPACT

“The show troupe has come to town,” said the tall, lank postmaster to every one who called, and the words passed from mouth to mouth, so that those who did not witness the arrival were soon aware of it. Punchinello and his companions never attracted more attention from the old country peasants than did the chariot and its occupants, as on the day after their night in the woods they passed through the main thoroughfare of the village where they were soon to appear.

Children in woolen dresses of red retinet, or in calico vandykes and aprons, ran after the ponderous vehicle with cries of delight; the staid, mature contingent of the population shook their heads disapprovingly, while viewing with wonder the great lumbering coach, its passengers inside and out, and, behind, the large wagon with its load of miscellaneous trappings. Now on the stage throne lolled the bass viol player, even as Jacques assumed the raiment of the Duke of Aranza, reclining the while in his chair of state. Contentment was written upon his face, and he was as much a duke or a king, as Jacques when he swelled like a shirt bleaching in a high wind and looked burly as a Sunday beadle.

The principal avenue of the village boasted but few prosperous-looking business establishments. In the general “mixed store,” farmers’ implements, groceries, West India goods and even drugs were dispensed. But the apothecary’s trade then had its limitations, homeopathy being unknown, while calomel, castor oil and rhubarb were mainly in demand, as well as senna, manna and other bitter concoctions with which both young and old were freely dosed. The grocer, haberdasher, and druggist, all rolled into one substantial personage, so blocked the doorway of his own establishment, while gazing at the strollers, it would have puzzled a customer, though but a “sketch and outline” of a man, to have slipped in or out. Dashing as in review before the rank and file of the village, the coach, with an extra flourish, rattled up to the hotel, a low but generous-sized edifice, with a wide, comfortable veranda, upon the railing of which was an array of boots, and behind them a number of disconsolate-looking teamsters.

“You want to register, do you?” said the landlord in answer to Barnes’ inquiry, as the latter entered the office, the walls of which were covered with advertisements of elections, auctions, sales of stock, lands and quack medicines.

“We don’t keep no register,” continued the landlord, “but I guess we can accommodate you, although the house is rather full with the fellers from the ark. Or,” he added, by way of explanation in answer to the manager’s look of surprise, “Philadelphia freight wagons, I suppose you would call them. But we speak of them as arks, because they take in all creation. Them’s the occupants, making a Mount Ararat of the porch. They’re down-hearted, because they used to liquor up here and now they can’t, for the town’s temperance.”

“I trust, nevertheless, you are prepared for a season of legitimate drama,” suggested Barnes.

The other shook his head dubiously. “The town’s for lectures clear through,” he answered. “They’ve been making a big fuss about show folks.”

The manager’s countenance did not fall, however, upon hearing this announcement; on the contrary, it shed forth inscrutable satisfaction.

No sooner were they settled in far from commodious quarters than preparations for the future were seriously begun; and now the drama proceeded apace, with Barnes, the moving spirit. Despite his assertion that he was no scholar, the manager’s mind was the storehouse of a hundred plays, and in that depository were many bags of gold and many bags of chaff. From this accumulation he drew freely, frankly, in the light-fingered fashion of master playwrights and lesser theatrical thimble-riggers.

Before the manager was a table–the stage!–upon which were scattered miscellaneous articles, symbols of life and character. A stately salt-cellar represented the leading lady; a pepper box, the irascible father; a rotund mustard pot, the old woman; a long, slim cruet, the ingenue; and a pewter spoon, the lover.

Barnes gravely demonstrated the action of the scene to Saint-Prosper, and the soldier became collaborator, “abandoning, as it were,” wrote the manager in his autobiographical date-book and diary, “the sword for the pen, and the glow of the Champ de Mars for the glimmer of a kerosene lamp.” And yet not with the inclination of Burgoyne, or other military gentlemen who have courted the buskin and sock! On the contrary, so foreign was the occupation to his leaning, that often a whimsical light in his eye betrayed his disinclination and modest disbelief in his own fitness for the task. “He said the way I laid out an act reminded him of planning a campaign, with the outriders and skirmishers before; the cavalry arrayed for swift service, and the infantry marching steadily on, carrying with them the main plot, or strength of the movement.”

No sooner were the Salt Cellar and Pepper Box reunited, and the Pewter Spoon clasped in the arms of the loving Cruet, with the curtain descending, than Barnes, who like the immortal Alcibiades Triplet could turn his hand to almost anything, became furiously engaged in painting scenery. A market-place, with a huge wagon, containing porkers and poultry, was dashed off with a celerity that would have made a royal academician turn green with envy. The Tiddly Wink Inn was so faithfully reproduced that the painted bottles were a real temptation, while on the pastoral green of a rural landscape grazed sheep so life-like that, as Hawkes observed, it actually seemed “they would eat the scenery all up.” But finally sets and play were alike finished, and results demonstrated that the manager was correct in his estimate of such a drama, which became a forerunner of other pieces of this kind, “The Bottle,” “Fruits of the Wine Cup,” “Aunt Dinah’s Pledge,” and “Ten Nights in a Bar Room.”

In due time the drama was given in the town hall, after the rehearsals had been witnessed by a committee from the temperance league, who reported that the play “could not but exercise a good influence and was entertaining withal … We recommend the license to be issued and commend the drama to all Good Templars.” Therefore, the production was not only well attended, but play and players were warmly received. The town hall boasted a fairly commodious platform which now served the purpose of a stage, and–noteworthy circumstance!–there were gas jets for footlights, the illuminating fluid having at that early date been introduced in several of the more progressive villages. Between the acts, these yellow lights were turned low, and–running with the current of popular desire–the orchestra, enlarged to four, played, by special request, “The Old Oaken Bucket.”

The song had just sprung into popularity, and, in a moment, men, women and children had added their voices to the instruments. It was not the thrill of temperance fanaticism that stirred their hearts, but it was the memories of the old pioneer home in the wilderness; the rail-splitting, road-building days; the ancient rites of “raisings” and other neighborly ceremonies; when the farmer cut rye with a cradle, and threshed it out with his flail; when “butter and eggs were pin money” and wheat paid the store-keeper.

“How solemnly they take their amusements in the North, Mr. Barnes!” exclaimed a voice in one of the entrances. “What a contrast to the South–the wicked South!”

The manager turned sharply.

“We are mere servants of the public, Mr. Mauville.”

“And the public is master, Mr. Barnes! How the dramatic muse is whipped around! In Greece, she was a goddess; in Rome, a hussy; in England, a sprightly dame; now, a straight-laced Priscilla. But you have a recruit, I see?”

“You mean Saint-Prosper?”

“Yes, and I can hardly blame him–under the circumstances!” murmured the land baron, at the same time glancing around as though seeking some one.

“Circumstances! What circumstances?” demanded the manager.

“Why, the pleasant company he finds himself in, of course,” said the visitor, easily. “Ah, I see Miss Carew,” he added, his eye immediately lightening, “and must congratulate her on her performance. Cursed dusty hole, isn’t it?” Brushing himself with his handkerchief as he moved away.

“What business has he behind the scenes anyway?” grumbled the manager. “Dusty hole, indeed! Confound his impudence!” But his attention being drawn to the pressing exigencies of a first night, Barnes soon forgot his irritation over this unwarranted intrusion in lowering a drop, hoisting a fly or readjusting a flat to his liking.

The land baron meanwhile crossed to the semi-darkness at the rear of the stage behind the boxed scene, where he had observed the young girl waiting for the curtain to rise on the last act. A single light on each side served partly to relieve the gloom; to indicate the frame-work of the set scene and throw in shadow various articles designed for use in the play. As she approached Mauville, who stood motionless in an unlighted spot, the pale glow played upon her a moment, white on her neck, in sheen on the folds of her gown, and then she stepped into the shadow, where she was met by a tall figure, with hand eagerly outstretched.

“Mr. Mauville!” she exclaimed, drawing back at the suddenness of the encounter.

His restless eyes held hers, but his greeting was conventional.

“Did I not say the world was small and that we might meet again?”

“Of course, we are always meeting people and parting from them,” she replied unconcernedly.

He laughed. “With what delightful indifference you say that! You did not think to see me again?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” she answered, frankly, annoyed by his persistence.

“I am unfortunate!” he said.

Beneath his free gaze she changed color, as though the shadow of a rose had touched her face.

“You are well?” he continued.

“Yes.”

“I need not have asked.” His expression conveyed more–so much more, she bit her lip impatiently. “How do you like the new part?”

“It is hard to tell yet,” she answered evasively.

“You would do justice to any rôle, but I prefer you in a historical or romantic play, with the picturesque old costumes. If it were in my domains, you should appear in those dramas, if I had to hang every justice of the peace in the district.”

Her only response was a restless movement and he hastened to add: “I fear, however, I am detaining you.”

He drew aside with such deference to permit her to pass that her conscience smote her and she was half-minded to turn and leave him more graciously, but this impulse was succeeded by another feeling, ill-defined, the prevailing second thought. Had she looked, she would have seen that her fluttering shawl touched his hand and he quickly raised it to his lips, releasing it immediately. As it was, she moved on, unaware of the gesture. The orchestra, or rather string quartet, had ceased; Hans, a host in himself, a mountain of melody, bowed his acknowledgments; the footlights glared, the din of voices subsiding; and the curtain rose.

Remaining in the background, the land baron watched the young girl approach the entrance to the stage, where she stood, intent, one hand resting against the scenery, her dress upheld with the other; the glimmer from the footlights, reflected through the opening, touching her face; suddenly, with a graceful movement, she vanished, and her laughing voice seemed to come from afar.

Was it for this he had made his hasty journey? To be treated with indifference by a wandering player; he, the patroon, the unsuccessful suitor of a stroller! She, who appeared in taverns, in barns, perhaps, was as cold and proud as any fine lady, untroubled about the morrow, and, as he weighed this phase of the matter, the land baron knew not whether he loved her most for her beauty or hated her for the slight she put upon him. But love or hate, it was all one, and he told himself he would see the adventure to the end.

“How do you do, Mr. Mauville?” said a gay but hushed voice, interrupting his ruminations, and Susan, in a short skirt and bright stockings, greeted him.

“The better for seeing you, Mistress Susan.” Nonchalantly surveying her from head to foot.

She bore his glance with the assurance of a pretty woman who knows she is looking her best.

“Pooh!” Curtesying disdainfully. “I don’t believe you! You came to see some one else. Well”–lightly–“she is already engrossed.”