"Don"t you read the newspapers?" she cried impatiently. She actually resented my ignorance.
"Religiously," I said, stung to revolt. "But I make it a point never to read the criminal news."
"Criminal news?" she gasped, a spot of red leaping to her cheek. "What do you mean?"
"It is merely my way of saying that I put marriages of that character in the category of crime."
"Oh!" she cried, staring at me with unbelieving eyes.
"Every time a sweet, lovely American girl is delivered into the hands of a foreign bounder who happens to possess a t.i.tle that needs fixing, I call the transaction a crime that puts white slavery in a cla.s.s with the most trifling misdemeanours. You did not love this pusillanimous Count, nor did he care a hang for you. You were too young in the ways of the world to have any feeling for him, and he was too old to have any for you. The whole hateful business therefore resolved itself into a case of give and take--and he took everything. He took you and your father"s millions and now you are both back where you began. Some one deliberately committed a crime, and as it wasn"t you or the Count, who levied his legitimate toll,--it must have been the person who planned the conspiracy. I take it, of course, that the whole affair was arranged behind your back, so to speak. To make it a perfectly fashionable and up-to-date delivery it would have been entirely out of place to consult the unsophisticated girl who was thrown in to make the t.i.tle good. You were not sold to this bounder. It was the other way round. By the G.o.ds, madam, he was actually paid to take you!"
Her face was quite pale. Her eyes did not leave mine during the long and crazy diatribe,--of which I was already beginning to feel heartily ashamed,--and there was a dark, ominous fire in them that should have warned me.
She arose from her chair. It seemed to me she was taller than before.
"If nothing else came to me out of this transaction," she said levelly, "at least a certain amount of dignity was acquired. Pray remember that I am no longer the unsophisticated girl you so graciously describe.
I am a woman, Mr. Smart."
"True," said I, senselessly dogged; "a woman with the power to think for yourself. That is my point. If the same situation arose at your present age, I fancy you"d be able to select a husband without a.s.sistance, and I venture to say you wouldn"t pick up the first dissolute n.o.bleman that came your way. No, my dear countess, you were not to blame. You thought, as your parents did, that marriage with a count would make a real countess of you. What rot! You are a simple, lovable American girl and that"s all there ever can be to it. To the end of your days you will be an American. It is not within the powers of a scape-grace count to put you or any other American girl on a plane with the women who are born countesses, or d.u.c.h.esses, or anything of the sort. I don"t say that you suffer by comparison with these n.o.ble ladies. As a matter of fact you are surpa.s.singly finer in every way than ninety-nine per cent. of them,--poor things! Marrying an English duke doesn"t make a genuine d.u.c.h.ess out of an American girl, not by a long shot. She merely becomes a figure of speech. Your own experience should tell you that. Well, it"s the same with all of them. They acquire a t.i.tle, but not the homage that should go with it."
We were both standing now. She was still measuring me with somewhat incredulous eyes, rather more tolerant than resentful.
"Do you expect me to agree with you, Mr. Smart?" she asked.
"I do," said I, promptly. "You, of all people, should be able to testify that my views are absolutely right."
"They are right," she said, simply. "Still you are pretty much of a brute to insult me with them."
"I most sincerely crave your pardon, if it isn"t too late," I cried, abject once more. (I don"t know what gets into me once in a while.)
"The safest way, I should say, is for neither of us to express an opinion so long as we are thrown into contact with each other. If you choose to tell the world what you think of me, all well and good. But please don"t tell _me_."
"I can"t convince the world what I think of you for the simple reason that I"d be speaking at random. I don"t know who you are."
"Oh, you will know some day," she said, and her shoulders drooped a little.
"I"ve--I"ve done a most cowardly, despicable thing in hunting you--"
"Please! Please don"t say anything more about it. I dare say you"ve done me a lot of good. Perhaps I shall see things a little more clearly.
To be perfectly honest with you, I went into this marriage with my you his queen? You"ll find it better than being a countess, believe me."
"I shall never marry, Mr. Smart," she said with decision. "Never, never again will I get into a mess that is so hard to get out of. I can say this to you because I"ve heard you are a bachelor. You can"t take offence."
"I fondly hope to die a bachelor," said I with humility.
"G.o.d bless you!" she cried, bursting into a merry laugh, and I knew that a truce had been declared for the time being at least. "And now let us talk sense. Have you carefully considered the consequences if you are found out, Mr. Smart?"
"Found out?"
"If you are caught shielding a fugitive from justice. I couldn"t go to sleep for hours last night thinking of what might happen to you if--"
"Nonsense!" I cried, but for the life of me I couldn"t help feeling elated. She _had_ a soul above self, after all!
"You see, I am a thief and a robber and a very terrible malefactor, according to the reports Max brings over from the city. The fight for poor little Rosemary is destined to fill columns and columns in the newspapers of the two continents for months to come. You, Mr. Smart, may find yourself in the thick of it. If I were in your place, I should keep out of it."
"While I am not overjoyed by the prospect of being dragged into it, Countess, I certainly refuse to back out at this stage of the game.
Moreover, you may rest a.s.sured that I shall not turn you out."
"It occurred to me last night that the safest thing for you to do, Mr.
Smart, is to--to get out yourself."
I stared. She went on hurriedly: "Can"t you go away for a month"s visit or--"
"Well, upon my soul!" I gasped. "Would you turn me out of my own house?
This beats anything I"ve--"
"I was only thinking of your peace of mind and your--your safety,"
she cried unhappily. "Truly, truly I was."
"Well, I prefer to stay here and do what little I can to shield you and Rosemary," said I sullenly.
"I"ll not say anything horrid again, Mr. Smart," she said quite meekly.
(I take this occasion to repeat that I"ve never seen any one in all my life so pretty as she!) Her moist red lip trembled slightly, like a censured child"s.
At that instant there came a rapping on the door. I started apprehensively.
"It is only Max with the coal," she explained, with obvious relief.
"We keep a fire going in the grate all day long. You"ve no idea how cold it is up here even on the hottest days. Come in!"
Max came near to dropping the scuttle when he saw me. He stood as one petrified.
"Don"t mind Mr. Smart, Max," said she serenely. "He won"t bite your head off."
The poor clumsy fellow spilled quant.i.ties of coal over the hearth when he attempted to replenish the fire at her command, and moved with greater celerity in making his escape from the room than I had ever known him to exercise before. Somehow I began to regain a lost feeling of confidence in myself. The confounded Schmicks, big and little, were afraid of me, after all.
"By the way," she said, after we had lighted our cigarettes, "I am nearly out of these." I liked the way she held the match for me, and then flicked it snappily into the centre of a pile of cushions six feet from the fireplace.
I made a mental note of the shortage and then admiringly said that I didn"t see how any man, even a count could help adoring a woman who held a cigarette to her lips as she did.
"Oh," said she coolly, "his friends were willing worshippers, all of them. There wasn"t a man among them who failed to make violent love to me, and with the Count"s permission at that. You must not look so shocked. I managed to keep them at a safe distance. My unreasonable att.i.tude toward them used to annoy my husband intensely."
"Good Lord!"
"Pooh! He didn"t care what became of me. There was one particular man whom he favoured the most. A dreadful man! We quarrelled bitterly when I declared that either he or I would have to leave the house--forever.
I don"t mind confessing to you that the man I speak of is your friend, the gentle Count Hohendahl, some time ogre of this castle."
I shuddered. A feeling of utter loathing for all these unprincipled scoundrels came over me, and I mildly took the name of the Lord in vain.
With an abrupt change of manner, she arose from her chair and began to pace the floor, distractedly beating her clinched hands against her bosom. Twice I heard her murmur: "Oh, G.o.d!"