"This is _too_ bad!" breathed the lady impatiently, and plainly she was not speaking to Varney. "I believe it"s coming down harder and harder every minute!"
"Yes," he answered cheerfully, "the good old rain is at it in earnest.
We"re probably fixed for hours and hours. I might argue, you know," he added, "that I have a right to know these things. The box of matches I just gave away like a madman would have told me, and no questions asked.
Matches and lamps you have none, but such as you have--"
"Could you not talk of something else, please?"
Varney laughed. "Certainly, if I must. Only I"ve been rather generous about this, I think, showing you my hand and giving you the chance to laugh at me. You see, for all I know you may be fifty-two, after all. Or even sixty-two--Oh, glory! Hallelujah!"
"What on earth is the matter?"
"Oh, nothing! Nothing at all! Just I have found a match. That"s all!"
"A _match_! Splendid!" she cried, and her voice suddenly seemed to come from a higher point in the darkness, as though she had risen. "Just one!
Oh, we--you must be extremely careful with it."
"The trouble is," he said with exaggerated dejection, "it"s pretty wet.
I don"t know whether it will strike or not."
"You must _make_ it strike. Oh, it will be--unpardonable--if you don"t make it strike!"
"Then I"ll throw my soul into the work. I"ll concentrate my whole will-power upon it. On the back of this chair here--shall I?"
"All right. I"ll concentrate too. Are--you ready?"
"Ready it is," said Varney.
Gently he drew the match across the rough wood of the chair-back, his ear all eager expectancy--and nothing happened. Thrice he did this fruitless thing, and something told him that a large section of the sulphur had been rubbed away into eternity.
"It"s nip and tuck," he breathed, stifling an impulse to laugh. "Nip and tuck!"
Pressing the match"s diminished head firmly against the wood, he drew it downward vigorously and long. There was a faint crackle, a little splutter, and--glory of glories!--a tiny flame faltered out into the darkness.
"Oh--_be careful_!"
Varney cupped his hand about the little flare, and for a moment ceased to breathe. Then it caught more fully, and it was evident to both that the victory was won.
He had meant to look instantly about for lamp or candle to light; but if all his future happiness had hinged upon it, it seemed to him that he could not have helped one glance at the lady who shared that shelter and that match with him.
She stood a few feet away, regarding him breathlessly, hatted, gloved, all in white, one hand resting lightly on the center-table, one folded about the crook of a dainty draggled parasol. The match threw a small and ghostly light, but he saw her, and she wore no veil.
"Why--why--I--"
"Oh, quick! There"s a lamp just behind you."
He caught himself with a start. By incredible luck a lamp was at his very elbow; as it was the match died on the wick. He put back the chimney and shade, turned up the wick, and the room was bathed in golden light.
It was a good-sized room, evidently newly furnished and as neat as a bandbox. The empty book-case on which the lamp rested was of handsome quartered oak, which transiently struck him as curious. But in the next instant he turned away and forgot all about it.
The lady stood where she had risen and was regarding him without a word.
The lamplight fell full upon her. He came nearer, and his waning a.s.surance shook him like a pennant in the wind and was suddenly gone.
The sense of _camaraderie_ which the dark had given faded; his easy friendliness left him; and he was an embarra.s.sed young man face to face with a girl whose sudden beauty seemed to overwhelm him with the knowledge that he did not so much as know her name.
"None of my thumbnail sketches," he faltered, "made you look like this."
She had rested her wet parasol against the table, where a slow pool gathered at the ferrule, and was pulling on more trimly her long white gloves. Now she looked at him rather quizzically, though her young eyes reflected something of his own unsteadying embarra.s.sment.
"No," she said, "I shall not be sixty-two for--for some time yet. But of course it was a game--a pastime--where I had a--little the advantage. Do you know, I--I am not entirely surprised, after all."
"Oh, aren"t you?" he said, completely mystified, but as charmed by her smile as he was by the subtle change in her manner which had come with the lighting of that match.
"And it _was_ nice of you to tell me that polite story at the beginning," she said. "And quick--and clever. When I heard the front door burst open, the first thing I thought of, really, was that it must be you."
"I can"t think," he said, unable to take his eyes off her, "what in the world you are talking about."
She laughed with something of an effort, and sat down exquisitely in a cruel cane chair. "Well, then--_do_ you forgive me for taking possession of your house like this? You will, won"t you? I can"t be silly, now, and pretend not to know you. But really I never dreamed that you--"
"Is it possible," he broke in stormily, "that you are mistaking me for that insufferable Stanhope?"
She looked at him startled, dumfounded; in her eyes amazement mingled with embarra.s.sment; then her brow wrinkled into a slow, doubtful smile.
"Oh-h--I beg your pardon! I--did n"t understand. But is it my fault that I"ve seen your picture a hundred times? Yes, I suppose it is; for, at the risk of making you crosser still, I"ll confess that I--I cut it out and framed it."
Varney leaned his elbow on the mantel and faced her.
"You have made a mistake," he said. "I am not Mr. Stanhope."
"You mean," she laughed, very pretty and pink, "that it is no affair of mine that you are."
A kind of desperation seized him. It was evident that she did not believe him, just as Coligny Smith had not believed him, and the plump young woman of the grocery who had used his Christian name. He was almost ready not to believe himself. However, there were cards in his pocket; he got one of them out, and coming nearer, handed it to her.
"My name is Laurence Varney," he said mechanically, for that slogan seemed fated to meet skeptics everywhere. "I am from New York and have happened to come up here on a friend"s yacht to--to spend a few days.
You have made a mistake."
She took the card, held it lightly in her gloved hand, bowed to him with mocking courtesy.
"I am very glad to meet you--Mr. Laurence Varney! I--I am from New York, too, and have happened to come up here on the New York Central with my mother to spend a few years. And I live in a white house half a mile down the road, where I ought to have been an hour ago. And I am Mary Carstairs, who has read all your books and thinks that they--Oh"--she broke off all at once: for there was no missing the look in his astounded face. "What in the world have I said now?"
"You--can"t be--_Mary Carstairs_!" he cried.
"Is--that so terrible?" she laughed, a little uncertainly.
CHAPTER VII