"Sit down, sir," she commanded--most adorably he thought; "I had almost forgotten that I have something to tell you."
"You"ve been telling me a great deal," he confided.
She shrugged her answer over her shoulder, and peremptorily motioned him to a chair.
"Madame Durrand has been located," she began. "The Emba.s.sy telephoned me that she is in Pa.s.savant Hospital, getting along splendidly; and that she duly wired them of her accident and of my having the letter, with an identifying description of me. The wire was never received."
"It was blocked by a _present_," he remarked. "The wire never left the hospital."
"So the Marquis d"Hausonville said. He also a.s.sured me that the letter was of no immediate importance, and that steps were being taken to have it repeated."
"Which may be true," Harleston smiled, "but it is entirely safe to a.s.sume that he is acting precisely as though the letter was of the most immediate importance. You may be sure that the moment you left him he dispatched a cable to Paris reciting the facts, so that the Foreign Office could judge whether to cable the letter or to dispatch it by messenger. And he has the reply hours ago."--("Also," he might have added, "our State Department--only it may not be able to translate it.") "I should say, Mrs. Clephane, that your duty is done now, unless the Marquis calls on you for a.s.sistance. You have performed your part--"
"Very poorly," she interjected.
"On the contrary, you have performed it exceptionally well. You, a novice at this business, prevented the letter from falling into Spencer"s hands, and so you blocked that part of their game. No, no, Mrs. Clephane, I regard you as more than acquitted of blame."
"You"re always nice, Mr. Harleston!" she responded.
"Nice expresses very inadequately what I wish to be to you," he said slowly.
Again the flush came--and her glance wavered, and fled away.
"Meanwhile," he went on, "I am quite content to know that you think me nice to you."
She sprang up and moved out of distance, saying as she did so, with a ravishing smile:
"Nice is comprehended in other pleasant--adjectives."
"It is?" said he, advancing slowly toward her.
"But you, Mr. Harleston, are forbidden to guess how pleasant, or the particular adjective, until you"re permitted."
"And you"ll permit me to guess some day--and soon."
"Maybe so--and maybe not!" she laughed. "It will depend on the both of us--and the business in hand. Diplomats, you are well aware, are given to very disingenuous ways and methods."
"In diplomacy," he appended. "A diplomat, as a rule, is merely a man of a little wider experience and more mature judgment--the American diplomat alone excepted, save in the secret service. Therefore he knows his mind, and what he wants; and he usually can be depended upon to keep after it until he gets it."
"And to want it after he gets it?" she inquired.
"Don"t be cynical," he cautioned.
"I"m not. The world looks good to me, and I try to look good to the world."
"You have succeeded!" he exclaimed.
"I"ve about-faced," she went on. "Now I presume everybody trustworthy until it"s proven otherwise. Time was, and not so long ago, when I was more than cynical; and I found it didn"t pay in a woman. A man may be cynical and get away with it; a woman only injures her complexion, and makes trouble for herself. Me for the happy spirit, and side-stepping the b.u.mps."
"Good girl!" Harleston applauded--thinking of her unhappy spirit, and the hard b.u.mps she must have endured during the time that the late deceased Clephane was whirling to an aeroplane finish. "You"re a wonder, Mrs. Clephane," he ended.
"Aren"t you afraid you"ll make me vain?" she asked.
"It can"t be done," he averred. "You simply can"t be spoiled; you"re much too sensible."
"La! la!" she trilled. "What a paragon of--"
--"everything," he adjected.
"Everything that I must be, if you so wish it."
"Just so!" he replied.
"Aren"t you afraid of a paragon, Mr. Harleston?"
"Generally, yes; specifically, no."
"La! la!" she trilled again. "You"re becoming mystic; which means mysterious, which means diplomatic, which means deception--which warns us to get back to the simple life and have dinner. Want dinner, Mr.
Harleston?"
"With you, yes; also breakfast and luncheon daily."
"You couldn"t do that unless you were my husband," she replied tantalizingly and adorably.
"I"m perfectly aware of it," he responded, leaning forward over the back of the chair that separated them.
"But I"m not ready to take a husband, monsieur," she protested lightly.
"I"m perfectly aware of that also. When you are ready, madame, I am ready too. Until then I"m your good friend--and dinner companion."
He had spoken jestingly--yet the jest was mainly pretence; the real pa.s.sion was there and ready the instant he let it control. As for Mrs.
Clephane, Harleston did not know. Nor did she herself know--more than that she was quite content to be with him, and let him do for her, a.s.sured that he would not misunderstand, nor misinterpret, nor presume.
So, across the chair"s back, she held out her hand to him; and he took it, pressed it lightly, but answered never a word.
"Now you shall hear the special matter I"ve got bottled up," said she.
"Whom do you think was here late this afternoon?"
"The Emperor of Spain!" he guessed.
"A diplomatic answer!" she mocked. "There is no Emperor of Spain; yet it"s not absolutely wide of the diplomatic truth, for it was Mrs.
Buissard--she of the cab, you"ll remember."
"So!" Harleston exclaimed. "What"s the move now; I fancy she was not paying a social visit."
"You fancy correctly," Mrs. Clephane replied. "She came to the apartment unannounced; and when I, chancing to be pa.s.sing the door when she knocked, opened it, and saw who was without, I almost cried out with surprise. I didn"t cry out, however. On the contrary, remembering diplomatic ways, I most cordially invited her in. To do her justice, Mrs. Buissard, beyond expressing hope that I had experienced no ill effect from the occurrence of the other night, wasted no time in coming to business."
""Mrs. Clephane," she said, sitting on the corner of the table just where you are sitting now, "I have a proposition to make to you--may I make it?"
"I could see no reason to forbid, so I acquiesced.