"I am to infer then that there is no present adoring cavalier."
"No," she answered. "Not since last Friday. He has sailed, I believe, to offer his services to the Mexican revolutionists."
"Ah!" he leaned back and gazed pensively over his interlocked fingers.
His eyes rested on a bronze in the opposite corner.
"You"ve never thanked me for that," he said casually.
Nina followed his gaze. "Thanked _you_?" she asked.
"Who else?"
"For the cobra?" For it was the cobra with the history that he continued to regard.
"For the cobra."
"You mean you were the one that sent it to me? There was no card with it--no name."
"I picked it up in Calcutta and fancied it might please you. Eve and the serpent, you know. Rather delicately significant--What?"
She was staring at him, astounded. After all these five years he had unsealed his lips. She noticed his scarred left hand, recalled the part that the bronze had played in that, too--and wondered the more.
"Some day," he said in an undertone that had become habitual, "I"ll send you a bronze tigress. That will make the symbolism complete."
"Do--do you so much mind, then?" she asked yieldingly. "I mean about my amus.e.m.e.nts."
"Your _one_ amus.e.m.e.nt?" The sneer, the cynicism was in his tone again.
"Good G.o.d, no! Why should I?"
"You seemed to resent it. I--I"ll be very good, if you wish."
"I don"t wish anything about it. To be candid, it interests me, when I happen to think of it. You"re a type. And I always did like types. The men you first charm and then devour are types, too--types of the weakling. They could never win my sympathy."
"No one has ever encouraged me to be different," she said, turning back to her flowers.
He waited a long moment, his lips parted. Then he said: "No? I dare say not."
She came to him, a white carnation in her hand, and, bending over, caught his coat-lapel between thumb and finger. But, noting her intention, he drew it away.
"No, no," he cried sharply. "Not for me. I am no _pet.i.t maitre_."
She was about to retreat abashed, but he gripped her wrist and held it, and her cheeks flushed crimson. Then he let it go.
"I was looking at the ring," he said. "I see you still wear it."
"I"m still bearing my cross," she returned, "but I"ve given up hope of the crown."
"I told you to give it to poor Darling," he reminded her. "It should have been buried with him."
She made no rejoinder, but stuck the carnation among the gold of her hair. Almost at the same moment one of the doors was pushed ajar and an enormous staghound, black to a hair, slipped in and began nuzzling Nina"s hand.
"Another present?" inquired Nibbetts, looking the beast over.
"Yes. A loan rather--my Irish soldier of fortune left Tara with me to keep his memory green, I fancy."
She patted his head, and into her eyes he looked unutterable things.
"You"ve bewitched the creature, that"s clear," said her caller. He laid a hand on the hound"s back and was answered by a low growl. "Surly brute!" he added.
"He senses in you his master"s rival," she suggested roguishly.
"G.o.d forbid!" snarled Kneedrock.
"Tell me about the marmalade maid," Nina begged, sitting down and taking Tara"s head in her lap. "The maid of Dundee."
"I was visiting a man I knew in Tahiti," Nibbetts answered frankly. "And it happens he has a niece. I ran away from her."
"Why?" Nina asked simply.
"For the best reason in the world," he told her. "I was getting to like her too well. That"s why I"m here this morning. You"re a perfectly incomparable antidote for that sort of thing."
"She"s like her marmalade, perhaps--too cloyingly sweet," said Nina, indifferently.
"Her marmalade?" questioned Nibbetts, his brow knitting.
"Doesn"t she make it, then? I can"t think of Dundee in any other connection. Don"t all the women there peel oranges?"
"She doesn"t." He could be very literal at times.
"What does she do? How in the world does she spend her time?"
"She spends most of it, I fancy, talking to her parrot."
"Her parrot! How odd! Hasn"t she any one else to talk to?"
"Only one other--her uncle. And he doesn"t understand."
"But the parrot does, I infer?"
"Thoroughly. The Tahitian parrots are very wise little birds."
Nina"s laugh rippled. "It talks back, of course."
"Most certainly. One must talk back to her--even if it is only a parrot."
"And what does she talk about? What do they talk about, I mean?"
The viscount took his time answering. The pause lent emphasis to his words.