"Oh, don"t be afraid. I"m only playing with your fears. One look at you as you chased your absurd spectacles was enough to satisfy my curiosity.
Go in peace, startled fawn that you are."
"Go nothing! I"m not going. Neither are you, I hope, until you"ve told me lots more about yourself."
"All that for a spray of orchids?"
"But they are quite rare ones."
"And very lovely."
The girl mused, and a sudden impulse seized her to take the unseen acquaintance at his word and free her mind as she had not been able to do to any living soul for long weeks. She pondered over it.
"You aren"t getting ready to go?" he cried, alarmed at her long silence.
"No; I"m thinking."
"Please think aloud."
"I was thinking--suppose I did."
There was so much of weighty consideration in her accents that the other fear again beset him.
"Did what? Not come down from the rock?"
"Be calm. I shouldn"t want to face you any more than you want to face me, if I decided to do it."
"Go on," he encouraged. "It sounds most promising."
"More than that. It"s fairly thrilling. It"s the awful secret of my life that I"m considering laying bare to you, just like a dime novel. Are you discreet?"
"As the eternal rocks. Prescribe any form of oath and I"ll take it."
"I"m feeling just irresponsible enough to venture. Now, if I knew you, of course I couldn"t. But as I shall never set eyes on you again--I never shall, shall I?"
"Not unless you creep up on me unawares."
"Then I"ll unburden my overweighted heart, and you can be my augur and advise me with supernatural wisdom. Are you up to that?"
"Try me."
"I will. But, remember: this means truly that we are never to meet.
And if you ever do meet me and recognize my voice, you must go away at once."
"Agreed," he said cheerfully, just a bit too cheerfully to be flattering.
"Very well, then. I"m a runaway."
"From where?"
"Home."
"Naturally. Where"s home?"
"Utica, New York," she specified.
"U.S.A.," he concluded, with a sigh. "What did you run away from?"
"Trouble."
"Does any one ever run away from anything else?" he inquired philosophically. "What particular brand?"
"Three men," she said dolorously. "All after poor little me. They all thought I ought to marry them, and everybody else seemed to think so, too--"
"Go slow! Did you say Utica or Utah?"
"Everybody thought I ought to marry one or the other of "em, I mean.
If I could have married them all, now, it might have been easier, for I like them ever so much. But how could I make up my mind? So I just seized papa around the neck and ran away with him down here."
"Why here, of all places on earth?"
"Oh, he"s interested in some mines and concessions and things. It"s very beautiful, but I almost wish I"d stayed at home and married Bobby."
"Which is Bobby?"
"He"s one of the home boys. We"ve grown up together, and I"m so fond of him. Only it"s more the brother-and-sister sort of thing, if he"d let it be."
"Check off No. 1. What"s No. 2?"
"Lots older. Mr. Thomas Murray Smith is an unspoiled millionaire. If he weren"t so serious and quite so dangerously near forty--well, I don"t know."
"Have you kept No. 3 for the last because he"s the best?"
"No-o-o-o. Because he"s the nearest. He followed me down. You can see his name in all its l.u.s.ter on the Hotel Kast register, when you get back to the city--Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll, at your service."
"Sounds Southern," commented the man below.
"Southern! He"s more Southern than the South Pole. His ancestors fought all the wars and owned all the negroes--he calls them "n.i.g.g.e.rs"--and married into all the first families of Virginia, and all that sort of thing. He must quite hate himself, poor Fitz, for falling in love with a little Yankee like me. In fact, that"s why I made him do it."
"And now you wish he hadn"t?"
"Oh--well--I don"t know. He"s awfully good-looking and gallant and devoted and all that. Only he"s such a p.r.i.c.kly sort of person. I"d have to spend the rest of my life keeping him and his pride out of trouble.
And I"ve no taste for diplomacy. Why, only last week he declined to dine with the President of the Republic because some one said that his excellency had a touch of the tar brush."
"He"d better get out of this country before that gets back to headquarters."
"If he thought there was danger, he"d stay forever. I don"t suppose Fitz is afraid of anything on earth. Except perhaps of me," she added after-thoughtfully.
"Young woman, you"re a shameless flirt!" accused the invisible one in stern tones.