"Had my affairs not mended, Colonel Sheraton, I could not have blamed any of you for breaking the engagement. If conditions prove to be practically the same now as then, it is she who must decide her course and mine."
"That is perfectly honorable. I have no criticism to offer. I have only her happiness at heart."
"Then, if you please, sir, since I am rather awkwardly situated here, I should like very much to see Miss Grace this morning."
He bowed in his lofty way and left me. Within a half hour a servant brought me word that Miss Grace would see me in the drawing-room.
She was seated in a wide, low chair near the sunny window, half hid by the leafy plants that grew in the boxes there. She was clad in loose morning wear over ample crinoline, her dark hair drawn in broad bands over the temples, half confined by a broad gold comb, save two long curls which hung down her neck at either side. It seemed to me she was very thin--thinner and darker than ever. Under her wide eyes were heavy circles. She held out her hand to me, and it lay cold and lifeless in my own. I made some pleasant talk of small matters as I might, and soon as I could arrived at the business of the letter I had received.
"Perhaps I have been a little hurried, after all, in cla.s.sing myself as an absolute pauper," I explained as she read. "You see, I must go out there and look into these things."
"Going away again?" She looked up at me, startled.
"For a couple of weeks. And when I come back, Miss Grace--"
So now I was up to the verge of that same old, definite question.
She sat up in the chair as though pulling herself together in some sudden resolve, and looked me straight in the face.
"Jack," she said, "why should we wait?"
"To be sure," said I. "Only I do not want you to marry a pauper if any act of my own can make him better than a pauper in the meantime."
"You temporize," she said, bitterly. "You are not glad. Yet you came to me only last spring, and you--"
"I come to you now, Miss Grace," I said.
"Ah, what a difference between then and now!" she sighed.
For a time we could find nothing fit to say. At last I was forced to bring up one thing I did not like to mention.
"Miss Grace," said I, seating myself beside her, "last night, or rather this morning, after midnight, I found a man prowling around in the yard."
She sprang up as though shocked, her face gray, her eyes full of terror.
"You have told!" she exclaimed, "My father knows that Captain Orme--"
It was my own turn to feel surprise, which perhaps I showed.
"I have told no one. It seemed to me that first I ought to come to you and ask you about this. Why was Orme there?"
She stared at me. "He told me he would come back some time," she admitted at length. All the while she was fighting with herself, striving, exactly as Orme had done, to husband her powers for an impending struggle. "You see," she added, "he has secret business all over the country--I will own I believe him to be in the secret service of the inner circle of a number of Southern congressmen and business men. He is in with the Southern circle--of New Orleans, of Charleston--Washington. For this reason he could not always choose his hours of going and coming."
"Does your father know of his peculiar hours?"
"I presume so, of course."
"I saw a light at a window," I began, "whose window I do not know, doubtless some servant"s. It could not have been a signal?"
"A _signal_? What do you mean? Do you suspect me of putting out a beacon light for a cheap night adventure with some man? Do you expect me to tolerate that sort of thing from you?"
"I ask you to tolerate nothing," I said. "I am not in the habit of suspecting ladies. But I ask you if you can explain the light on that side of the house."
"Jack," she said, flinging out a hand, "forgive me. I admit that Captain Orme and I carried on a bit of a flirtation, after he came back--after he had told me about you. But why should that--why, he did not know you were here."
"No," said I, dryly, "I don"t think he did. I am glad to know that you found something to amuse you in my absence."
"Let us not speak of amus.e.m.e.nts in the absence of each other," she said bitterly. "Think of your own. But when you came back, it was all as it was last spring. I could love no other man but you, Jack, and you know it. After all, if we are quits, let us stay quits, and forgive, and forget--let us forget, Jack."
I sat looking at her as she turned to me, pleading, imploring in her face, her gesture.
"Jack," she went on, "a woman needs some one to take care of her, to love her. I want you to take care of me--you wouldn"t throw me over for just a little thing--when all the time you yourself--"
"The light shone for miles across the valley," said I.
"Precisely, and that was how he happened to come up, I do not doubt. He thought we were still up about the place. My father has always told him to make this his home, and not to go to the tavern. They are friends politically, in many ways, as you know."
"The light then was that of some servant?"
"Certainly it was. I know nothing of it. It was an accident, and yet you blame me as though--why, it was all accident that you met Captain Orme.
Tell me, Jack, did you quarrel? What did he tell you?"
"Many things. He is no fit man for you to know, nor for any woman."
"Do I not know that? I will never see him again."
"No, he will never come back here again, that is fairly sure. He has promised that; and he asked me to promise one thing, by the way."
"What was that?"
"To keep my promise with you. He asked me to marry you! Why?"
Infinite wit of woman! What chance have we men against such weapons? It was coquetry she forced to her face, and nothing else, when she answered: "So, then, he was hard hit, after all! I did not know that.
How tender of him, to wish me married to another than himself! The conceit of you men is something wondrous."
"Mr. Orme was so kind as to inform me that I was a gentleman, and likewise a very great a.s.s."
"Did you promise him to keep your promise, Jack?" She put both her hands on mine as it lay on the chair arm. Her eyes looked into mine straight and full. It would have taken more imagination than mine to suspect the slightest flickering in their lids. "Jack," she murmured over and over again. "I love you! I have never loved any other man."
"So now," I resumed, "I have come to you to tell you of all these things, and to decide definitely and finally in regard to our next plans."
"But you believe me, Jack? You do promise to keep your promise? You do love me?"
"I doubt no woman whom I wed," I answered. "I shall be gone for two or three weeks. As matters are at this moment it would be folly for either of us to do more than let everything stand precisely as it is until we have had time to think. I shall come back, Miss Grace, and I shall ask your answer."
"Jack, I"m sure of that," she murmured. "It is a grand thing for a woman to have the promise of a man who knows what a promise is."
I winced at this, as I had winced a thousand times at similar thrusts unconsciously delivered by so many. "No," said I, "I think Orme is right. I am only a very stupid a.s.s."