Prince or Chauffeur? Part 16

Armitage interrupted.

"Your mother asked me if I had been in college. I told her I had, but that I preferred not to say where, or why I left."

"Oh!" she said, and her eyes suffused with pity. "I am so sorry. But you _must_ tell me one thing now. Was your leaving because of--of anything--that would make me sorry I had found--" she smiled, but looked at him eagerly--"the subject of the Dying Gladiator?"

"I hope not."

"You are not certain?"

"Miss Wellington, there are certain reasons why the position you helped me to obtain was vitally necessary. I am a dependant in your house. I can a.s.sure you that you will never find anything half so grievous against me as that which you have already found--your 'Dying Gladiator'

a servant. You must think of that."

"But I am not so deluded as to think you cannot explain that" cried the girl. "How foolis.h.!.+ You are not a servant, never were, and I am sure never will be one. And I know you have n't sneaked in as a yellow newspaper reporter, or magazine writer," tentatively. "You are not a sneak."

"No, I have not the intention, nor the ability, to make copy of my experiences," said Armitage.

"Intention!" echoed the girl. "Well, since you suggest the word, just what was, or is, your intention then?--if I may ask."

Armitage straightened and looked full at the girl.

"Suppose I should say that ever since that morning on the _General_ I had--" Armitage hesitated. "I reckon I 'd rather not say that," he added.

"No, I reckon you had better not," she said placidly. "In the meantime, how long do you intend staying with us before giving notice?"

Armitage did not reply immediately. He stood for a moment in deep thought. When he looked up his face was serious.

"Miss Wellington, I have neither done nor said anything that would lead you to believe that, whatever I may have been, I am now in any way above what I appear to be, with the Wellington livery on my back. I say this in justice to you. I say it because I am grateful to you.

You may regard it as a warning, if you will."

For a moment she did not reply, sitting rigidly thoughtful, while Armitage, abandoning all pretence at work, stood watching her.

"Very well," she said at length, and her voice was coldly conventional.

"If you have finished your repairs, will you drive me to Mrs. Van Valkenberg's? Follow this road through; turn to your left, and I 'll tell you when to stop."

Sara Van Valkenberg was one of the most popular of the younger matrons of Newport and New York. As Sara Malalieu, daughter of a prime old family, Billy Van Valkenberg had discovered her, and their wedding had been an event from which many good people in her native city dated things. Van Valkenberg was immensely wealthy and immensely wicked.

Sara had not sounded the black depths of his character when he was killed in a drunken automobile ride two years before, but she had learned enough to appreciate the kindness of an intervening fate.

Now she lived in an Elizabethan cottage sequestered among the rocks a short distance inland from the Ocean Drive. She was very good to look at, very worldly wise, and very, very popular. She was thirty years old, an age not to be despised in a woman.

When Miss Wellington's car arrived at the cottage, Tommy Osgood's motor was in front of the door, which was but a few feet from the road. With an expression of annoyance, Anne ran up the steps and rang the bell.

The footman was about to take her card when Mrs. Van Valkenberg's voice sounded from the library.

"Come in, Anne, we saw you coming."

Anne entered the apartment and found her friend reclining in all her supple ease, watching flushed-face Tommy, who had been attempting to summon his nerve to tell her how little he cared to continue his course through the world without her, which was just what she did not wish to have him do, because Tommy was a manly, likable, una.s.suming chap and had much yet to learn, being several years her junior.

"Oh, Tommy," said Anne, "I wanted to speak to Sara alone for a moment."

"Tommy was on his way to the polo field," said Mrs. Van Valkenberg, suggestively. "Now he need have no further excuse for being civil to an old lady."

"By George," said Tommy, "that's so, I must be on my way." And he went, not without some confusion.

Sara watched him through the window as he walked to his car.

"Poor, dear boy," she said. She turned to Anne with a bright smile.

"What is it, dear?"

"Prince Koltsoff is with us, as you know. I think mother would be pleased if I married him. I don't know that I am not inclined to gratify her. I have n't talked to father yet."

"Then he has not told you about the Russian railroad thingamajigs he is gunning for?" asked Mrs. Van Valkenberg.

"Really!" Anne's eyes were very wide.

"Oh, I don't know anything about it," said Sara hastily. "Only--the men were speaking of it at the Van Antwerps', the other night. And how about Koltsoff?"

"His intentions are distressingly clear," said Anne.

Mrs. Van Valkenberg whistled.

"Congratulations," she said with an upward inflection. "You 've no idea--"

"Oh, sh's's.h.!.+" exclaimed Anne. "Don't try to be enthusiastic if you find it so difficult. Anyway, there will be nothing to justify enthusiasm if I can help it."

"Really!" Sara regarded the girl narrowly. "If you can help it! What do you mean?"

"I don't know exactly what I do mean," Anne laughed nervously. "He is so thrillingly dominant. He had not been in the house much more than thirty hours before he had lectured me on the narrowness of my life, indicated a more alluring future, kissed my hand, and reposed in me a trust upon which he said his future depended. And through all I have been as a school girl. He 's fascinating, Sara." She leaned forward and placed her hand upon her friend's knee. "Sara--now don't laugh, I 'm serious--"

"I'm not going to laugh, dear; go on."

"Sara, you know the world. . . . I thought I did, don't you know. But I 'm a child, a perfect simpleton. I said Prince Koltsoff was fascinating; I meant he fascinates me. He does really. Some time when he gets under full headway he is going to take me in his arms--that's the feeling; also that I shall let him, although the idea now fills me with dread."

"Why, Anne!"

"I know," continued the girl, "isn't it too absurd for words! But I am baring my soul. Do you marry a man because his eyes seem to draw you into them?--whose hand pressure seems to melt your will? Is that love?"

Sara regarded the girl for a few minutes without speaking. Then she lifted her brows.

"_Is_ it love?" she said. "Ask yourself."

Anne shrugged her shoulders and grimaced helplessly.

"It might be, after all," she said. "I am sure I don't know."

"Yes, it might be," smiled Sara; "it's a question in which you must consider the personal equation. I am rather finicky about men who exude what seems to pa.s.s for love. They don't make good husbands. The best husband is the one who wins you, not takes you. For heaven's sake, Anne, when you marry, let your romance be clean, wholesome, natural; not a demonstration in psychic phenomena, to use a polite term."

Anne smiled.