The Hillman Part 16

"Dear man," she sighed, "I am getting much too fond of you! Go and sit in your corner, drink your c.o.c.ktail, and remember Louise. I love your rooms, and I hope you'll ask me to lunch some time."

"I'll have a luncheon party to-morrow, if you like--that is, if Louise will come."

She looked up at him quickly.

"Isn't Louise going to Paris?" she asked.

He set down the gla.s.s which he had been in the act of raising to his lips.

"Paris? I didn't hear her say anything about it."

"Perhaps it is my mistake, then," Sophy went on hastily. "I only fancied that I heard her say so."

There was a moment's silence. John had opened his lips to ask a question, but quickly closed them again. It was a question, he suddenly decided, which he had better ask of Louise herself.

"If she does go, I shall be very sorry," he said; "but I do not wish, of course, to upset her plans. We must talk to her about it to-night. I suppose we ought to go now."

Sophy walked with him to the door and waited while he took his hat and gloves from the hat-stand. Suddenly she laid her hand upon his arm.

"If Louise goes to Paris," she whispered disconsolately, "I suppose there will be no luncheon-party?"

For a single moment he hesitated. She was very alluring, and the challenge in her eyes was unmistakable.

"I think," he said quietly, "that if Miss Maurel goes to Paris, I shall return to c.u.mberland to-morrow."

He opened the door, and Sophy pa.s.sed out before him. She had dropped her veil.

They drove down the Strand toward Knightsbridge. For a time there was a significant silence. Then Sophy raised her veil once more and looked toward John.

"Mr. Strangewey," she began, "you won't mind if I give you just a little word of advice? You are such a big, strong person, but you are rather a child, you know, in some things."

"This place does make me feel ignorant," he admitted.

"Don't idealize any one here," she begged. "Don't concentrate all your hopes upon one object. Love is wonderful and life is wonderful, but there is only one life, and there are many loves before one reaches the end. People do such silly things sometimes," she wound up, "just because of a little disappointment. There are many disappointments to be met with here."

He took her hand in his.

"Little girl," he said, "you are very good to me, and I think you understand. Are you going to let me feel that I have found a friend on my first evening in London?"

"If you want me," she answered simply. "I like you, and I want you to be happy here; and because I want you to be happy, I want you to come down from the clouds and remember that you have left your hills behind and that we walk on the pavements here."

"Thank you," he whispered, "and thank you for what you have not said. If I am to find sorrow here instead of joy," he added, a little grimly, "it is better for me to stumble into the knowledge of it by myself."

"Your hills have taught you just that much of life, then?" Sophy murmured.

X

The Prince of Seyre handed his hat and stick to the parlor maid and seated himself upon the divan.

"I should be very sorry," he said politely, as the maid left the room, "if my coming has hastened the departure of your visitors."

"Not in the least," Louise a.s.sured him. "They were leaving when you were announced. Sophy and I are taking Mr. Strangewey to a Bohemian restaurant and a music-hall afterward."

"Fortunate Mr. Strangewey!" the prince sighed. "But, forgive me, why not a more dignified form of entertainment for his first evening?"

"The poor man has no clothes," Louise explained. "He came to London quite unexpectedly."

"No clothes?" the prince repeated. "It is a long journey to take in such a fas.h.i.+on. A matter of urgent business, perhaps?"

Louise shrugged her shoulders. She had risen to her feet and was busy rearranging some roses in the bowl by her side.

"Mr. Strangewey has just come into a large fortune, as you know," she said. "Probably there are many things to be attended to."

The prince made no further comment. He drew a tortoise-sh.e.l.l-and-gold cigarette-case from his pocket.

"It is permitted that one smokes?" he inquired.

"It is always permitted to you," was the gracious reply.

"One of my privileges," he remarked, as he blew out the match; "in fact, almost my only privilege."

She glanced up, but her eyes fell before his.

"Is that quite fair?"

"I should be grieved to do anything or to say anything to you that was not entirely fair."

She crushed one of the roses to pieces suddenly in her hands and shook the petals from her long, nervous fingers.

"To-day," she said, "this afternoon--now--you have come to me with something in your mind, something you wish to say, something you are not sure how to say. That is, you see, what Henri Graillot calls my intuition. Even you, who keep all your feelings under a mask, can conceal very little from me."

"My present feelings," the prince declared, "I do not wish to conceal. I would like you to know them. But as words are sometimes clumsy, I would like, if it were possible, to let you see into my heart, or, in these days, shall I not say my consciousness? I should feel, then, that without fear of misunderstanding you would know certain things which I would like you to know."

She came over and seated herself by his side on the divan. She even laid her hand upon his arm.

"Eugene," she expostulated, "we are too old friends to talk always in veiled phrases. There is something you have to say to me. I am listening."

"You know what it is," he told her.

"You are displeased because I have changed my mind about that little journey of ours?"

"I am bitterly disappointed," he admitted.