A Woman's Will Part 38

"It isn't foolish. Yourself considered, it's the most natural question in the world."

"You never met me before when I was walking with a stranger, and then asked me such a thing."

"This man's different. Some one wrote home that you were going to marry him. You can imagine Uncle John! I was sent for from the beach and shipped by the first thing that sailed after my arrival."

Rosina stopped on the first landing to stare in tranceful astonishment.

"Some one wrote!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed faintly. "Who wrote?"

"Never you mind who wrote. Whoever it was set uncle thinking, and I was posted off to look him up."

"When did you come over?"

"Landed in Hamburg the last of August."

"Where have you been ever since?"

"Been looking him up."

Rosina began to mount the second staircase; she appeared completely bewildered.

"It's very nice of uncle," she said about the fourth step, "and of course I'm awfully obliged to whoever wrote home; but I'm not going to marry him, really."

Jack whistled.

"Well," he said cheerily, as they attained the second landing, "I know all about him now, anyway; and if you ever do want to go ahead, you can be sure that he's all right."

"I knew that he was all right," she said quietly; "every one in Europe knows that he's all right."

"He's a first-cla.s.s boxer, anyhow," the cousin declared. "Lord, what a blow that was! And I did not mean to frighten you at all, either; I thought that you saw me coming."

"How was I to know that it was you? I supposed that you were in New York. I did not think that there was a man on this continent who had a right to kiss me. And even if there was I shouldn't be expecting him to do so in public. You never kissed me in the street yourself before. What possessed you to do so this time?"

She faced about on the stairs as she spoke, and he stopped and drew a deep breath or two. It takes time to become acclimated to the stairs abroad.

"Don't be vexed at me," he implored, "or I shall think that you are not glad that I came; and you are, aren't you?"

"Yes, of course I am."

"And after supper to-night we'll go out and take a good old-fashioned tramp and talk a lot, won't we?"

They were now before the door of the _pension_ and he was pressing the electric bell. She sighed a resigned sigh of utter submission, nodded acquiescently, and waited beside him.

Anna, a maid whose countenance left much to be divined at pleasure, finally let them in. When she saw that the lady had changed her escort, her face fell and she slightly shook her head as if regretful that one who was so generous should own openly to the vice of fickleness. They went into the long hall and Jack paused to hang his hat upon one of the hooks in that angle by the door; then he overtook his cousin and they went together to the salon, the pretty little salon with its great window, tall white-tiled stove, piano, corner-ways divan, tabouret, table of magazines, quaint Dutch picture of Queen Wilhelmina, and the vase in the corner--that green vase from whose stem hangs the flower-like body of a delicate porcelain nymph.

"You can't smoke here, you know," she cautioned him. "If you want to smoke you must go into the corridor."

"I don't want to smoke," he said. "I'll look out of the window. I like to watch the people."

So she left him there and sought Ottillie.

After supper that night they did go to walk; and if Rosina's cousin came abroad with a mission he certainly went in for fulfilling it vigorously.

"Who wrote you about him, anyhow?" she demanded at last, when her patience was nearly exhausted by the mercilessness of his cross-examination. She was inwardly furious at whoever had done so, but it seemed wisdom to conceal her fury--for the present at least.

"You can't travel about all summer with the same man everlastingly at your heels, without other people's seeing him as well as yourself."

"But some one person must have written. It can't be that several people would bother to."

"You won't ever know who wrote, so don't you fret."

They were crossing the Max-Joseph Platz diagonally, and a light flashing from a pa.s.sing trolley seemed to suddenly illuminate her brain.

"I bet I do know," she cried.

"I bet you don't."

"It was a man; now wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was a man; but I won't say a word more."

She smiled, triumphant in her woman's intuition.

"It was that man at Zurich," she exclaimed; "wasn't it?"

He turned into the Residenzstra.s.se and made no reply.

"It was, wasn't it?" she insisted.

"I shan't tell."

"You needn't tell. I know that it was and you know that it was too, so I'm satisfied."

They went along past the two sentinels who guard the gate of the royal palace, and emerged on the large open s.p.a.ce that spreads before the Feldherrnhalle. From there the Ludwigsstra.s.se stretches straight out and away to the Siegesthor, stretches in one magnificent splendor of breadth and boulevard and electric lights. They took the right-hand side and set off at a pace neither swift nor slow--just such a pace as will allow sufficient breath for ample conversation.

"You know you'll marry again, Rosina, no matter what you may say; you know that, don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"Nonsense!"

"Well, I'm sure that I won't for a long time."

"Of course you can't until the two years are out, but they're out this October; and you know the more dead-set you are against doing anything the surer you are to do it. We all know that just by the light of the past."

She elevated her eyebrows and made no reply.