One Day Part 15

"If you think that of me----"

"What else can I think? Our first meeting did not leave much room for conjecture. And, of course----"

"Opal! You have just time to dress for dinner! And the Count is very anxious to see the new orchid, you know!"

There was a suggestion of reproof in Mrs. Ledoux's voice. The girl's face clouded as she turned away in response to the summons. But she threw the Boy a challenge over her shoulder--a hint of that mischief that always seemed to lurk in the corner of her eye.

Paul bit his lip. He was not a boy to be played with, as Opal Ledoux would find out. And he sulked in a corner, refusing to be conciliated, until at last she re-entered the room, leaning on the Count's "venerable" arm. She had doubtless been showing him the orchid. Humph!

What did that old reprobate know--or care--about orchids?

"A primrose by the river's brim, A yellow primrose was to him, And nothing more."

As the evening pa.s.sed, there came to the Boy no further opportunity to speak to Opal alone. She not only avoided him herself, but the entire party seemed to have entered into a conspiracy to keep him from her. It roused all the fight in his Slavic blood, and he determined not to be outwitted by any such high-handed proceeding. He crossed the room and boldly broke into the conversation of the group in which she stood.

"Miss Ledoux," he said, "pardon me, but as we are about to leave, I must remind you of your promise to show me the new orchid. I am very fond of orchids. May I not see it now?"

Opal had made no such promise, but as she looked up at him with an instinctive denial, she met his eyes with an expression in their depths she dared not battle. There was no knowing what this impetuous Boy might say or do, if goaded too far.

"Please pardon my forgetfulness," she said, with a propitiating smile, as she took his arm. "We will go and see it."

And the Boy smiled. He had not found his opportunity--he had made one!

With a malicious smile on his thin, wicked lips the Count de Roannes watched them as they moved across the room toward the conservatory--this pair so finely matched that all must needs admire.

It was rather amusing in _les enfants_, he told Ledoux, this "_Paul et Virginie_" episode. Somewhat _bourgeois_, of course--but harmless, he hoped. This with an expressive sneer. But--_mon Dieu!_--and there was a sinister gleam in his evil eyes--it mustn't go too far! The girl was a captivating little witch--the old father winced at the significance in the tone--and she must have her fling! He rather admired her the more for her _diablerie_--but she must be careful!

But he need not have feared to-night. Paul Zalenska's triumph was short-lived. When once inside the conservatory, the girl turned and faced him, indignantly.

"What an utterly shameless thing to do!" she exclaimed.

"Why?" he demanded. "You were not treating me with due respect and 'self-preservation is the first law of nature,' you know. I am so little accustomed to being--snubbed, that I don't take it a bit kindly!"

"I did not snub you," she said, "at least, not intentionally. But of course my friends have prior claims on my time and attention. I can't put them aside for a mere stranger."

"A stranger?" he echoed. "Then you mean----"

"I mean what?"

"To ignore our former--acquaintance--altogether?"

"I do mean just that! One has many desperate flirtations on board ship, but one isn't in any way bound to remember them. It is not always--convenient. You may have foolishly remembered. I have--forgotten!"

"You have not forgotten. I say you have not, Opal."

"We use surnames in society, Monsieur Zalenska?"

"Opal!" appealingly.

"Why such emotion, Monsieur?" mockingly.

The Boy was taken aback for a moment, but he met her eyes bravely.

"Why? Because I love you, Opal, and in your heart you know it!"

"Why?"

"Why do I love you? Because I can't help it! Who knows, really, why anything happens or does not happen in this topsy-turvy world?"

The girl looked at him steadily for a moment, and then spoke indifferently, almost lightly.

"Have you looked at the orchid you wished so much to see, Monsieur Zalenska? Mamma is very proud of it!"

"Opal!"

But she went on, heedless of his interruption, "Because, if you haven't, you must look at it hastily--you have wasted some time quite foolishly already--and I have promised to join the Count in a few moments, and--"

"Very well. I understand, Opal!" Paul stiffened. "I will relieve you of my presence. But don't think you will always escape so easily because I yield now. You have not meant all you have said to me to-night, and I know it as well as you do. You have tried to play with me--"

"I beg your pardon!"

"You knew the tiger was in my blood--you couldn't help but know it!--and yet you deliberately awakened him!" She gave him a startled glance, her eyes appealing for mercy, but he went on relentlessly. "Yes, after the manner of women since the world began, you lured him on and on! Is it my fault--or yours--if he devour us both?"

Paul Verdayne, strangely restless and ill at ease, was pa.s.sing beneath the window and thus became an involuntary listener to these mad words from the lips of his young friend.

Straightway there rose to his mental vision a picture--never very far removed--a picture of a luxurious room in a distant Swiss hotel, the foremost figure in which was the slender form of a royally fascinating woman, reclining with reckless abandon upon a magnificent tiger skin, stretched before the fire. He saw her lavishing her caresses upon the inanimate head. He heard her purr once more in the vibrant, appealing tones so like the Boy's.

The stately Englishman pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes to shut out the maddening vision, with its ever-fresh pangs of poignant anguish, its persistent, unconquered and unconquerable despair!

"G.o.d help the Boy!" he prayed, as he strolled on into the solitude of the moonlit night. "No one else can! It is the call of the blood--the relentless lure of his heritage! From it there is no escape, as against it there is no appeal. It is the mad blood of youth, quickened and intensified in the flame of inherited desire. I cannot save him!"

And then, with a sudden flood of tender, pa.s.sionate, sacred memories, he added in his heart,

"And I would not, if I could!"

CHAPTER XII

Paul Verdayne had many acquaintances and friends in New York, and much against their inclination he and the Boy soon found themselves absorbed in the whirl of frivolities. They were not very favorably impressed. It was all too extravagant for their Old World tastes--not too magnificent, for they both loved splendor--but it shouted its cost too loudly in their ears, and grated on their nerves and shocked their aesthetic sense.

The Boy was a favorite everywhere, even more so, perhaps, than in London. American society saw no mystery about him, and would not have cared if it had. If his face seemed somewhat familiar, as it often had to Opal Ledoux, no one puzzled his brains over it or searched the magazines to place it. New York accepted him, as it accepts all distinguished foreigners who have no craving for the limelight of publicity, for his face value, and enjoyed him thoroughly. Women petted him, because he was so witty and chivalrous and entertaining, and always as exquisitely well-groomed as any belle among them; men were attracted to him because he had ideas and knew how to express them. He was worth talking to and worth listening to. He had formed opinions of his own upon most subjects. He had thought for himself and had the courage of his convictions, and Americans like that.

Naturally enough, before many days, at a fashionable ball at the Plaza he came into contact with Opal Ledoux again.

It was a new experience, this, to see the girl he loved surrounded by the admiration and attention of other men. In his own infatuation he had not realized that most men would be affected by her as he was, would experience the same maddening impulses--the same longing--the same thirst for possession of her. Now the fact came home to him with the force of an electric shock. He could not endure the burning glances of admiration that he saw constantly directed toward her. What right had other men to devour her with their eyes?

He hastened to meet her. She greeted him politely but coldly, expressing some perfunctory regret when he asked for a dance, and showing him that her card was already filled. And then her partner claimed her, and she went away on his arm, smiling up into his face in a way she had that drove men wild for her. "The wicked little witch!" Paul thought. "Would she make eyes at every man like that? Dare she?"