The Coast of Chance Part 19

But at that small word his whole mood warmed to her. "Why, then," he began eagerly, "if Cressy doesn't know--"

"Oh, but he--" Flora stopped in terror of herself. "I can't talk of him, I must not. Don't ask me!" she implored, "and please, please don't come to my house again!"

He gave his head a puzzled, impatient shake. "Then where _am_ I to see you?"

"In a few days--perhaps to-morrow--I will let you know." She rose. She had her package now. She was getting back her courage. There was no further way of keeping her.

But he followed her closely through the crowd to the door. "Yes," he said quickly under his breath, "in a few days, perhaps to-morrow, as soon as you get rid of it, you won't mind meeting me! What are you afraid of? Surely not me?"

She was, but hotly denied it.

"I am not afraid of you. I am afraid of them!"

"Of them!" He peered at her. "What are you talking about now?"

Ah, she had said too much! She bit her lip. They had reached the corner, and the gliding cable car was approaching. She turned to him with a last appeal.

"Don't ask me anything! Don't come with me! Don't follow me!"

Not until she was safely inside the car did she dare look back at him.

He was still on the corner, and he raised his hat and smiled so rea.s.suringly that she was half-way home before she realized that, in spite of all she had urged upon him, he had not committed himself to any promise. And yet, she thought in dismay, he had almost made her give away Harry's confidence. She was seeing more and more clearly that this was the danger of meeting him. He always got something out of her and never, by chance, gave her anything in return. If he should seek her to-night she dared not be at home! Any place would be safer than her own house. It would be better to fulfil her engagement and go to the reception with Clara and Harry. That was a house Kerr did not know.

It was awkward to have to announce this sudden change of plan after her pretenses of the morning, but of late she had lived too constantly with danger for Clara's lifted eyebrows to daunt her. The mere trivial act of being dressed each day was fraught with danger. To get the sapphire off her person before Marrika should appear; to put it back somehow after Marrika had done; to shift it from one place to another as she wore gowns cut high or low--and every moment in fear lest she be discovered in the act! This was her daily manoeuver. To-night she clasped the chain around her waist beneath her petticoats. But Marrika's sensitive fingers, smoothing over, for the last time, the close-fitting front of the gown, felt the sapphire, fumbled with it, and tried to adjust it like a b.u.t.ton.

"That is all right," Flora said quickly. "Nothing shows." Was it always to make itself known, she thought uneasily, no matter how it was hid?

She was ready early, in the hope that Harry might come, as he had been wont to do, a little before the appointed hour. But he turned up without a moment to spare. Clara was down-stairs in her cloak when he appeared.

There was no chance for a word at dinner. But if she could not manage it later in the wider field of the reception, why, then she deserved to fail in everything.

But she found, upon their arrival that even this was going to be hard to bring about. For she was immediately pounced upon--first, by Ella Buller.

"Why, Flora," at the top of her voice, "where have you been all these days!" Then in a hot whisper, "Did you speak to her? It hasn't done one bit of good."

"I think you are mistaken," Flora murmured. "But be careful, and let me know--" She had only time for that broken sentence before she was surrounded; and other voices took up the chorus.

She was getting to be a perfect hermit.

She was forgetting all her old friends.

And a less kindly voice in the background added, "Yes, for new ones."

She realized with some alarm that though she had forgotten her public, it had kept its eye on her. She answered, laughing, that she was keeping Lent early, and allowed herself to be drifted about through the crowd by more or less entertaining people, now and then getting glimpses of Harry, tracking him by his burnished brown head, waiting her opportunity to get him cornered. At last she saw him making for the smoking-room.

Connecting this with the drawing-room where she stood was a small red lounging-room, walls, floor and furniture all covered with crimson velvet. It had a third door which communicated indirectly with the reception-rooms, by means of a little hall. She was near that hall, and it would be the work of a moment to slip by way of it into the red room and stop Harry on his way through. She had not played at such a game since, as a child, she had jumped out on people from dark closets, and Harry was as much astonished as she could remember they had been. He was cutting the end of a cigar and he all but dropped it.

"What in the world are you doing here alone?" He spoke peevishly. "I don't see how a crowd of men can leave such a bundle of fascination at large!"

She made him a low courtesy and said she was preventing him from doing so.

"It's very good of you, and you are very pretty, Flora," he admitted with a grudging smile, "but I've got to see a man in there." His eyes went to the door of the smoking-room whence was audible a discussion of voices, and among them Judge Buller's ba.s.so. She was between Harry and the door. Laughingly, he made as if to put her aside, when the door through which she had entered opened again sharply; and Kerr came in.

"Forgive me. I followed you," he began. Then he saw Harry.

"I--ha--ha--I've been hunting for you, Cressy, all the evening!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "FORGIVE ME, I FOLLOWED YOU."]

Harry accepted the statement with a cynical smile. It was too evidently not for him Kerr had been hunting, and after the first stammer of embarra.s.sment, the Englishman made no attempt to conceal his real intentions. His words merely served him as an excuse not to retreat.

"This is a good place to sit," he said, pushing forward a chair for Flora. She sank into it, wondering weakly what daring or what danger had brought him into a house where he was not known, to seek her. He sat down in the compartment of a double settee near her. Harry still stood with a dubious smile on his face. The look the two men exchanged appeared to her a prolongment of their earnest interrogation in the picture gallery; but this time it struck her that both carried it off less well. Harry, especially, bore it badly.

"Did you say you were looking for me?" he remarked. "Well, Buller's been looking for _you_. He wants to know about some Englishman that they're trying to put up at the club."

"How's that? Oh, yes! I remember." Kerr shrugged. "Never heard of him at home, and can't vouch for every fellow who comes along, just because he is English."

"Quite so!" said Harry, with a straight look at Kerr that made Flora uncomfortable.

"But Judge Buller has already vouched for that man," she said quickly, "so he must be all right."

Kerr inclined his head to her with a smile.

"Buller is easily taken in," said Harry calmly. Under the direct, the insolent meaning of his look Flora felt her face grow hot--her hands cold. Harry could sit there taunting this man, hitting him over another man's back, and Kerr could not resent it. He could only sit--his head a little canted forward--looking at Harry with the traces of a dry smile upon his lips.

She thought the next moment everything would be declared. She sprang up, and, with an impulse for rescue, went to the door of the smoking-room.

"Judge Buller," she called.

There was a sudden cessation of talk; a movement of forms dimly seen in the thick blue element; and then through wreaths of smoke, the judge's face dawned upon her like a sun through fog.

"Well, well, Miss Flora," he wanted to know, "to what bad action of mine do I owe this good fortune?"

She retreated, beckoning him to the middle of the room. "You owe it to the bad action of another," she said gaily. "Your friends are being slandered."

Harry made a movement as if he would have stopped her, and the expression of his face, in its alarm, was comic. But she paid no heed.

She laid her hand on Harry's arm. "Mr. Kerr is just about to accuse us of being impostors," she announced. She had robbed the situation of its peril by gaily turning it exactly inside out.

The judge blinked, puzzled at this extraordinary statement. Harry was disconcerted; but Kerr showed an astonishment that amazed her--a concern that she could not understand. He stared at her. Then he laughed rather shakily as he turned to her with a mock gallant bow.

"All women impose upon us, madam. And as for Mr. Cressy"--he fixed Harry with a look--"I could not accuse him of being an impostor since we have met in the sacred limits of of St. James'."

The two glances that crossed before Flora's watchful eyes were keen as thrust and parry of rapiers. Harry bowed stiffly.

"I believe, for a fact, we did _not_ meet, but I think I saw you there once--at some Emba.s.sy ball."

The words rang, to Flora's ears, as if they had been shouted from the housetops. In the speaking pause that followed there was audible an unknown hortatory voice from the smoking-room.

"I tell you it's a d.a.m.n-fool way to manage it! What's the good of twenty thousand dollars' reward?" Flora clutched nervously at the back of her chair. She seemed to see the danger of discovery piling up above Kerr like a mountain.

The judge chuckled. "You see what you saved me from. They've been at it hammer and tongs all the evening. Every man in town has his idea on that subject."

"For instance, what is that one?" Kerr's casual voice was in contrast to his guarded eyes.