The Maker of Opportunities Part 7

"By letting me go home to dinner."

Patricia was laughing this time. The man was looking at his watch.

"What a brute I am!" He stopped, took off his hat and turned away. And here it was that some little frivolous genius put unmeditated words upon Patricia's tongue.

"I'm not so dreadfully hungry," she said.

After all, he had been impertinent so very courteously.

In a moment he was at her side again.

"That was kind of you. Perhaps you've forgiven me."

"N--no," with rising inflection.

"Come now! Let's be friends, just for this little while. Let's begin at once to believe we've known each other always--just for to-night. I will be getting out of town to-morrow and we won't meet again. I'm certain of that."

"How can I be sure?" Patricia spoke as though thinking aloud.

"They've promised me this time. I'll go away to-morrow. If my papers aren't ready I'll leave without them."

"Will you give me your word?"

"Upon my honor."

Patricia turned for the first time and looked directly up at him. What value could she set upon the honor of one she knew not? Whatever the feminine process of examination, she seemed satisfied.

"What can I do? It's almost dusk."

"I was about to suggest--er--I thought perhaps you might be willing to--er--go and have a bite--to eat--in fact, dinner."

Patricia stopped and looked up at him in startled abstraction. The word and its train of a.s.sociated ideas evolved in significant fashion from her mental topsy-turvy. Dinner! With a strange man in a public place! The prosaic word took new and curious meanings unwritten upon the lexicon of her code. There was the tangible presentation of her sin--that she might read and run while there was yet time. How had it all happened? What had this insolent person said to make it possible for her to forget herself for so long?

With no word of explanation her small feet went hurrying down the hill while his big ones strode protestingly alongside.

"Well?" he said at last.

But she gave him no answer and only walked the faster.

"You're going?"

"Home--at once." She spoke with cold incisiveness.

He walked along a few moments in silence--then said a.s.sertively:

"You're afraid."

For reply she only shook her head.

"It's true," he went on. "You're afraid. A moment ago, you were willing to forget we had just met. Now in a breath you're willing to forget that we've met at all."

But she would not answer.

He glanced at the poise of the haughty head just below his own. Was it mock virtue? He felt thoroughly justified in believing it so.

They had reached a corner. Patricia stopped.

"You'll let me go here, won't you? You'll not follow me or try to find out anything, will you? Say you won't, please, please! It has all been a dreadful mistake--how dreadful I didn't know until--until just now. I must go--alone, you understand--alone----"

"But it is getting dark, you----"

"No, no! It doesn't matter. I'm not afraid. How can I be--now? Please let me go--alone. Good-by!"

And in a moment she had vanished in the cross street.

CHAPTER VII

Mortimer Crabb watched the retreating figure.

"H-m," he said, "the Eternal Question--as usual--without the answer. And yet I would have sworn that that parasol in the Square----"

He had always possessed an att.i.tude of amused and tolerant patronage for the City of Brotherly Love--it was the birthright of any typical New Yorker--and yet since that inconsiderable adventure in Rittenhouse Square, he had discovered undreamed-of virtues in the Pennsylvania metropolis. It was a city not of apartments, but of homes--homes in which men lived with their families and brought up interesting children in the old-fashioned way--a city of conservative progress, of historic a.s.sociation, of well-guarded tradition--an American city, in short--which New York was not. At the Bachelors' Club he sang its praises, and mentioned a plan of wintering there, but was laughed at for his pains. Anything unusual and extraordinary was to be expected of Mortimer Crabb. But a winter in Philadelphia! This was too preposterous.

Crabb said nothing in reply. He only smiled politely and when the _Blue Wing_ was put in commission went off on a cruise with no other company but his thoughts and Captain Jepson. Jepson under ordinary circ.u.mstances would have been sufficient, but now Mortimer Crabb spent much time in a deck chair reading in a book of poems, or idly gazing at the swirl of foam in the vessel's wake. Jepson wondered what he was thinking of, for Crabb was not a man to spend much time in dreaming, and the Captain would have given much that he possessed to know. He would have been surprised if Mortimer Crabb had told him. To tell the truth Crabb was thinking--of a parasol. He was wondering if after all, his judgment had been erring. The lady in the Square had left the parasol, it was true.

But then all the tribe of parasols and umbrellas seemed born to the fate of being neglected and forgotten, and there was no reason why this particular specimen of the genus should be exempt from the frailties of its kind. As he remembered, it was a flimsy thing of green silk and lace, obviously a French frippery which might be readily guilty of such a form of naughtiness.

It had long worried him to think that he might have misjudged the sleeping princess--as he had learned to call her--and he knew that it would continue to worry him until he proved the matter one way or another for himself. Had she really forgotten the parasol? Or had she--not forgotten it?

The cruise ended, the summer lengthened into fall, and winter found Mortimer Crabb established in residence at a fashionable hotel in Philadelphia.

Letters had come from New York to certain Philadelphia dowagers in the councils of the mighty, to the end that in due course Crabb accepted for several desirable dinners, and before he knew he found himself in the full swing of a social season. And so when the night of the a.s.sembly came around, he found himself dining at the house of one of his sponsors in a party wholly given over to the magnification of three tremulous young female persons, who were to receive their _cachet_ and certificate of eligibility in attending that ancient and honorable function.

It was just at the top of the steps leading to the foyer of the ball-room that Crabb met Patricia Wharton in the crowd, face to face.

The encounter was unavoidable. He saw the brief question in her glance before she placed him, the vanishing smile, the momentary pallor, and then was conscious that she had gone by, her eyes looking past him, her brows slightly raised, her lips drawn together, the very letter of indifference and contempt. It was cutting advanced to the dignity of a fine art. Crabb felt the color rise to his temples and heard the young bud at his side saying:

"What is it, Mr. Crabb? You look as if you'd seen the ghost of all your past transgressions."

"_All_ of them, Miss Cheston! Oh, I hope I don't look as bad as that,"

he laughed. "Only one--a very tiny one."

"Do tell me," cried the bud.

"First, let's safely run the gantlet of the lorgnons."