The Tigress Part 48

Nina thought for a moment. Then she said: "Of course I shall pay him. I shall insist on it."

"I'm sure he won't accept. He regarded it a great privilege, he was delighted at the opportunity."

And at that she became really alarmed. It was some one she knew, of course. It was one or another, no doubt, of the army of lovers she had sent about their business when their ardor grew too oppressive.

But which one? Ah, that was the question--which one?

"But you've put me under a terrible obligation," she complained. "I think you should have consulted me, Dr. Pottow, before accepting such a sacrifice. I am very uncomfortable over it."

"You would have been more uncomfortable disfigured for life," he replied sagely.

Of course it wasn't Nibbetts. He would delight in seeing her hideous.

The cabinet minister was out of the question, too. He'd be sure to get into the newspapers. Besides, he was very bitter.

The soldier of fortune was out of the country. And Carleigh was married and honeymooning. The American aviator had been killed volplaning.

"It might be the poet," she said aloud.

"I don't think he's ever been guilty of sonnets," observed Pottow.

"Still we never know. He's most interested now in sheep-raising and in quarrying freestone."

"Good Heavens!" cried Mrs. Darling. "He isn't even a gentleman. How could you? Oh, how could you, Dr. Pottow?"

He smiled quizzically and excused himself with: "I hadn't any choice, you know. To tell the truth, I've done so much of this sort of thing that I've reduced the visible supply of skin, here in Bath, to the minimum."

"I don't see how he knew me," she went on, puzzled. "I'm very secluded here. I don't know a soul in the place, except you."

"You know him, or did. He says he owes you something, and--"

"What is his name?" she demanded, interrupting.

"I thought you'd ask that before. But you wished to place him for yourself, didn't you? And I'm afraid you'll have to. You see, when he volunteered it was on certain conditions; and that he was not to be known in the premises was one of them."

"But you've told me everything but his name."

"That was especially stipulated."

"And I am never to be any the wiser?" she inquired. "That seems hardly fair. Since I can't pay him I certainly should be permitted to thank him."

"I'll take your thanks to him."

"No. I wish to thank him myself, in person."

"You want him to come here?"

"I want him to come here--just as soon as I am fit to be seen."

"He'll come to-day, if you say so," he surprised her with.

"Oh, no, no, no. Not while I'm like this."

"But he's seen you worse than this, remember. He's been in this room a dozen--a score of times."

"Here!" she exclaimed, amazed.

"Of course. While your eyes were bandaged. While the transfer was made."

"Then he saw how awful I was?"

"I fancy he didn't regard you as awful. He seemed--"

But she wouldn't let him go on. "Send him this evening," she commanded, "and I'll have the lights arranged so that I can see him while I myself am veiled by the kindly shadow."

When the surgeon was gone Nina fell to wondering once more. There were flirtations she had totally forgotten; there was no question about that.

But she had always been rather a stickler for caste, and she couldn't at all reconcile the sheep-raising and the stone-quarrying with any of her lightly amorous adventures.

Perhaps, after all, she had been on the wrong track. Certainly she had been on the wrong track. This man owed her something, the perplexing Pottow had said, meaning evidently a debt of grat.i.tude.

Then it couldn't be one of those. They were the last persons to think themselves in arrears of that kind. It must be some one she had befriended. She supposed she had befriended poor men on occasions, but she couldn't recall individual cases.

Possibly it was a coachman or gardener, or one of the tenantry at some place she had been years agone.

Or--why, to be sure!--some private from the ranks, who had completed his service, fallen heir to a little farm and a little quarry here in Somersetshire, and settled down to the prosaic life of a plodding civilian.

The idea robbed the prospect of the meeting of most of its interest. And it was the only idea she could accept. She even forgot to tell Delphine that she was expecting a caller, and she forgot, too, to have the lights arranged as she had planned.

When, therefore, her maid came to her with the announcement that a gentleman was calling--a gentleman who wouldn't give his name, but said that he came at Dr. Pottow's suggestion--she was not in the least prepared.

"Does he seem a gentleman, Delphine?" she asked, interested afresh.

"_Oh, oui, madame!_ A young gentleman, and good-looking."

"Have you ever seen him before?"

"Of a certainty, madame. Here, with Dr. Pottow."

"But you never heard his name?"

"Never, madame."

Then, hastily, she had her arrange the lights and give her a fan with which to mask the lower part of her features where the now healing burns were still more or less unsightly.

And then she waited--sure still that she was to be disappointed.

She heard the steps at length in the pa.s.sage, and fixed her eyes upon the door. But the light was not very good there, either--she had had it concentrated as far as possible on the chair placed for the visitor at least four yards from her bedside, toward the foot and facing her.

He was in the room now, just over the threshold, bowing at what must have seemed to him just a black shadow, and save that he was tall, and that his figure was gracefully slender, what she saw meant nothing to her whatever. He hadn't even spoken, so there was no voice to recognize.