Do one thing at least I can— Love a man or hate a man
Supremely.
Pippa Passes.
"Louisa!"
 
"Yes, Miss Dot?"
 
"Has either of those two recognized you?"
 
"Well, miss, Mr. Smith haven't, that's sure. I might be a sack of potatoes for all the notice he takes. Men he'll look at, and I'd be sorry to be the one as tried to do him; but women—no. He's a real gentleman, he is. He've taken his ticket for up above, and he ain't goin' to waste it."
 
"And the other one?"
 
"Mr. Gardiner? I see him stare at me pretty hard times and again, but it's always, 'Now, have I seen you before or haven't I?' so I just stares back as bold as a cucumber and puts him off. He can't be sure, see, about a old thing as is just like any other old thing. He've seen a many maids, miss."
 
"I never realized you were a danger till I'd got you here, and then it was too late. Never mind, you'll come in useful. Very useful. I didn't see how to begin, but I do now. I'm going to get it out of Gardiner himself if I possibly can, that's only fair; but if I can't, I can always fall back on Merion-Smith. You see, if I can only get either of them to make any sort of admission, it's all I need, and that murderer's under my thumb. Because Merion-Smith won't swear to a lie. Not even to save a friend—Lettice owned it this morning. At the inquest he escaped because nobody thought of asking him any questions, but once I get him into the[Pg 74] witness-box again—oh! I must make Gardiner speak—I will!"
 
"Miss, if you 'op about so I can't do your hair, and I shall pull you crool."
 
"Do I care?"
 
With a jerk and a tug, Dorothea dragged her long tresses out of Louisa's hands, and buried her face on the dressing-table. Gaunt and patient, Louisa waited behind her chair. Her sympathies were divided; she found it hard to believe harm of a man, a mere bachelor man, who kept his house so scrupulously clean.
 
"It's a wicked thing you're after, miss, though I suppose it's no use me saying so," she remarked dispassionately.
 
"It is not wicked! It's justice. That's all I want: to make him answer to the law for what he's done. I wouldn't touch him with a pitchfork myself!"
 
"But look at the nasty underhanded way of it, miss! Mascarooning as if you wasn't married, and you the way you been last year and all—it ain't hardly decent, to my mind. It makes me sick to see him hangin' on your footsteps, so to speak, and you leadin' him on. And it's my belief it's a wild mare's nest you got in your head, and him a babe unborn all the time; and then where'll you be?"
 
"Where I was before, of course. If it's so I shall find it out, and no harm done."
 
"No harm, with him trustin' the very ground you tread on, and then coming all of a jolt on the truth—"
 
"Oh, I can't go into all that," said Dorothea impatiently. "I didn't ask him to admire me, did I? It was he began it. I never dreamed of such a thing. Besides, I'm right, I know I am, and so would you if you'd been there. He did it. He's accountable for two lives, and one of them so innocent, so innocent—You know what Guy did for me, what he saved me from; how do you think I could ever face him or my baby again if I let them go unavenged?"
 
"It's not in heaven you'll be meeting that dear little innocent, nor never seeing her no more—"
 
"Oh, be quiet, Louisa!" Dorothea stamped; "Put[Pg 75] Uncle Jack's stars in my hair," she ordered. "And I'll not wear that old black thing to-night. I'll have the silver brocade."
 
"The brocade, miss? It ain't suitable, miss. A deal too dressy."
 
Dorothea slewed round in her chair and looked up with an expression which sent Louisa off to fetch the silver brocade without another word. Persuasion was no good with Dorothea. Flat contradiction might sometimes avail; and the flatter it was, the more likely to hit the turning angle of that incalculable young person. But if it did not chance to hit that angle—well, there was nothing for it but prompt obedience.
 
Dorothea, a world-weary cynic of twenty-one, not infrequently thought in terms of the penny novelettes which were her favorite reading. She had conceived the idea of arraying herself for conquest, after the fashion of the Lady Ermyntrude in The Heart of a Countess. Every evening hitherto she had worn what the author of that interesting romance might have described as "a modest little black frock of some soft, clinging material." The brocade was full dress; it had a short-waisted bodice, with strands of silver crossing on the breast and a silver girdle. The petticoat, heavily embroidered, was short enough to show her silver shoes. Over her shoulders, jasmine-white and dimpled, fell a scarf of silver gauze; and there were diamond stars in the darkness of her hair. In fine, when Louisa had done with her, she was herself a star of loveliness bright enough to dazzle anybody.
 
Lettice was waiting in the hall to see her cousin start, Denis having as usual got ready half-an-hour too soon, with his rod and his rug and his bag and a basket for Geraldine the kitten. They were exchanging those labored last words which even the best of friends manufacture while the carriage delayeth its coming, when this vision swept down on them, with her nose in the air. Evidently Dorothea had not forgiven Lettice for cutting short her talk, or Denis for suffering it to be done. She sailed on to the salon, where[Pg 76] her entrance was greeted with a comically sudden hush, such as fell on the dinner-table when a new course made its appearance. Lettice relieved her feelings with one of her favorite words; not "nice" this time, but "Well!"
 
"There, you see you've lost me a commission, Lettice!" said Denis, laughing.
 
"Me? I didn't do anything!"
 
"What's up?" asked Gardiner. He had come out of his den, with a pot of flowers in his arms, just in time to witness the transit of Venus, and had been favored, in contradistinction to the others, with a gracious smile; his face had changed, ever so little, in response. Denis opened his lips to reply, but Lettice was too quick for him.
 
"Why, Miss O'Connor and I were having such a nice cozy talk together, and Denis would come bothering with his old aeroplanes" (the tone of spite was delicious), "and of course she didn't like it, and now he's cross with me because she doesn't want to buy one! Robs me of my only friend, and they says it's my fault, and abuses me like, like—like a pickpocket! Well, well!"
 
Nobody could play the injured innocent better than Lettice, above all when she was in the wrong. She played with Denis as delicately as a kitten plays with a leaf. "Yes, you're an ill-used person, aren't you?" he said. He put his arm round her shoulders and gently pressed her down into a chair; he would never let her stand if he could help it. "At any rate, you're not in it, Harry," he said, speaking over her head to Gardiner. "She's not carried over our sins to you, that's one good thing!"
 
"Yes, didn't I get a beamer?" said Gardiner, with his easy laugh. He fell back to observe the flowers he had been arranging. "Not that I should afflict myself if she did. So long as she pays her bill, it's all one to me!"
 
He fancied, as he spoke, that a gleam passed over Miss Smith's countenance; but at that moment the omnibus arrived, and amid good-bys and good wishes Dorothea was forgotten. When the traveler had departed, and when Gardiner had stood on the step waving his hand till the last[Pg 77] minute, he turned, and came face to face with Lettice. They looked at each other as the two intimate friends of a common friend do look, when the link (or should it be called a barrier?) is removed from between them. It might be said that this was the first time Gardiner had ever seen Lettice, for, remembering that gleam, he looked with curiosity. He found himself gazing into a pair of perfectly intelligent and faintly derisive hazel eyes.
 
When you have summed up a person as ordinary and inoffensive, it is a shock to discover that the said person has turned the tables by reading the inmost secrets of your heart. Gardiner felt as though he had suddenly become transparent. Fairly disconcerted, he wheeled round, and almost fell over the chambermaid, who was at his elbow offering him a note. "Tiens!" said Rosalie. The note dropped; the draught from the open door whisked it down the hall to Lettice's feet. Lettice, like her cousin, was a dandy in affairs of honor, and would not willingly have glanced even at the envelope of another person's letter; but in this case, as she stooped, she could not avoid seeing that the handwriting was Dorothea's. She gave it back, and had the unique satisfaction of seeing Gardiner color as he thanked her. Then she slipped away, and left him to enjoy his letter alone.
 
"Could you possibly give me just five minutes this evening, I have something very important I want to ask you. I will be up at the crucifix at half-past nine............