Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/290

270 ly way and investigate? You know the direction it blew away; follow it. If you meet any one, be admiring the scenery!"

Again Edith's look deserved the footlights, but Rose shrugged her shoulders and withdrew her detaining hand. Edith caught up her parasol and ran down the stairs. The big hall was empty. From a room on the right came a click of billiard-balls.

"Perhaps they are all in the house!" she thought, and drew a small breath of relief.

On the door-step she paused, with her parasol open, and considered. The house faced the west; her room was to the south, and the letter had disappeared to the east. She chose her line of advance carefully careless.

The lawn on the eastern side of the house sloped to an artificial pond, and near it a vine-covered summer-house made a dim retreat from the June sun. Look as she would, though, no faintest glimpse of white paper rewarded her gaze.

She strolled on—daunted, but still persistent, with the wind blowing her hair out of order—to the door of the summer-house. Within it a young man was standing, reading her letter. He looked up and took off his hat hastily, crumpling the letter in his hand. She saw he was quite ugly, with determined-looking eyes, and the redemption of a pleasant mouth.

She hesitated, the words "That is my letter!" absolutely frozen on her lips. He had been reading it! It seemed impossible for her to claim it, and so for a moment's silence she stood, with the green vines of the doorway—

framing herself and her white umbrella.

"You are looking for a cool spot?"—he deprecatingly took the initiative. "This is a good choice. There's a wind—"

"Horrid!" she interrupted, so vehemently that she caught his involuntary surprise. "I don't like the wind," she added.

It's an ill wind,' you know," he quoted, that doesn't blow some one good.

"I assure you this is an ill wind! It has blown me all of the ill it could."

"Do come out of it," he begged. "The vines keep it off. It's a half-hour until luncheon," he added, "unless they've changed since I was here last." He put up his watch. "We're fellow guests. You came this morning, didn't you?—while we were out. I came last night."

She seated herself provisionally on the little bench by the door, and dug the point of her umbrella into the ground. Her mind was busy. He still held the letter. She had had a forlorn hope that he would throw down the sheet; but he did not. Was there any strategy, she wondered. But none suggested itself; and indeed, as if divining her thought, he put the crumpled sheet in his pocket. Her eyes followed despairingly the "Dear Christopher," in her clear and, she felt, unfortunately individual writing, as it disappeared in his capacious blue serge pocket.

Different ideas wildly presented themselves, but none would do. Could she ask him to climb a tree? Of course in that case he would have to take off his coat and put it down, and give her the opportunity to recover the horrible letter from his pocket. But one cannot ask a stranger to climb a tree simply to exhibit his acrobatic powers. And trees!—there were none save saplings in a radius of fifty yards! Could she tumble in the pond? It would be even less desirable, and he would simply wade in and pull her out, with no need to remove his coat.

"Mrs. Manstey," he was saying, a little tentatively, upholding the burden of conversation, "sent some of us out riding this morning, and Ralph Manstey raced us home by a short cut cross country. That is, he took the short cut. We gave it the cut direct and looked for gaps."

"If I had been out, I'd have taken every fence," she said, boastfully, and then laughed. He laughed too.

"If I—if you were my sister, I shouldn't let you follow Ralph Manstey on horseback. He's utterly reckless."

"So am I," she came in, with spirit. "At home I ride anything and jump everything."

"Well, you shouldn't if you were my sister," he repeated, decisively.

"I'm sorry for your sister," she declared.

"Well, you see, I haven't one," he said,