Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/110

 CHAPTER XIX.

PHILLIP VAN ZANDT.

"What are they playing now, Phillip?" Isabel Harding draws the program to her and scans the musical numbers listed thereon.

"Is it possible that you do not recognize the immortal unfinished Schubert symphony?" her companion asks, with good-natured sarcasm.

"You know I cannot tell one symphony from another," Mrs. Harding remarks, pettishly. "I wish you would pay less attention to the music and more to me."

Phillip Van Zandt smiles, but makes no reply to this reproach. And while he listens intently to the divine music which the orchestra is making, his companion sips her claret punch with a pretty frown upon her face.

The place is Madison Square Garden; the occasion, one of a series of classical concerts which Mr. Walter Damrosch and his orchestra are furnishing New York.

The two—Mrs. Harding and Mr. Van Zandt—are sitting by the wall in a comparatively uncrowded section of the Garden and more than one person who glances at them remarks that they are a handsome couple.

Phillip Van Zandt is not far from 30 years of age. There is nothing effeminate about his singularly handsome face; the closely trimmed brown beard does not conceal the firm, almost hard lines about the mouth. A mass of dark-brown curls cluster about a noble forehead that fronts a well-shaped head. But the striking features of the face are the eyes. Something inscrutable lurks in their dark-brown depths, now dreamy and tender, and again cold and glittering.

Who he is and what he is are points upon which his nearest acquaintances—he has no intimate friends—have never succeeded in satisfying themselves. He came somewhere out of the West less than a year ago. He occupies luxurious quarters at the Wyoming apartment