Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/128

 *penter omitted to drive home, and the digit gets a painful tear.

The lady in black extends sympathy and lends her own dainty lace handkerchief to bind up his wound. As he bends to tie the knot with his teeth the perfume on the lace almost startles him.

"Your first condition, madam, was easily accepted," he smiles, as he throws himself into a chair and toys with the handkerchief about his finger. "The second is more difficult to live up to, and the third is cruel." He is carelessly unwrapping the handkerchief as though to rebind it, and is looking for some initial.

"Oh, tell me a story—something I haven't heard," yawns the lady in black. "At the first sign of stupidity I shall send you away."

"A story?" drawls Ashley. Ah, he has found what he sought. In one corner of the handkerchief is the letter "I," curiously embroidered in silk.

"Very well," he says, in rare good humor, "I promise you a story that, while it may not be entirely new to you, will hold your interest to the end. But first, madam, I must beg of you to lay aside your domino, that I may know whether my tale is interesting you or I am courting the unhappy fate which you threatened should be meted out to stupidity."

The lady in black laughs musically and, partially drawing the box draperies, she tosses off her mask, and, to Ashley's intense amaze, reveals the face of the handsome woman whom he remembers to have seen with Phillip Van Zandt the preceding night at the Damrosch concert.

But Jack Ashley is not a young man who permits his face or voice to betray his emotions. So he knots the lace once more about his injured digit, settles himself comfortably in his chair and begins:

"Once upon a time"

"Is this a fairy tale?" interrupts his handsome auditor.

"A fairy tale? Perhaps. But a fairy tale that came true. Once upon a time there lived in a small New England community a youth to whom the simple amuse