Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/12

 tentatively caressed a light stubble of beard on his square chin.

But presently it occurred to him that care had been responsible for the death of the domestic cat. He smiled faintly, apprehensively, as though half, afraid that a smile would hurt; finding the experiment painless he prolonged it, grinning broadly.

Below stairs, the last echoing thump of Madame's feet was to be heard. O'Rourke lifted his shoulders together, sighed, chuckled, and anathematized his landlady.

"Brrrrr!" cried O'Rourke, with a flirt of his hand in the general direction of the conciergerie. "Brrrrrp! And may the Old Boy fly away with ye!"

He turned to the window, dismissing his troubles with a second shrug of his broad shoulders, and, leaning his elbows on the sills and himself perilously far out over the eaves, stared earnestly at a window in the attic of the house that stood just behind O'Rourke's hôtel. But it proved vacant.

O'Rourke pursed his lips and whistled persuasively. "Faith, darlint," said he, and as earnestly as though he really expected to be heard, "'tis no more than a glimpse of your red cheeks and bright eyes that I'm needing to put the heart into me. Will ye not come,—only for one little minute?"

He whistled again, more piercingly. There was no response; the little dormer window, where a black-eyed and red-cheeked little seamstress ordinarily sat of a morning, sewing industriously—but not too industriously to be altogether unaware of the infatuated Irishman's burning glances—remained desolately empty.

"Oh, well!" conceded O'Rourke, in the end. "If 'tis obstinate ye are, me dear, sure and that only proves ye a true daughter of Mother Eve!"