Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/194

 as an able and relentless coquette. Nor could I fail to understand how the late Colonel Jere Lansdale would have found need to be a duellist after he became her lover, even had he aforetime been unskilled in that difficult art.

As she chatted, chiefly of her journey, I falsely pretended to listen, whereas I only stared and in spirit was prostrate before her. Mere kneeling at her feet savored too nearly of arrogance. I felt the need to be a spread rug in her presence. She sat back in the chair that embraced her loosely, a slight figure with a small head, on which the heavy strands of whitening hair seemed only a powdered lie above the curiously girlish face. A tiny black patch or two on the face, I thought, would have made this illusion perfect. And yet when she did not laugh, or in some little silence of recollection, the deeper lines stood out, and I could see that sorrow had long known its way to her face. It even lurked now back of her eyes, and I knew that she tried to keep her face lighted for me so that I should not detect it. She succeeded admirably, but the smile could not always be there, and ghosts of her dead years came stealthily to haunt her face as surely as the smile went.

When Clem, with an air of having had word from a numerous kitchen crew, stood before us and bowed out, "Miss Cahline, dinneh is suhved!" I gave her my arm with a feeling of vast relief. Not only was Miss Caroline an abiding joy, but apprehension as