Kitabı oku: «The Inner Flame», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XII
MRS. FABIAN'S DINNER LIST

For the next two months, Phil, to his entire satisfaction, had practically no social life. One or two of his fellow students found their way to the stable studio, envying him loudly when they viewed it, but for the most part he succeeded in keeping his castle to himself. Aunt Mary's easel found a good situation beneath the north light, and the evenings were spent in reading works calculated to help him on his way.

Occasionally the satisfactoriness of his lamp or his easy-chair would cause him to start in a panic and begin to figure how long a time had elapsed since he had called on his benefactress; usually discovering that it was high time to go again.

Frequently he declined invitations from Mrs. Fabian to dine, giving the excuse of incessant occupation. Once in a while, on the occasion of these duty calls, he saw Edgar, and the latter prided himself on the subtle implication of injury which he infused into the perfunctory courtesy of a host.

Phil saw it, and, while he was amused, he gave Edgar some credit for not having carried out the threat to tell his mother how Phil had guarded her dignity with Eliza.

"So there are some things too petty for him, after all," thought Phil carelessly; but he suspected and was grateful for Kathleen's intervention.

When Edgar was not in evidence, Phil rather enjoyed an evening with his aunt. It gave him an opportunity to talk about his mother, and Mrs. Fabian could tell him events of their girlhood. She soon found that no occurrence in which Mary Sidney had figured was too trifling to bring the light of close attention into the young fellow's eyes.

"Dear me," she said one night when they were alone together, and she had been entertaining him with reminiscence, "I wonder how your mother made you love her so."

There was a sincere wistfulness in her tone that touched Phil. He laughed with some embarrassment, throwing a glance around the too-gorgeous room.

"I don't believe she went for to do it," he said. "I contracted the habit early."

"But Edgar was only five years old when I married his father," said Mrs. Fabian plaintively.

"We didn't have any money," said Phil. "Perhaps that helped. Mother and I were pals, you see; had to be. She could afford only one maid."

"It's true I was very, very busy," admitted Mrs. Fabian thoughtfully, with the return of her ever-ready tone of virtue. "I had the best nurses and governesses. They couldn't speak a word of English, – and I didn't neglect the children. I made it a point to hear them say their prayers every night that I wasn't going out."

Phil's clasped finger tips were pressed to his lips and he did not reply to this. He admired Mrs. Fabian's exquisite costumes, and now he dropped his twinkling eyes to the hem of her gossamer gown.

"How often do you write to your mother?" pursued Mrs. Fabian.

"I'd be ashamed to tell you," he answered.

She sighed. "It's beautiful," she declared; again wistful. "I suppose she has told you about our dear old dull island."

"Brewster's Island? I don't remember her talking of it; but Eliza has spoken of my mother having been there."

At the mention of her humble enemy Mrs. Fabian's nostrils dilated. "Eliza!" she repeated indignantly. "Every time I think of the impudence of that woman – " she paused, at a loss for words.

"I suppose the island was named for Eliza's family," hazarded Phil.

"I suppose so. You may call nearly every islander 'Brewster,' and seldom go wrong." Mrs. Fabian continued: "Edgar made a joke of the barrel affair, but Kathleen put on tragedy airs at the idea of my trying to get my own. Kathleen knows so much more than her mother, you understand. She knows so much more about everything than she will ten years from now. It's rather painful. Well, of course you didn't realize what you were doing in helping Eliza spirit the things away. I'm glad the creature has gone, for your sake. She would have been a dreadful bore to you as a part of Aunt Mary's legacy."

"I feel very kindly toward Eliza," said Phil. Aunt Mary's letter was against his heart where it always lay. "She did too much for Aunt Mary for me ever to forget it."

"But you didn't know Aunt Mary."

"Not until she had gone. Then she revealed herself to me in a letter. I seem to have seen her at her patient work."

"Yes, and Eliza has probably told you that I neglected her." Mrs. Fabian colored and looked at Phil defensively.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"It's a wonder she didn't make you hate me. I know what a virago the creature can be."

"I like," said Phil, – "I like that saying, 'Yesterday is as dead as Egypt.' I like to feel that the only enemy a man can have is himself."

"I'm glad you don't hate me, Phil," returned Mrs. Fabian, again plaintive. "I have enough troubles. 'Qui s'excuse, s'accuse,' and I shall not try to explain to you why I saw so little of Aunt Mary; but it is beyond belief that a common creature like Eliza should dare to sit in judgment on a person in my position."

"Eliza is not a common creature," said Phil quietly.

"I see. Her devotion is all you think of. We won't talk of her, then. – What are you going to do in the summer, Phil?"

"Work!" he answered, smiling.

"Not under that stable roof. I won't permit it."

"Then I'll take the road. There's nothing I know better than how to be a tramp."

At this juncture Mr. Fabian came in from his library. He was a smooth-shaven man, comfortably stout; and the stern lines on his forehead and about his mouth softened at sight of Phil, who rose to greet him.

"What of the mine?" asked the newcomer, seating himself.

"Oh, father's digging away," returned Phil. "He probably tells you more than he does me."

Mr. Fabian drew his brows together.

"Not sick of the picture business yet?" he asked, regarding the young man curiously.

Phil shook his head and laughed. He knew Mr. Fabian's disapproval of his chosen profession.

"I was just about telling Phil," said Mrs. Fabian, "that he must visit us at the island next summer."

Mr. Fabian nodded cordially. "Care for sailing?" he asked.

"I never had a chance to know. Horses and tramping and camping have given me all my outings so far."

"Then you must come. We'll have a cruise. I've only a small yacht, for I prefer to run it myself with a few friends."

"That sounds attractive, but I shan't indulge, I think."

"Why, what sort of a painter is it who doesn't do marines?" asked Mrs. Fabian.

"Yes, I know," returned Phil, smiling. "I'll do them at Coney Island."

When he had taken his departure Mrs. Fabian turned to her husband.

"Isn't it a shame," she said, "for a boy like that not to have any money?"

"No," responded her husband. "It's in his favor. The shame is that a fine husky chap like that should give himself over to paint-pots. I'd make a position for him in the office if he'd come. I wish I had a son like that."

When her husband made this sort of reference, Mrs. Fabian was glad that she was not Edgar's own mother; yet since she had known Phil she had never entirely escaped a consciousness that Mary Sidney would have bent the twig in Edgar's childhood in a manner to have produced a different inclination in the tree.

As Christmas approached, Mrs. Fabian detained her son one evening as he was about to leave the house.

"Edgar, you are always in such a hurry," she complained. "I never can catch you for a word except at table when the servants are about. Sit down for five minutes."

The youth paused reluctantly. "I must keep my engagements," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "and since the Administration has shut down on my using the car at night, I have to live by my wits; in other words, sponge on other people's motors as much as possible."

"You know, dear," said Mrs. Fabian, "your father didn't do that until we found, evening after evening, that we could never have the car ourselves. Somehow or other, Edgar, you manage very badly. You always rub your father the wrong way."

Edgar's chest in his dress shirt rose very high. "I'm not the cringing, begging sort," he returned. "Unless a thing is offered me freely I don't care for it."

In the last month he had affected a short, pointed mustache, and this he now twisted with a haughty air.

Mrs. Fabian's sense of humor was latent, but she smiled now. "Sit down a minute, dear," she said. "It won't detain you, for you may use the car to-night. Your father has just 'phoned that he is obliged to attend a sudden meeting of directors, so I have to give up the opera – unless you will go with me?"

Edgar regarded his mother's charming toilet appraisingly. "I don't mind," he said graciously, "if you will ask Mrs. Larrabee. I was going there to call to-night."

Mrs. Fabian's brow clouded. "She is so conspicuous," she said persuasively; "I wish you didn't go there, Edgar. Why are all the men daft about her when there are so many sweet young girls so much better worth their attention?"

"Shall I see if she is disengaged?" asked Edgar alertly. "If she cares to go I can come back and talk with you."

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Fabian sighed resignedly; and Edgar disappeared, presently returning, a self-satisfied smile curving the little mustache.

"She was gracious, evidently," remarked Mrs. Fabian.

"Says she was saving this evening for me anyway, and will be delighted," said Edgar, seating himself. "She says she is glad it is a Caruso night, for she can prove to me that I ought to be on his side of the footlights."

"That's the way she does it, is it?" returned Mrs. Fabian.

"Oh, she means it," declared Edgar quickly. "She's the most sincere creature alive. Everybody knows that."

"Where is Mr. Larrabee? I've never seen him yet. Does anybody see him?"

"His clerks, I fancy," returned Edgar, with his careless, gleeful smile.

"It's really a pity the woman's so well connected," said Mrs. Fabian. "She is insolently daring. Did you tell her you were taking me?"

"I told her you were asking her to be so good as to accept an impromptu invitation; that you had but just found that you could go, yourself."

Mrs. Fabian sighed again. "Well, Edgar, then I have earned a few minutes of your time. I'm going to give a dinner for you and Kathleen while she is at home for the holidays. I thought of Christmas night, with a little informal dance afterward; and I want you to help me decide on the list."

"Mrs. Larrabee?" suggested Edgar, twisting his mustache complacently.

"Certainly not," returned his mother, with energy. "This is to be just for your and Kathleen's young friends – a simple Christmas merry-making."

"Couldn't you let me off?" asked Edgar, with his most blasé, man-of-the-world air.

"Don't be absurd, Edgar Fabian. Have you no interest in helping to make your sister's holidays pleasant?"

"My dear mother," protested the young man, "in order to make Kath's holidays pleasant, all you need to do is to give her a pair of blue spectacles for a Christmas gift, and invite a few Columbia professors to engage her in light conversation. If I should send her roses, she would only analyze them and reel off the learned names of their innards."

"Very well; I am giving you an opportunity to suggest some names if you care to. Of course I shall ask Philip Sidney."

Edgar shrugged again. "Do you suppose he has any evening clothes?"

"And Kathleen suggested Violet Manning," went on Mrs. Fabian. "Do you remember Mrs. Wright's niece? Her life must be a dull one.

"So it is to be a dinner party of derelicts," said Edgar; "a charity affair."

"Kathleen is always thoughtful," said Mrs. Fabian reproachfully. "As it is to be on Christmas Day I don't know that trying to give pleasure to some people who don't have much usually would be so far out of the way. I'm not sure about Miss Manning myself. Kathleen has suggested once or twice that, as we saw quite a little of her at the island, it might be well to show her some courtesy here; but, as I say, I'm not quite sure. What I am sure of is that I will not allow you to speak of Philip Sidney slightingly in my presence."

Edgar looked up in some surprise.

"A derelict, indeed," she went on. "I wish I might ever hope to see you bring the look into your father's eyes that they hold when he sees Phil."

"You choose a fine way to make me like him!" answered the youth; but beneath his carelessness was a twinge which proved that the words went home. "I remember Miss Manning now. She sailed with us a few times."

"Yes, and she lives here with some girl students in a bachelor-maid way, and teaches – "

"I remember the whole thing!" interrupted Edgar. "She dances."

"What! The stage?" asked Mrs. Fabian.

"No; some sort of school business; more on the gymnastic order. Of course, I remember her. She did a jig once on the boat."

"Oh, I don't think we'd better ask her," exclaimed Mrs. Fabian hastily.

"Yes, put her down," said Edgar. "If we're going into the charity business, I greatly prefer worthy girls who can jig; and for the rest, you and Kath fix it up. Christmas is a sort of a lost night anyway. I don't mind."

And with this gracious cooperation Mrs. Fabian was fain to be content. Although she felt somewhat dubious about sending an invitation to Violet Manning, she concluded from the vivacity in Edgar's countenance, as memory awakened, that the purchase of his interest was worth the risk.

Mrs. Fabian did not care for sailing, and she had but a vague memory of an inoffensive girl who arrived at the island as Mrs. Wright's niece. She hoped Miss Manning's propensity for jigging would not be the cause of any shock to the carefully nurtured buds who were Kathleen's friends.

CHAPTER XIII
CHRISTMAS

It was shortly after this that a miniature riot broke out in the tiny apartment where Violet Manning and her two friends made a home; and it was on the subject of Christmas, too.

The year before, Violet had spent the holidays with Mrs. Wright in Boston; but this year the loving letter which she now held in her hand invited her cordially not to come to the island.

"I want to see my little girl," wrote Mrs. Wright, "but I would rather risk the sort of days you will spend among the many pupils who are sure to ask you than to let you take the expensive journey to the island, so bleak and cold as it is, and with nothing to repay you at this end but a hug from Aunt Amy."

Violet read this aloud, and her two friends listened attentively.

"I told you," said Roxana, the teacher and the eldest, "that Mrs. Wright wouldn't let you come. I shall stay here with you." She spoke firmly. Her face had the lines of one who always spoke firmly.

"Then I shall stay, too", said Regina, the art-student.

"Then you'll make me miserable, girls!" ejaculated Violet energetically, folding her letter back in its envelope. She was sitting on the table, a favorite perch not to be despised in that box of a room where she often said one must either be under the table or on it. She swung both her slippered feet and her blonde head. "Roxy – Rex – " she added beseechingly, "do you want to ruin my holidays?"

"Rex can go, it's very foolish for her to talk about staying, when she can go sleighing in the country and study the shadows on the snow," said Roxana.

"What's the use of being a bachelor girl if you can't have any independence?" inquired Violet, her blue eyes, and full, pretty lips looking stormy.

"The baby bachelor can't have everything she wants," said Roxana. "You're the baby bachelor. Rex may do approximately as she pleases, but I am the only one entirely independent. Rex still waves her hair. I stopped a year ago; just forgot it. That was the rubicon. Have you heard of the old colored mammy who deplored the failure of her dear but mature miss to marry? She said to her consolingly: 'Never mine, honey, I'se known some old maids who settled down right happy and contented when they stopped strugglin'.' I knew when I forgot to wave my hair that I'd stopped 'strugglin'." Roxana rocked gently. It was the only safe way to rock in that apartment. "So when that time comes, Violet, you will see that you have earned independence."

"Oh, Rox, don't be so unkind," pleaded Violet. "I've had ever so many invitations for Christmas dinner from parents. I knew my small admirers slapped them into it, so I refused; but I give you my word that if you will go ahead with your Christmas plans, I will write to one of the most ardent, and Cinderella's coach will be nothing compared to the limousine that will be sent for me Christmas morning, and nothing will be lacking but the prince to make the story complete. If you don't promise, I'll sulk all the holidays, and I won't stay with you either. I'll go skating in the park."

Roxana smiled meditatively.

"Prince!" repeated Regina ecstatically. "That reminds me of mine again."

"Oh, help!" exclaimed Violet. "I've reminded her of Mr. What's-his-name. Rex, if you'll promise to go ahead with your holiday doings, I'll let you tell us again how He came into the class-room first, and how He chose the best light, and how His sketches were always stunning, and how hard it was for you not to sketch Him instead of the model, and I'll let you show me the head you did of Him on the sly, and you shall tell us again how you plotted for an introduction and how you didn't get it, and – "

"Oh, hush up," said Regina good-naturedly. "How about that Mr. Fabian you met at the island? How about the careless elegance of his manners? How about that wonderful, heartrending, angelic voice in which he sang on moonlight sails?"

"Dear me!" said Violet, swinging her feet and smiling with mischievous eyes, "what a wonderful memory you have! I had forgotten all about him."

"It shows what a superior being he considers himself that he has allowed you to," retorted Regina, with curling lip; "after the way he behaved at the island – "

"I never said he behaved," interrupted Violet mildly.

"Well, he kept on asking you to go, every time they sailed, and gave you every reason to think he was friendly."

"That's summer friendship," returned Violet, but her cheeks took a deeper rose. The shoe pinched.

"Well, it's settled," said Roxana. "Rex proceeds to the farm and studies snow shadows. I stay here, and sleep as late as I wish in the morning. Now, be calm, Violet. It isn't as if I had a home to go to. It wouldn't be all holiday to visit, and be on my best behavior, and not be sure which fork to use nor how large tips I ought to give the servants, nor – "

"Nonsense!" interrupted Violet. "It will do you all the good in the world to sit down in the lap of luxury for a while; to live in large rooms, and drive in large motors, and eat large dinners, and lounge on large divans, and sleep in large beds; and you're going, Rex, you're going."

There was something like tears in the stormy blue eyes, and Regina heard with relief the postman's whistle.

"Go down and see if we have anything, will you, Violet? I'm fixed so comfortably, and it's nothing to hop off the table."

Violet obeyed, and the other bachelors saw her press a very small handkerchief to her eyes as she went.

"You'd better go, Rox," said Regina in a low tone. "I know just how she feels."

"If it weren't for Christmas day I would; but I am sure Violet won't accept a pupil's hospitality for more than an hour, just so she can tell us she went; and the baby shan't spend Christmas eve and Christmas night alone. Even if she won't speak to me, I shall stay. It's the lesser of two evils. Honestly, I would enjoy a lazy time at home here with no papers to correct. The trouble is to get her to believe it."

Here Violet returned; her face and bearing so laden with dignity that Roxana coughed lest she laugh. The baby bachelor handed a postcard to Regina, then took a very straight-backed chair. To sit on either of her customary thrones, the table or the floor, would be too much concession to her mutinous companions. She opened the letter in her hand, and as she read, a curious change altered her countenance. The wintry stiffness of her expression began to thaw. A springtime warmth appeared in her eyes, and, spreading to her lips, relaxed their corners. At last she looked up. The sparkle of summer seas shone in her glance.

"You can go, girls," she said; "it is all right. Mrs. Fabian has asked me to dinner on Christmas, with a dance afterward and to spend the night. Now, then!" She challenged Roxana triumphantly.

"How about Christmas eve?" inquired the latter inflexibly.

"You tiresome old dear, the Settlement has a tree and I'll attend it, and spend the night with one of my class who is interested there."

"Then I'll go," agreed Roxana mildly. "Fled is the rosy dream of sleeping till noon and watching you skate in the afternoons; and I will ask Mrs. McCabe across the hall to keep an eye on you."

The invitation came as a welcome event to Philip Sidney as well. Aunt Isabel had been uniformly kind and motherly to him. The thought of a solitary Christmas, or one spent in a glittering restaurant, made him wince even with all the allurements of his easel and his books; so at last Mrs. Fabian received a grateful reply to a dinner invitation.

The roses that came with his card on Christmas morning pleased her also, more than her extravagant gifts. While Phil was dressing he thought again of Kathleen. He had never seen her since the Sunday afternoon visit. He felt he could put up with Edgar's airs and graces through a dinner for the sake of seeing Kathleen again.

"I wonder if she'll smoke a cigarette to-night," he thought, while he adjusted the dress tie he had bought for the occasion: adjusted it very carefully, for the tie was a unique possession. If he made a botch of it he could not go to the dinner. The girl never came to his mind except when her mother spoke of her; but now that he was to be her guest he recalled agreeably how womanly and sweet had been her manner to Eliza on that autumn day before the stable had turned into a studio.

It was Kathleen who suggested sending the car for Violet. It was not the traditional Christmas of dry sparkling snow under a radiant moon, but a day of slush and clouds, and Kathleen was not of those owners of motors who believe that every one else has one, too. Her acquaintance with Violet was slight, but she knew she was a teacher and a very young one. She fancied that dollars were precious with her as yet.

So Violet rolled up to the brown-stone house on Christmas evening in state, arrayed in her best and full of anticipation. Mrs. Wright's gift to her had been a small gold pendant holding a turquoise matrix, and this she wore on a slender chain around her throat, where it shone between the deep blue of her eyes and the pale blue of her gown.

Kathleen's greeting to her had a ring of friendliness through its gentle formality. Violet's involuntary thought was that she might have been less formal, for, although there was nothing chilling in her manner, it seemed to suggest the difference between the bachelor maid doing light housekeeping in a hemmed-in apartment and the heiress of this stately mansion.

Mrs. Fabian was kindly patronizing, and held Violet at her side that she might meet the other dinner guests.

Edgar Fabian was one of the last to enter the drawing-room. Violet noted that he was not alone, but although his companion dwarfed him she saw no one but the well-set-up, exquisite youth with the shining hair who had been the companion of her moonlight sails. Her heart quickened and her color deepened.

"I'm behaving exactly like Rex," she thought impatiently. Really there had been no reason why Edgar Fabian should take pains to find her in the city or show her any courtesy, after the return from the island, but in her heart of hearts she had expected he would; and it showed no proper pride in this same heart to give an undignified bound at the present juncture. What was the idiotic thing bounding for anyway?

This query she put to it as Edgar approached his mother; and now Violet saw that his companion was a tall man whose evening clothes could not lessen the breadth of his shoulders, and whose poetic face was lighted with alert, observant eyes.

Mrs. Fabian greeted the stranger warmly, and presented him to Violet as her nephew, Mr. Sidney; while Edgar's cool eyes swept the girl's face for a brief moment without recognition.

"You remember Miss Manning, Edgar," said his mother; and then the sudden gleeful smile relieved the youth's face of its superciliousness.

"What a difference feathers make to the bird, Miss Manning!" he ejaculated. "Upon my word, I think I must have believed you always wore a jolly little red sweater and hat. Weren't those corking sails we had? Awfully glad to see you again." And he bore Phil off to meet his friends.

"I think, Miss Manning," said Mrs. Fabian impressively, "that in meeting my nephew you have seen a future celebrity. He is wonderfully talented."

"How pleasant," murmured Violet, the idiot heart having given one record-breaking bound and then retired into its usual self-effacement.

"Yes, he is a painter. Only a student as yet, of course. I think he has the sort of originality that longs to spread its wings and fly; but he holds himself down to foundation work in the most level-headed way."

Violet's eyes followed the easy movements of the athletic figure.

"Studying art, did you say?"

"Yes."

"I didn't quite get his name?"

"Sidney. Philip Sidney."

Stars began to twinkle in Violet's eyes at her sudden enlightenment. What would Rex say?

Kathleen Fabian's observing eyes found time to follow Phil, too. He wore his dress clothes more like one accustomed to inhabit palaces than stables. She saw girlish eyes brighten as Edgar personally conducted the Westerner about the room. When she planned to sit next him at dinner, it had been with a thought of protection; as Edgar had been lavish of prophecies of the probable gaucherie of the cowboy. She also had believed it quite likely that the mining engineer did not possess a dress suit; and Edgar had drawn cheerful pictures of the way his arms and legs would probably protrude from any which he might rent; but it was quite evident now that Phil had a good tailor and had not spent all his evenings in a mountain cabin.

Kathleen had suggested to her brother that he be seated beside Violet Manning, as there would be no other man present whom she had ever seen, but Edgar vetoed that plan.

"Let the two derelicts go in together," he had said. "I never did see any sense in this business of social philanthropy. Let the lonely people take care of each other. They will if you only have the cleverness to bring them together. Then you're spared all the boredom yourself, and kill two birds with one stone."

"My dear," his mother had said, "Miss Manning is an orphan, alone in the city, and you were quite friendly with her at the island – "

"Yes, but I don't want to talk about the island all the evening. There are some widows I would consider; but when it comes to orphans – orphan teachers – count me out."

He smiled the gleeful smile, and Kathleen sighed, and allotted him to the maiden of his choice; one who knew and hated the enthralling Mrs. Larrabee, and who, he averred, had enough "pep" not to bore him.

Violet had somehow expected to be placed with Edgar at dinner, and argue with herself as she would, the surprise of finding herself with a stranger instead gave her the sensation of a slight; but she was cheery and natural, and her escort, a youth with long lashes and a sallow complexion, found the sea-blue eyes intelligent and sympathetic repositories for his mournful rhapsodies upon Kathleen Fabian's charms.

She was sitting across the table from them beside Philip Sidney. Aqua-marines glistened water-blue about her bare throat, and filmy lace clung to her satin shoulders. Her simple coiffure was in contrast to the puffs and curls that danced airily on the other girlish heads. Kathleen's was straight hair, but fine, thick, and lustrous. The simplicity of her aspect gave one to know that with her "the colors seen by candlelight" would look the same by day.

"It isn't every one who understands Miss Fabian," the long lashes announced to Violet, with the implication that he was in the inner circle. "She's what I call a subtle girl – a mysterious girl. Those jewels suit her. That liquid, elusive play of light, as the moonlight sparkles on the water, is like her moods, gentle, and – and remote. I often think Miss Fabian lives in a world of her own. One can't always be sure that she hears what one is saying."

"I know her very little," returned Violet, "but she does seem a very thoughtful girl."

"Who is that chap with her? – the big fellow?"

"That is her cousin, Mr. Sidney."

"Her cousin? I never saw him before."

"I fancy he's not a New Yorker," said Violet. "He is here studying art."

"H'm," ejaculated Long-Lashes. "He doesn't look the part. He doesn't wear artistic hair."

"No," agreed Violet. "There is no studied disorder in his appearance. Miss Fabian seems to hear everything he says," she added demurely; "and why, if he is her cousin, does she call him Mr. Sidney?"

Long-Lashes, who had looked cheered at the information of relationship, gloomed again.

"I'm sure I have it right," went on Violet. "Mrs. Fabian told me he was her nephew."

"Oh," returned her companion, "but Mrs. Fabian is Kathleen's step-mother." He looked across at the pair anxiously. "She has adopted him, though, that's evident. Her wits haven't gone wool-gathering since we sat down."

When the young people returned to the drawing-room they found a charming transformation had taken place. The spacious floor was bare, garlands of evergreen, holly, and mistletoe were wreathed in all possible positions, and a majestic Christmas tree sparkling with the tiny electric bulbs of these sophisticated days stood in a recess. Its boughs were gay with favors for a german.

An orchestra, concealed behind palms in the hall, played a Christmas carol as the couples entered.

"There are Christmas fairies even in Gotham," said Phil to Kathleen. "Ah," he thought, "poverty may be no disgrace, but what a convenience is money!" "Before we go any further," he added aloud, "I want to thank you, Miss Fabian, for the honor you paid the stranger in a strange land by allowing me to take you out to dinner. I want you to know that I appreciate it in a gathering of your own friends."