第37章

Miss Langham held herself a little more stiffly.``Perhaps you do not quite understand, Mr.Clay,'' she said.``Some of us have to conform to certain rules that the people with whom we best like to associate have laid down for themselves.If we choose to be conventional, it is probably because we find it makes life easier for the greater number.You cannot think it was a pleasant task for me.But I have given up things of much more importance than a dance for the sake of appearances, and Hope herself will see to-morrow that I acted for the best.''

Clay said he trusted so, but doubted it, and by way of re-establishing himself in Miss Langham's good favor, asked her if she could give him the next dance.But Miss Langham was not to be propitiated.

``I'm sorry,'' she said, ``but I believe I am engaged until supper-time.Come and ask me then, and I'll have one saved for you.But there is something you can do,'' she added.``I left my fan in the carriage--do you think you could manage to get it for me without much trouble?''

``The carriage did not wait.I believe it was sent back,'' said Clay, ``but I can borrow a horse from one of Stuart's men, and ride back and get it for you, if you like.''

``How absurd!'' laughed Miss Langham, but she looked pleased, notwithstanding.

``Oh, not at all,'' Clay answered.He was smiling down at her in some amusement, and was apparently much entertained at his idea.

``Will you consider it an act of devotion?'' he asked.

There was so little of devotion, and so much more of mischief in his eyes, that Miss Langham guessed he was only laughing at her, and shook her head.

``You won't go,'' she said, turning away.She followed him with her eyes, however, as he crossed the room, his head and shoulders towering above the native men and women.She had never seen him so resplendent, and she noted, with an eye that considered trifles, the orders, and his well-fitting white gloves, and his manner of bowing in the Continental fashion, holding his opera-hat on his thigh, as though his hand rested on a sword.She noticed that the little Olanchoans stopped and looked after him, as he pushed his way among them, and she could see that the men were telling the women who he was.Sir Julian Pindar, the old British Minister, stopped him, and she watched them as they laughed together over the English war medals on the American's breast, which Sir Julian touched with his finger.He called the French Minister and his pretty wife to look, too, and they all laughed and talked together in great spirits, and Miss Langham wondered if Clay was speaking in French to them.

Miss Langham did not enjoy the ball; she felt injured and aggrieved, and she assured herself that she had been hardly used.

She had only done her duty, and yet all the sympathy had gone to her sister, who had placed her in a trying position.She thought it was most inconsiderate.

Hope walked slowly across the veranda when the others had gone, and watched the carriage as long as it remained in sight.Then she threw herself into a big arm-chair, and looked down upon her pretty frock and her new dancing-slippers.She, too, felt badly used.

The moonlight fell all about her, as it had on the first night of their arrival, a month before, but now it seemed cold and cheerless, and gave an added sense of loneliness to the silent house.She did not go inside to read, as she had promised to do, but sat for the next hour looking out across the harbor.She could not blame Alice.She considered that Alice always moved by rules and precedents, like a queen in a game of chess, and she wondered why.It made life so tame and uninteresting, and yet people invariably admired Alice, and some one had spoken of her as the noblest example of the modern gentlewoman.She was sure she could not grow up to be any thing like that.She was quite confident that she was going to disappoint her family.She wondered if people would like her better if she were discreet like Alice, and less like her brother Ted.If Mr.Clay, for instance, would like her better? She wondered if he disapproved of her riding on the engine with MacWilliams, and of her tearing through the mines on her pony, and spearing with a lance of sugar-cane at the mongrel curs that ran to snap at his flanks.

She remembered his look of astonished amusement the day he had caught her in this impromptu pig-sticking, and she felt herself growing red at the recollection.She was sure he thought her a tomboy.Probably he never thought of her at all.

Hope leaned back in the chair and looked up at the stars above the mountains and tried to think of any of her heroes and princes in fiction who had gone through such interesting experiences as had Mr.Clay.Some of them had done so, but they were creatures in a book and this hero was alive, and she knew him, and had probably made him despise her as a silly little girl who was scolded and sent off to bed like a disobedient child.Hope felt a choking in her throat and something like a tear creep to her eyes: but she was surprised to find that the fact did not make her ashamed of herself.She owned that she was wounded and disappointed, and to make it harder she could not help picturing Alice and Clay laughing and talking together in some corner away from the ball-room, while she, who understood him so well, and who could not find the words to tell him how much she valued what he was and what he had done, was forgotten and sitting here alone, like Cinderella, by the empty fireplace.

The picture was so pathetic as Hope drew it, that for a moment she felt almost a touch of self-pity, but the next she laughed scornfully at her own foolishness, and rising with an impatient shrug, walked away in the direction of her room.

But before she had crossed the veranda she was stopped by the sound of a horse's hoofs galloping over the hard sun-baked road that led from the city, and before she had stepped forward out of the shadow in which she stood the horse had reached the steps and his rider had pulled him back on his haunches and swung himself off before the forefeet had touched the ground.