Chapter VI: Part 6

"As a fire chief he may consider himself free to do what he pleases," said Anthony to himself, and set about a thorough search of the place, having no doubt that at any moment he should come upon the boy carrying out the details of his imaginary vocation. After a time he went back into the house and scoured it from top to bottom. And when, even here, there was to be discovered no trace of the child, he began to feel a slight uneasiness.

There was no source of immediate danger to a stray child in the neighbourhood, of which he was aware, except the electric line, and little Tony had never manifested the slightest inclination to approach this by himself. There were no open ponds, no traps of any kind for the incautious feet of a three-year-old. Everybody knew Tony, and everybody admired and loved him, so that, as Anthony took up his hat and started upon a more extended search, he had no doubt whatever of finding the runaway without delay.

In a very short time it became a rousing of the neighbourhood. It was Saturday, and all the children who knew Tony were at hand. They were soon eagerly searching for him near and far, without finding the slightest trace of his passing. Anthony, now thoroughly alarmed, telephoned in every direction, warned every police station in the city, and took every possible step for the discovery of the child. It occurred to him with tremendous force that the boy might have been stolen. Such things did happen. It seemed almost the only way to account for such a sudden and mysterious disappearance.

Before it seemed possible two hours had slipped past. And now, on every car which whirled by the corner, Anthony began to expect Juliet. He dreaded yet longed to see her. He turned cold at the thought of telling her the situation, yet at the same time he felt as if she might have some sort of a solution ready which nobody else had thought of. And while, still searching over and over the entire ground, he kept watch of the arriving cars, he saw his wife suddenly appear. He went to meet her.

"What is it?" she said, the instant her eye met his.

"I think it's all right, dear," he told her, as quietly as he could, "but somehow we can't find Tony. He disappeared during five minutes when I was in the house--too short a time for him to have got very far away, but--we can't find him. Do you think he may be hiding? Does he ever hide himself so effectually as that?"

The bright colour in her face had slipped out of it on the instant, for he could not keep the anxiety out of his voice. But she said no word of reproach, nor did she lose command of herself in any way.

"How long has he been gone?" she asked, going straight toward the house, Anthony close behind her.

"I think--I am afraid--nearly two hours. I will tell you what happened. It is possible something I said is responsible for all this, though I don't know."

She was going swiftly about the house, as he told her the story of his attempt to teach the boy a lesson, and she was listening closely to every word as she examined for herself each nook and corner. She disclosed several possible hiding places of which Anthony had not thought, explaining that Tony knew them all and sometimes betook himself to them in the course of various games. The two came out upon the porch, and Juliet stood still, thinking.

"You have done everything to intercept him, if he should really have--got far away?"

"Everything I can think of, except start out myself. I am ready to do that, if you think best."

"Not until I have gone over the neighbourhood myself. I don't believe he is far away--I believe he is near. He may have heard every call you and the children have made, and wouldn't answer. If by any chance his pride has been a little hurt, he is very likely to do this sort of thing. Wait--have you looked--I wonder if the children know----"

She was off without stopping to explain, through the garden and down the old willow-bordered path by the brook. Anthony followed. "I've been down here a dozen times," he called. "The brook is too shallow to hurt him, and he's certainly not anywhere on it within a mile. The children have been all over the ground."

But Juliet did not pause. She ran along the path for some distance, then turned abruptly at a point where an abandoned lot filled with stumps joined the area by the brook. She made her swift way among these stumps, Anthony following, his hope rising as he noted the directness of his wife's aim. At the biggest stump she came to a standstill, carefully swung out-ward like a door a great slab of bark, and disclosed a hollow. The sunlight streamed in upon a little heap of blue, and a tangled brown mass of hair. Anthony Robeson, Junior, lay fast asleep in his cunningly devised retreat.

Without a word his father stood looking down at the boy's flushed cheeks. Then he turned to Juliet, standing beside him, smiling through the tears which had not come until the anxiety was past. His own eyes were wet.

"That was a bad scare," he said softly. "Thank God it's over."

Then he stooped and gently lifted the fire chief and carried him home without waking him. Twenty children flocked joyfully from all about to see, and hushed their shouts of congratulation at Juliet's smiling warning.

Anthony went alone down the garden to the place where the hook-and-ladder cart had stood. It was still there. He stood and looked at it, his eyes very tender but his lips firm. "The little chap didn't give in," he said to himself. "It's going to be hard to make him, but for the sake of the Robeson will I think we'll have to take up the job where we left it. I'd mightily like to flunk the whole business now, but I should be a pretty weak sort of a beggar if I did."

When little Tony had wakened from his nap, and had been washed and brushed and fed, and made fresh in a clean frock, his mother brought him to his father.

"Is this Tony Robeson?" Anthony asked soberly. Tony considered for a moment, then shook his head.

"I's ve fire chief," he said, with polite stubbornness.

"Have your men put away the hook-and-ladder cart?"

"No, favver."

"Are they going to do it?"

"I didn't tell vem to."

"Why not?"

"Didn't want to."

"Listen, son," said Anthony. "I could make the fire chief put away the cart. I'm stronger than he is, you know. I could make him walk out to where it lies in the garden, and I could make his hands pick it up and carry it into the house, and then it would be done.--Don't you think I could?"

Tony considered. "Es, I fink 'ou could," he admitted. Evidently the question was one he could reflect upon from the standpoint of the outsider.

"But I don't want to do that. I want Tony Robeson to put the cart away because his father asks him to do it. Don't you think he ought to do that?"

"I isn't Tony Robeson, I'se ve fire chief."

"Were you the fire chief when you woke up, and mother washed you and dressed you and gave you your lunch? I don't think she thought you were. If you had been the fire chief she would have left you to take care of yourself."

Tony thought about it. "I dess I'se Tony wiv muvver," he said.

"Then you aren't Tony with me?"

The thick locks shook vehemently in the sir with the negative response. "I said I was ve fire chief, and I'se got to _be_ ve fire chief," he reiterated.

Without question it was a battle of wills. But Anthony's mind was made up. For lack of time to deal with them previous similar issues had been dodged in various ways, compromises had been effected. It was plain that argument and reasoning, the wiles of the affectionately wise adversary who does not want to bring the matter to a direct conflict, had been tried. Anthony could see no way out except to dominate the child by the force of his own resolute character. It was not the way by which he wanted to obtain the mastery, but it was becoming plain to him that, in this case, at least, it was the only way left.

His face grew stern all at once, his eyes, though still kind, met his son's with determination. "Tony," he said very gravely--and there was a new quality in his tone to which the child was not accustomed--"You are not the fire chief now. You are Tony Robeson. _I shall not let you be the fire chief any longer._ Do you understand?"

There was no threat in the words, only a decisiveness of the sort before which men give way, because they see that there is no alternative. Tony stared into his father's eyes curiously. His own grew big with wonder, with something which was not alarm, but akin to it. He gazed and gazed, as if fascinated. Anthony's look held his; the man's powerful eyes did not flinch--neither did the boy's. It is possible that both pulses quickened a beat.

Little Tony drew his eyes away at last, turned and started for the door. Silently Anthony watched him as he reached for the knob, turned again, and looked back at his father. On the very threshold the child stood still and stared back. His brown eyes filled, his red lips quivered. The stern face which watched his melted into a winning smile, and Anthony held out his arms. An instant longer, and his son had run across the floor and flung himself into them.

When the childish storm of tears had quieted, and several big hugs had been exchanged, Anthony set the boy down upon the floor and took his hand. Silently the two walked out of the house and down the garden. The hook-and-ladder cart stood patiently waiting, just where it had waited all day. Little Tony ran to it and picked it up. Over his exquisite face broke the first smile that had been seen there since the earliest disregarded command of the morning.

"Ve fire chief's gone," he said. "He was a bad fire chief."

So together the man and the boy escorted the hook-and-ladder cart to the nursery, and backed it carefully into its stall, between the milk wagon and the automobile. Then the child went to his play. But the man drew a long breath.

"I would rather manage a hundred striking workmen," he said to himself with emphasis.

XXVI.--ON GUARD

While little Tony had been growing, waxing strong and sturdy: while Juliet had been tending and training him, learning, as every mother does, more than she could impart: Anthony, in his place, had not stood still. The strength and determination he had from the first hour put into his daily work had begun to tell. His position in a great mercantile establishment had steadily advanced as he had made himself more and more indispensable to its heads.

Cathcart, the successful architect, began to talk about a new home for the man into whose hands Henderson and Henderson were putting large interests to manage for them, and whose salary, he asserted, must now justify, indeed call for, life under more ideal surroundings than the little home in the unfashionable suburb which poverty had at first made necessary.

"Let me draw some plans for you," urged Cathcart, one evening in June, when he had run out to see his friend. Juliet was by chance away, and Cathcart took advantage of this to call Anthony's attention, in a politely frank fashion, to the shortcomings of his present residence. "It's all right in its way," he said, standing upon a corner of the lawn with Anthony, and surveying the house critically. "Mrs. Robeson certainly deserves full credit for the admirable way in which she restored the old house and added just the changes in keeping with its possibilities. I've always said it couldn't have been better done, with the means you've told me you were able to put at her disposal. But the place is too small for you now."

"I don't think we feel it so," said Anthony tentatively, strolling beside Cathcart along the edge of the lawn, his hands in his pockets, lifting friendly eyes at the little house. "Since we put in the bathroom--that small room off the upper hall, you know--and added the nursery and den, we're very comfortable. The furnace keeps us warm as toast, and we're soon to have the water system out here, so we won't have to depend upon our present expedients. I'm fond of the place, and I'm confident Mrs. Robeson is devoted to it."

"I can understand that," agreed Cathcart. "Of course, the spot where you began life together will always have its charm for you both--in fact the sentiment of the matter may blind you to the real inadequacies of the place for a man in your position."

"My position isn't so stable that I want to build a marble palace on it yet," said Anthony, a humorous twinkle in his eye. He enjoyed watching another man manoeuvre for his favourable hearing of a scheme. It was an art in which he was himself accomplished; it was one of the points of his value to Henderson and Henderson.

"Everybody knows that you're in a fair way to become head man with the Hendersons," said Cathcart, "and everybody also knows that you might as well have struck a gold-mine. It's superb, the way you have come into the confidence of those old conservatives."

"That's all well enough; but I don't see that it entails upon me the duty of laying out all I've saved on a new house. I know what you fellows are--when you begin to draw plans your love of the ideal runs away with the other man's pocketbook."

"Not at all," declared Cathcart. "Particularly when he's a friend and you understand just what he can afford to do."

"Why don't you talk about enlarging the old house? That's much more likely to appeal to my desires."

The two had reached the back of the house and were close by the kitchen windows. Cathcart reached up and took hold of a sill. With a strong hand he wrenched and pounded about the window, until he succeeded in showing that it was old and uncertain.

"That's why," he said, dusting his hand with his handkerchief. "The house is old--fairly rotten in places. The minute you began to enlarge it in any ambitious way you'd find it would be cheaper to tear it down and begin again. But the site, Robeson--the site isn't desirable. The place is respectable enough, but it has no future. The good building is all going south, not north, of the city. You don't want to spend a lot of money here--you couldn't sell out except at a loss."

"Your arguments are good, very good," admitted Anthony; "so good that I'd like to put you on your mettle to draw me a set of plans for just the sort of thing you think I ought to have--or Mrs. Robeson ought to have, for she's the one to be considered. Anything will do for me. I'll let you do this--on one condition."

"Name it."

"That you also do your level best to demonstrate to me what a clever man and an artist of your proportions could make out of this house, provided he really wanted to show the extent of his ability. Now, that's fair. If you really care to convince me you won't fool with this proposition, you'll make a study of the one problem as thoroughly as you do of the other, and let me decide the case on its merits. If I thought you weren't giving the old house a fair chance I should take up its cause out of pure affection."

He smiled at Cathcart's discontented face with so brilliant a good humour that the architect cleared up.

"By Jove, Robeson," he said, "I think I see what endears you to the Hendersons. I wouldn't have said you could have induced me to try my hand at the old house, but I'll be hanged if I don't follow your instructions to the letter--and win out, too."

"Good," said Anthony. "And don't mention it to my wife. We'll keep it for a surprise; and I promise you when the time comes I won't prejudice her in any way."

Cathcart drew out a notebook and pencil and entered some memoranda on the spot, while Anthony, coming up on the piazza of the dining-room, laid upon the old Dutch house-door a hand which seemed to caress it. He was wondering if by any possible magic Cathcart could create, in the rarest abode in the world, a new door which he should ever care to enter as he now cared to enter this.

* * * * *

"I think," said Juliet decidedly, "you're wrong about it."

"And I know," returned Anthony with emphasis, "that you are."

The two faced each other. They were walking through a short stretch of woodland, which lay as yet untouched by the hand of suburban property owners. It was a favourite ground for the diversions of the Robesons, when they had not time to spend in getting farther away. They had been strolling through it now, in the early June evening, discussing a matter relative to the investment of a certain moderate sum of money which had come into Anthony's hands. It developed that their ideas about it differed radically.

"It's not safe to do as you propose," said Juliet.

"To do what you propose would be only one better than tying it up in an old stocking--or putting it away in the coffee pot. It's essentially a woman's plan--no man would do it the honour of considering it a moment."

Juliet flushed brilliantly. Even in Anthony's cheek the colour rose a little. Their eyes met with a challenge.

"Very well," said Juliet proudly. "I'll offer no more woman's plans. Invest the money as you like. Then, when you've lost it----"

Anthony's eyes flashed. "When I've lost it----" he began, and turned away with a gesture of impatience. Then he stopped short. "That isn't like you," he said.

Juliet stared at him an instant. Then she shut her lips together and walked on in silence. Anthony shut his lips together also. It was not their habit to indulge in sharp altercation. While both had decided ideas about things, both were also much too well bred to be willing to allow differences of opinion--which must arise as inevitably as two human beings live under the same roof--to degenerate into the deplorable thing commonly referred to as a quarrel.

When they had proceeded a few rods Juliet turned abruptly off from the path and picked up from the ground a slender straight stick, evidently cut and trimmed by some boy and then thrown aside. She looked about her and after some search found another, of similar size, untrimmed. She held out the latter to Anthony. He accepted it with a look of surprise. Then she walked into the path in front of him, stood stiff and straight, her small heels together, and made him the fencer's salute. "_On guard!_" she cried.

His lips relaxing, Anthony grasped his stick and fell into position. A moment more and two accomplished fencers were engaged in close combat.

Juliet happened to be wearing a trim linen skirt of short walking length, which impeded her movements as slightly as anything not strictly adapted to the exercise could do. Although her fencing lessons were some years past, the paraphernalia belonging both to herself and Anthony were in the house, and an occasional bout with the masks and foils was a means of exercise and diversion which both thoroughly enjoyed. Although Juliet was no match for the superior skill and endurance of her husband, she was nevertheless no mean antagonist, and her alertness of eye and hand usually gave him sufficient to do to make the encounter a stimulating one.

On the present occasion Anthony, challenged to combat with his coat and cuffs on, and wielding the more awkward weapon of the two impromptu foils, found himself distinctly at a disadvantage. Moreover, he was at the moment not precisely in the mood for fun, and he began to defend himself with a somewhat lazy indifference. After a minute or two, however, he discovered that his adversary's slightly ruffled temper was inspiring her hand and wrist to distinctly effective work, and he found himself forced to look to his methods.

Attack and parade, disengagement and thrust--the battle was waged over the uneven ground of the wood. And presently Anthony discovered that the richly glowing face opposite his was a smiling one. The absurdity of the match struck him irresistibly and he smiled in return. He tripped a little over an obtruding oak-root, and Juliet took advantage of her opportunity to press him hard. He fended off the attack and himself assumed the aggressive. An instant more and he had disarmed her and had thrown his own stick flying after hers. Both were laughing heartily enough.

"Forgive the trick," cried Anthony. "A man must disarm his wife when she becomes his enemy."

Breathless, Juliet sank upon a small knoll, her hand at her side. "If I'd been dressed for it--" she panted.

"You need coaching on your time thrusts, but you gave me plenty to do as it was," Anthony admitted. "More than that, you've presented me with a chance to recover my equilibrium. I was hot inside before. Now it's all on the outside."

He looked down at her affectionately. She smiled back. "I was crosser than sticks," she said. "I really can't imagine why, now. I apologise."

"So do I." He threw himself down on the ground at her feet, lay flat on his back, his clasped hands behind his head, and gazed up into the tree-tops.

"I'll take your advice into careful consideration," said he.

"I know you won't do anything rash," said she, and they both laughed again.

"How much more diplomatic that sort of talk is," he observed. "Why do we ever allow ourselves to use any other?"

"Because we are human, I suppose." Juliet was putting a mass of waving brown hair, disordered by the fight, into shape again. "It isn't nice. We don't do it often. To-night you came home tired, and found a wife who had been entertaining people from town all the afternoon. But it's all right now, isn't it?"

She bent forward, and Anthony took her outstretched hand in his own and gave it a grip which made it sting. He began to whistle cheerfully.

"Should we be happier if we never disagreed?" she asked thoughtfully.

The whistle stopped. "Jupiter, no! I want a thinking being to talk things over with, not a mental pincushion."

"Thank you.--Isn't it lovely here?"

"Delightful.--Julie, do you know we'll have been married five years next September?"

"It doesn't seem possible."

"I shouldn't know it, to look at you," he observed. He rolled upon his left side and regarded her from under intent brows. "You haven't grown a day older."

"I'm not sure that's a compliment."

"It's meant for one. Do you know you're a beauty?"

"I never was one and never shall be," she answered laughing, but she could not object to the obvious sincerity of his opinion as he delivered it.

"You're near enough to satisfy me. I'd rather have your good looks than all the--Well, I sat in front of a newly married pair on the way home to-night--that fellow Scrivener and his bride. _She's_ what people call a raving beauty, I suppose. I wouldn't have her in the house at a dollar an hour. She's a whiner. Had him doing something to satisfy her whim every minute. I heard him trying to tell her about something that interested him, but she couldn't take time from herself to listen. His voice had a note of fatigue in it, already, or I'm not Robeson. I tell you, Juliet--that's the sort of thing that makes a bachelor vow to stay single, and he can't be blamed."

"Suppose a bachelor had overheard us half an hour ago?"

"I'm glad none did--but if he had it wouldn't have disgusted him the way the other sort of thing did me to-day. A brisk little altercation is nothing, with unlimited hours of friendliness and understanding before and after. But a perpetual drizzle of fault finding and exactions--would make a fellow go hang himself. Mrs. Robeson, do you know, you're a very exceptional young person?"

"In what way, sir?"

"Whatever you do, you never nag. I've an awful suspicion that Judith Carey nags. You know how to let a man alone when he's in the mood for being alone. She never does. Carey had me out there not long ago, for what he called a quiet, confidential talk on some business matters. We went into what is supposed to be his private room and shut the door. Probably she came to that door not less than twelve times during that two hours. She called Carey away on every sort of pretext. Once she got him to do a stroke of work for her that took up at least ten minutes neither of us could spare. And she looked like a thundercloud every time I caught a glimpse of her face. Caesar!--think of having to live with that sort of person. No wonder Carey looks old before his time."

"It's certainly unfortunate. But I'm not an exception, Tony. There are plenty of women who know when to keep out of the way."

"Well, then, they're erratic on some other line, that's all. You're absolutely the only thoroughly sweet and sane woman I know."

"My dear boy! Remember how snappish I was just this evening."

"I was grouchy enough to match it. I tell you, Julie--the women who don't talk you to death on every subject, important or trivial, bore you with idiotic questions or impertinence about your affairs. How do I know so much about 'em? My dear, dozens of them come into the office every day, and Mr. Henderson has acquired a habit lately of turning them all over to me. I earn a double salary every hour I spend that way--wish I could put in a demand for it. Speaking of salaries, dear"--Anthony suddenly sat up--"I've no right to be grouchy, for I'm promised another advance next month."

"Splendid!" She put out her hand, and the two shook hands vigorously again, like the pair of comrades they were.

"Juliet," said her husband, watching her face closely. "It's been a happy five years, hasn't it?"

"A happy five years, Tony."

"Do you mean it?" He smiled at her. "You've never been sorry?" Then he got to his feet and held out his hand again to help her up. "The mortal combat we engaged in gave you a magnificent colour," he commented, and passed affectionate fingers across the smooth cheek near his shoulder. "Sweetheart----" he drew her into his arms--"I may fence with you once in a while with sharp words for weapons, but--do you know how I love you?"

"I wonder why?"

"It's strange, isn't it?--after all these years. To be really up-to-date, we should long since have become interested each in some other----"

A hand came gently but effectually upon his mouth. He kissed the hand. "No, I won't say it. It's a cynical philosophy, and I'll not take its language on my lips--not with my wife in my arms, giving the lie to that sort of thing. Julie, we're not sentimentalists because we still care----"

"Who thinks we are?"

"Plenty of envious skeptics, I'll wager. I see it in their green-eyed glances. They can't believe it's genuine. Dear--is it genuine? Look up, and tell me."

She looked up, and seeing his heart in his eyes, met his deep caress with a tenderness which told him more than she could have put into the words she suddenly found it impossible to speak.

XXVII.--LOCKWOOD PAYS A CALL

"Did you know Roger Barnes was back?" asked Wayne Carey of Anthony Robeson, on the evening of the twenty-fifth of June, as the two met on the street corner from which Anthony was to take his car. Electrics ran within a few rods of his home now, but they ran only at fifteen-minute intervals and were difficult to catch.

"No. To stay this time, I hope?"

"Off again to-morrow. Never saw such a fellow--restless as a fish. Been working all winter in Vienna--off to-morrow on the Overland Limited to sail Saturday for Hongkong. Goes to do a special operation on the Emperor's brother or some swell of the sort. He's been doing some mighty slick operating, according to the medical review I ran across in a throat specialist's office."

"I must see him. Where is he?"

"At your house now, more than likely. Said he'd got to see you, and if you haven't seen him yet you're sure to before he goes to-morrow night. By the way, Anthony, do you know what we heard lately about Rachel Redding--Huntington? That she wasn't married to Huntington till the night he died, almost three years ago."

Anthony stared.

"Guess it's straight, too," pursued Carey. "Queer she should have kept it all this time. Didn't Juliet hear from her at all?"

"Only once or twice, I believe."

"Her father and mother both died last winter."

"Are you sure?"

"The man who told me was a traveller. Said she and Huntington's mother were coming back to live East again. He was an Eastern man himself--knew Huntington, and got interested when he heard the name out in Arizona. 'Alexander Huntington's' rather an uncommon name, you know. But what could have been her motive for keeping everything so still?"

"I've no idea," said Anthony, and let Carey talk on by himself till the car came. He was unwilling to discuss Rachel Redding's affairs on a street corner even with Wayne Carey, because she was Juliet's friend. But he had an idea as to why Rachel had been so reserved about herself. There were three men in the East whose interest in Huntington's life or death had not been an altogether unbiased one. He could understand that the girl would not be eager to declare herself free to them, though the fact of Huntington's death had reached them soon after its occurrence. But this other fact--that she had married him only at the last moment--it was obvious that the sort of girl Rachel Redding was would never make capital out of that strange occurrence, whatever its explanation might be. That Roger Barnes knew nothing of it he was quite certain.

He missed Juliet from the corner where she and the boy usually met him, and hurrying on to the house came upon his wife just as she was leaving.

"Oh, I didn't realise I was late, dear," she said, while Anthony swung his little son up to his shoulder, eliciting triumphant shouts as a reward. "Tony, Rachel is here."

"_Rachel?_"

"Hush--yes; she's upstairs, and her window is open. Walk down the orchard with me and I'll tell you. Her coming, an hour ago, was what made me forget the time."

"Carey was talking about her this afternoon," said Anthony, strolling by her side and carrying on a frolic with the boy at the same time. "He'd just heard a singular thing--that she wasn't married to Huntington till the very night he died."

"She told me. She's going away to-night, she insists; but I shall not let her. No, Mr. Huntington wouldn't let her marry him. After they went away he said he wouldn't take her unless he got well. Tony, he was a fine character; in our sympathy for Roger Barnes we haven't appreciated him. It was only at the last that he let her do it. She found out how happy it would make him then, and she would have it so."

"I'm glad she did--poor fellow. Juliet, Roger Barnes is in town."

"Really?" Juliet stopped, her breath catching. "Oh, Tony----"

"Came day before yesterday--leaves to-morrow night for Hongkong."

"Tony!"

Anthony looked down at her, smiling. "There's a situation for you. Can you be expected to keep your friendly hands off that possibility?"

"He won't go away without coming to see us?"

"Most certainly not."

"Then he will naturally come to-night."

"It's more than probable."

"Tony, I won't be trying to manage fate--that's what the doctor calls it--if I keep Rachel here until after----"

"Until after the Overland Limited leaves for San Francisco? Well, fate needs a little assistance once in a while. I think you may legitimately persuade Rachel to stay, if you can. What is her hurry, anyway?"

"I can't find out, except that I imagine she's afraid of meeting one of the men she most assuredly would meet if they knew she had come. She thinks Roger Barnes is in Vienna still."

"She does? Ye gods! I think my knees will begin to tremble if I see their meeting imminent. Come, son, let's try a race to the house. I'll give you to the big, crooked apple tree. One--two--three--go!"

Juliet followed more slowly, thinking busily. Rachel had been very decided about going back into the city that night. Mrs. Huntington, Senior, was with friends, who had begged her daughter's acceptance of their hospitality, and for the elder woman's sake she had acquiesced. Rachel was a keeper of promises, Juliet knew. And to tell her of the probability of the doctor's appearance would be a doubtful means of securing her detention. But if, for any reason, the doctor should fail to appear--Juliet made up her mind that she would give fate her chance until nine o'clock that night. If by that time Barnes had not come----

* * * * *

Juliet looked on eagerly while Anthony greeted Rachel. Her friend had never seemed to her so lovely as now, in her simple black gown, accentuating, as it did, the deep tone of her hair and eyes. Her face had gained in colour and contour in the Arizona climate--its tints were richer. The delicacy of her features was not changed, but their beauty was greater.

"You've lived much outdoors, I see," said Anthony, when dinner was over and the three had gone out upon the porch, "and it's been good for you."

"I've even slept outdoors," Rachel told them, "fully half the year; and ridden horseback every day. I can't quite think how the electrics are going to seem in place of my gallop on Scot. The people on the ranch where we were have simply made me do the things they did. The owner was a dear old gentleman; he gave me Scot. He wanted to send him after me; but nurses have small use for horses, I believe," she ended, smiling.

"That's the plan, is it?"

"Yes. It's what I can do best, I think. I am to enter the training-school the first of July, at the Larchmont Memorial Hospital."

"I'll wager tremendous odds you don't," thought Anthony, "in spite of that confident tone. If Roger Barnes looks in to-night it's all up with your plans--or make a bigger fight than even you can do. A man who can't stay in his own town because you are out of it----"

He was sitting--purposely--where he faced the road. He had considerately offered Rachel a chair with her back to the highway. Juliet was swinging lightly in the hammock behind the vines. Anthony, talking on about Arizona and the Larchmont Memorial, kept an eye on the approach to the house from the corner where visitors always left the car. His watch was rewarded at length by the sight of a figure rapidly turning the corner and making straight for the house.

"Now we're in for it," he thought. "From now on the question with Juliet and me will be how we can most gracefully efface ourselves without seeming to do it. If I remember this young person correctly she's a little difficult to leave unchaperoned against her will."

Out of the corner of his eye he kept track of the approaching figure. It was coming on at a great pace, and in the twilight could be seen looming taller and taller as it crossed the road and turned in across the lawn, making a short cut according to Barnes's own fashion, so that the coming footsteps were noiseless, even to the moment when the figure reached the porch itself.

"Now for it," thought Anthony, feeling as if the curtain were about to ascend on the fourth act of a play, when the third had ended amidst all possible excitement.

"I found the roses blooming just as they used to do, at the side of the house"--Rachel's warm, contralto voice was answering a question from Juliet--"only so untended. I think I shall have to come out again before I begin my work, to look after them."

Anthony did not turn as the step he had been watching for sounded upon the porch. To save his life he could not help keeping his eyes upon Rachel's face. Rachel herself looked up with the air of the visitor who does not know the guests of the house, and the expression Anthony saw upon her face showed only the slightest possible surprise--certainly no other feeling.

Juliet rose. "Ah, Mr. Lockwood," she said, with a cordiality, sincere little person though she was, Anthony knew for once she did not feel. "In the dusk I couldn't be quite sure."

Lockwood's eyes instantly turned to Rachel. That he had known in some way whom he was to see was evident from a most unusual agitation in his manner.

"Mrs.--Huntington," he got out somehow, taking her hand, and staring eagerly down into her face, "I heard you were home, and I hoped to find you here. I--you are--I am extremely glad----"

* * * * *

Half an hour later Anthony came upon his wife in the darkness of the dining-room. "Oh, you shouldn't have left them when I was away," she said. "Little Tony cried out and I had to go. I know Rachel doesn't want to be left with him to-night."

"Angels and chaperons defend us," muttered Anthony. "I can't stand it forever to feel a man wanting to kill me for staying by him through a meeting like this, after three years. I didn't know but Lockwood would attempt to throw me off my own porch. Give him a chance--he hasn't any, anyhow."

"It's after nine," whispered Juliet.

"I know it. Roger's taking a terrible risk."

"He doesn't know she's here. But I thought he cared enough for us to----"

"That's what I've been so sure of. He's probably been detained by some case. He's getting so distinguished, the minute he sets foot in town now the folks with things the matter with them begin to block his path. I hope she knows what she throws over her shoulder if she refuses him now."

"I don't see that she's going to have a chance to refuse him," mourned Juliet. "Do you think he'd ever forgive us if we let him get away without knowing she was here?"

"Lockwood found it out, somehow. Carey's safe to tell him if he sees him--and he's pretty sure to, at Roger's club."

"You couldn't telephone?"

"Where? If he can he'll come here, if only to get news of her. She's never let him write to her, has she?"

"He told me she hadn't when he was here last fall. And she didn't know where he was."

"Fellow-conspirator," whispered Anthony, "we'll give fate her chance to-night. If she bungles the game we'll take it into our own hands to-morrow. But I've a feeling I'd like to let it happen by itself, if it will."

When Lockwood had gone--which was not until eleven o'clock, in spite of the way his hosts remained in his vicinity--Rachel stood still upon the porch smiling a little wearily at Juliet.

"My staying all night has been settled for me," she said. "There was no way to go."

"Luckily for us," Juliet answered. "Sit here a little longer, dear. It's such a perfect night, and I know we shall see little enough of you when you get at work."

Rachel dropped into the hammock. "I should like to lie here all night," she said, "and watch the stars until I go to sleep. I've done that so many, many nights from under a tent flap."

All at once she looked up, her eyes widening. Upon the porch step stood a strong figure--as unlike Lockwood's gracefully slender one as possible. A man's eyes were gazing steadily down into hers--determined gray eyes, with a light in them. The two faces were plainly visible to each other in the radiance from the open door.

XXVIII.--A HIGH-HANDED AFFAIR

If she had not been standing in the doorway Juliet would have run away, but she had to welcome Dr. Roger Barnes, a traveler whom she had not seen for almost a year. Her presence, however, after one glad greeting, seemed not to bother him much. He turned from her to Rachel, who had risen, and took her outstretched hand in both his.

"It's been rather a long evening," he said, "wandering around and around this place, waiting for the other man to go. I explored the orchard and the willow path, and every familiar haunt. I had to refresh myself occasionally by stealing up for a glimpse of your face between the vines. But, somehow, that only made it harder to wait. I had to march myself off again with my fists gripped tight in my pockets to keep them off that fellow, eating you up with his eyes--confound him--you, who belong only to me."

He did not smile as he said the last words, but stood looking eagerly at her with a gaze that never faltered. She tried to draw her hands away; it was useless. Juliet slipped off, knowing that neither of them would see her go.

"Come down on the lawn with me," he said, but she resisted.

"Please stay here, Doctor Barnes," she said, "and please let me have my hand. I can't talk so."

"You needn't talk--for a while," he answered. He sat down facing her. "At six o'clock I found out you were here. At eight--as soon as I could get away--I came out. I told you how I spent the evening. If I had needed anything to sharpen my longing for you that would have done it--but I think I had reached about the limit of what I could bear in that line already. It has been one constant augmenting thirst for a draught that was out of my reach. I shouldn't have kept my promise not to write you another day after I had been here this time and heard--what I have heard, Rachel."

She did not answer. Her face was turned away; she was very still. Only a slightly quickened breathing, of which he was barely conscious, betrayed to him that this was not listening of an ordinary sort.

"I shouldn't have said anything could make any difference with my feeling, to strengthen it," he went on very quietly, after a while, "but I find it has. I don't try to explain it to myself, except by the one thing I am sure of--that Alexander Huntington was the noblest and most heroic of men, and deserved to the full those last few hours of knowledge that you had taken his name. And I can understand your loyalty to him in wishing to wear it these three years. But, Rachel, I can't let you wear it any longer."

She turned her face a shade farther away.

"I am leaving to-morrow night for another year's absence." He spoke as simply as if he were discussing the most ordinary of subjects. "So I can see but one thing to do, and that is----"

He got up and came around behind her, standing in the shadow of the vines, where the light did not touch him--"and that is, to take you with me."

He had not said it doubtfully, although his inflection was very gentle. She moved quickly, startled.

"Doctor Barnes----"

"Yes, I'm ready for them. You can't raise an objection that I'm not ready for, not one that I can't meet--except one. And that you can't raise, Rachel."

She was silent, the words upon her lips held in check by this last bold declaration.

"You see you can't, being truthful," he said, smiling a little. "If I seem too confident, forgive me; but I've carried with me all these years that one look, when you forgot to veil your eyes away from me as you always had--and always have since then. When I get that look from you again----" He paused, drawing a long breath. "I don't dare dream of it. Rachel, will you go?"

She tried to glance at him, and managed it, but no higher than his shoulders.

"I am engaged to take the training for nurses at the Larchmont Memorial----" she began.

But he interrupted her joyfully. "You don't say, 'I don't love you'--it's only, 'I was intending to be a nurse.' I told you you couldn't say it, because it isn't true. You do love me, Rachel. Tell me so."

Her hurried breathing was plainly perceptible now. She rose quickly, as if she could not bear the telltale lamplight upon her face any longer, and went hurriedly across the porch and down upon the lawn, into the starlight. He followed her, his pulses bounding.

"Oh, give up to me," he said in her ear, his own breath coming fast. "You've been fighting it four years now--it's no use. We were made for each other, and we've known it from the first. You stood heroically by your first promise--you gave him all you could; but that's all over. You don't have to be true to anything or anybody now but me. Give up, dear, and let me know what it feels like to have you pull a man toward you instead of pushing him away."

They had reached the edge of the orchard--in deep shadow; and she stopped.

"I don't know what I came down here for," she said, in confusion.

"I do; you were running away. It's your instinct to run away--I love you for it--it's what first made me want to follow. But I can't stand your running away much longer. Look, Rachel, can you see? I'm holding out my arms. Rachel--I can't wait----"

For an instant longer she held out, while he stood silent, holding himself that he might have the long-dreamed-of joy of receiving her surrender. Then, all at once, he realised that it had been worth all his days of patient and impatient waiting, for turning to him at last she gave herself, with the abandon such natures are capable of showing when they yield after long resistance, into the arms which closed hungrily around her.

* * * * *

If anybody could have told what happened during the next twenty-four hours it would have been Juliet, for it was she who took the helm of affairs. She lay awake half the night, or what there was left of it after the doctor had come back with Rachel and told his friends what had happened and what was yet to happen, planning to make the hasty wedding as ideal as might be. She was a wonderful planner, and a most energetic and enthusiastic young matron as well, so by five in the afternoon she had accomplished all that had seemed to her good. Rachel's part was only to see that her trunk was packed, her explanations offered and good-byes said, and her choice made of several exquisite white gowns which Juliet had had sent out from town.

"But I can't be married in white, Mrs. Robeson," she had said protestingly when Juliet had opened the boxes.

"Yes, you can--and must. This is your only bridal, dear. The other--you know that was only what the doctor said of it once--'your hand in his to the last'--the hand of a friend. But this--isn't this different?"

Rachel had turned away her face. "Yes, this is different," she had owned. "But----"

"He asked me to beg you for him to have it so," Juliet urged, and Rachel was silent. So the simplest of the white frocks it was, and in it Rachel looked as Juliet had meant she should.

Only Judith and Wayne Carey were asked down to see them married. To humour the doctor the ceremony was performed in the orchard, near the entrance to the willow path. The time afterward was short, and before she knew it Juliet was bidding the two good-bye.

"I've got her," said the doctor, looking from Juliet to Rachel, who stood at his side. "She's mine--all mine. I have to keep saying it over and over to make sure."

"For your comfort," answered Juliet, smiling at them both, "I'll tell you that she looks as if she were yours."

"Does she?" he cried, laughing happily. "How does she look?" He turned and surveyed her. "She looks very proud and sweet and still--she's always been those things--and very beautiful--more beautiful than ever before. But do you think she really looks as if she were mine? Tell me how."

Juliet turned from him, big and eager like a boy, to his bride, "proud and sweet and still," as he had said. "I've never seen Rachel look absolutely happy before," she told him. "There's always been a bit of a shadow. But now--look down into her eyes, Roger; there's no shadow there now."

But when he would have looked Rachel's lashes fell. "Not yet? By-and-by then, Rachel," he whispered. Then he turned to Juliet--and Anthony, who had come up to stand beside her.

"If it hadn't been for you and your home-making this day would never have come for me," he said. "You have been good friends and true, to us both. Let us keep you so--and good-bye."

XXIX.--JULIET PROVES HERSELF STILL INDIFFERENT

On a July evening, a month later, Cathcart and a great roll of architects' paper arrived on the Robeson porch. For an hour Juliet looked and listened, while Anthony, as he had promised, said not a word to bias her decision. Cathcart laid before her plans for a new house which were--even Anthony could but admit to himself beyond praise. From every standpoint--the artistic, the domestic, the practical, even the economical, so far as the modern architect understands the meaning of the word--the plans were ideal. Juliet studied them absorbedly, showing plainly her appreciation of them.

"It would be a beautiful home," she said at length. "I can think of nothing more perfect than such a house."

Cathcart looked triumphant. Without glancing at Anthony he produced another set of plans.

"Just to please myself, Mrs. Robeson," he announced, "I have spent some interesting hours in trying to show what could be done with this old house, should any one care to lay out a reasonable sum upon it. Frankly, old houses never repay much expenditure of money, yet there is a certain satisfaction in working out the details of restoration and improvement which makes interesting study. Purely as a matter of that sort I have fancied such extensions as these."

He laid the plans before her. Juliet looked, bent over them, cried out with delight, and called upon Anthony to join her.

"Oh, Mr. Cathcart," she said eagerly, "before you proved yourself an exceedingly fine architect; but now you show yourself a master. To make this of the old house--why, it's far the higher art."

Anthony glanced, laughing, across at Cathcart, whose face had fallen so pronouncedly that Juliet would have seen it if she had been observing. But she was too absorbed in the new plans.

"If we could do this," she was saying, "it would satisfy my best ideals of a permanent home."

"But, my dear Mrs. Robeson," stammered the man of castles, "consider the location--the neighbourhood--the rural character of the surroundings."

"I do," she answered, still studying the plans. "I love them all--and the old home most of all. Ever since I knew"--how had she known? they wondered--"that a change of houses was a possible thing for us I have been homesick in anticipation of a change I couldn't bear to think of. Yet I wondered if we ought to go. But if you can make this of the old home----"

She lifted to her husband an enthusiastic face. His eyes met hers in a long look in which each read deep into the mind of the other. Then Anthony Robeson, like a man who hears precisely what he most wants to hear, turned smiling to Cathcart.

"I think you've lost, Steve," he said.

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* * * * *

WINDSOR CASTLE. A Historical Romance of the Reign of Henry VIII, Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth, Cloth. 12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.