Chapter VI

From the cool, white, slatted-shuttered house in Peixoes, rented by Lord Fordingbridge through the Embassy, Vingie launched her attack on this new, sun-baked indolent world where time stood still and the fretfulness of a more northerly race seemed impertinence. Sir Charles, blending with his new atmosphere through the habits of a lifetime, went forth to call upon Señor Alphonso del Sol. Vingie sent messages to one Henry Carter, who did the bidding of Mr. Berriman in those regions, and Jim Andaside, in the Hotel Nacional, where he dwelt, put Pete Hannen to the question.

"May you live a thousand years, Señor," implored the president, settling deeper into his chair and folding his hands upon that portliness time had brought him. "Welcome to our poor capital!"

Sir Charles exhaled the smoke of an excellent cigar. They were both much of an age, philosophic, light-hearted elderly gentlemen.

"It is thirty years since I stayed here last," he said reminiscently. "Señorita Tortola was dancing at the Alcazar, and there was a wonderful vintage, I remember."

"Yes, yes, I too remember," sighed the president. "Her hair came below her knees and you could span her ankle with your finger and thumb. There are no women like her nowadays, Señor, and the wine is not what it used to be. But the women are worse than the wine. I have a daughter of whom I understand nothing whatever."

"Dear, dear!" murmured Sir Charles sympathetically. "Every one says how beautiful and accomplished she is. We--that is, my ward and myself, were hoping to be honored with your company at dinner."

"I am overwhelmed!" declared the president. "But tell me, Sir Charles, are the women of your country as lovely as they are said to be, and what is the wine like?"

Over long, iced lemon squashes in her cool white house, Vingie bound Mr. Carter to the chariot wheels of her young charms. She outlined the unfortunate predicament of Jim Andaside, and Mr. Carter shook his head.

"I heard as much," he said sorrowfully, "but there's another complication since then. Somebody named Pink, Hildebrand Pink, has turned up with a car he calls the Demon Six. He rather splashes himself about, and candidly, he gets away with these Iberians. The commercial element has gone crazy over him, and they'll certainly approach the president and try to get this contract away from Mr. Andaside. I don't think you've arrived a minute too soon, but of course, any one with your personality, Miss Lauriston----" He paused and the pause vibrated with eloquence. "No people are more sensitive to feminine personality than the Iberians."

Pete Hannen, a thin, bitter little dark man, sat under the cafe awning, eyed his Iberian drink with disgust, and drew gratefully at a cigarette.

"There's a man called Pink, sir, come since you left," he began. "Drives something he calls a Demon Six. I wouldn't 'ave it draw my remains to the cemetery, but this Pink understands the natives all right. He's got a racing body on 'er and no silencer and he always wears a crash helmet to make her look faster. Takes all his corners on two wheels, kills a couple of dogs most days, and comes down the Avenida with flames shooting out of the exhaust pipe just when all the lads of the village are having their evening drink and giving the girls a treat. At the moment you couldn't give away a Catapult as long as there was a Demon Six for sale. People are inclined to laugh at us. Of course, I 'aven't said nothing. It's true I did have to remove three or four young fellers from the pub where I generally get my glass of beer at night."

"What's Pink like?" asked Jim Andaside.

"I couldn't say, sir, never having spoken to him, but he's a big, hefty sort of bloke, and got red hair and curly at that and I don't like him. I knew a red-haired girl once. 'S been a lesson to me."

Jim Andaside's keen eyes wandered thoughtfully to the Sierra Morena which rises like the backcloth of a theatrical set behind the pleasant city of Peixoes.

"What sort of a road runs over those mountains?" he asked.

"Well sir, you know what they call a road in these parts. It's the kind that makes a mule feel sorry for itself, and the gradient's about one in one here and there, not to mention lumps of rock scattered about. Fit to tear the tires off a traction engine, I should say."

"I have fitted a set of unpuncturable tires to that chassis I brought out with me. I s'spose a racing Catapult hasn't really anything to fear from Mr. Pink, has it, Pete?" went on Jim dreamily.

Pete expectorated silently.

"Just as I thought," concluded Jim Andaside. "We'd better arrange a little hill climbing contest. Bear up, Pete, my lad; all is not lost, not by a jugful."

He went up to his room, and by much fluent persuasion extracted a bath from the staff, shaved, changed, and drove himself gently in a despised Catapult to dine with Vingie, Sir Charles and Rupert. Over cocktails and cigarettes the air became electric.

"I have most awful news," began Vingie, "there's a man called Pink----"

"I know all about Pink, or Hildebrand as I prefer to call him," interrupted Jim Andaside suavely. "I shall give his flesh to the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air."

"We must arrange a race or something and beat him," continued Vingie.

Jim shook his head.

"I should be ashamed to take the prize," he declared. "It would be murder to start a Catapult against that galloping bedstead of his. With your permission we'll give the poor chap a chance and arrange a little reliability run up the Sierra Morena. You and the Señorita and Rupert can come as my passengers and Hildebrand can just take his poor self, and the car that goes farthest and comes back under its own power wins. It would look a bit personal if I were to suggest it, so perhaps you wouldn't mind fixing up details with the president!"

"Does any one know a respectable local bookmaker?" inquired Sir Charles. "The Iberians bet like blazes, and if all their money is going on this Pink fellow I might be able to get a very decent price about Jim. Have you any information, Rupert?"

"I'll go and ring up Harrington at the Embassy," volunteered Rupert. "He's an honorary member of the Jockey Club. He might be able to get better odds than we should. It's worth trying."

"Jim," demanded Vingie, "are you perfectly sure you aren't going to make a fool of me if I do what you ask?"

"Perfectly, my dear lady. Hildebrand is a gear-grinder, a clutch-crasher, a brake-and-accelerator person. One needs a soul to drive cars, and he only possesses red hair and a face of brass. Pete has listened to Hildebrand's engine day after day and it's simply a sheep in wolf's clothing. My Catapult has the heart of a lion although it purrs like a kitten and ticks like a clock."

Vingie drilled him with her ruthless gaze.

"The del Sols are dining here to-morrow," she said at last. "From what I hear of the old gentleman, I may have a certain influence over him. You'd better not come, Jim, because of Maria Dolores. But if you and your Catapult let me down I shall simply hand you Charles' revolver and you'll know what to do."

Twenty-four hours later, all that was mortal of her veiled in a wisp of flame-colored inspiration, she received Señor Alphonso del Sol with precisely the right mingling of homage to his exalted office and stimulus to his masculine intuition. He wore the riband of the Order of the Flaming Sunset, a pretty thing in scarlet and gold, draped across his immaculate shirt-front, and dissolved easily into flowing gestures. Maria Dolores accompanied him, swaying from the hips, her lips red and passionate, her eyes dark and smoldering, mysterious beneath her mantilla, undeniably beautiful.

When her glance fell upon Rupert Frack, tall and a thought austere, his earnest intelligent face molded into an expression of welcome tinged by that faint hauteur peculiar to the Foreign Office, her lips drew back a shade from the pearliest teeth in Iberia and a suspicion of warmth underlay the peach bloom of her cheek. Then her dark eyes swept Vingie from head to foot and her red upper lip curled in faint contempt.

"She's saying to herself: Thin cold northern skeleton, I will take the _caballero_ away from you before you know where you are," reflected Vingie, who missed very little. "Well, she can have Rupert if she likes, for the time being anyhow. Business before pleasure is my motto at the moment."

"I'm so delighted to meet you, Señorita," she said aloud. "I've been looking forward to it most frightfully. I think Iberia's so wonderful. How lucky you are to live here always."

"Beautiful, yes--poor, alas!" returned the señorita. "In your country every one has several motor-cars. Here, sometimes an ox-cart, sometimes nothing."

Rupert Frack came forward to be presented; they moved slowly in the direction of the dining-room. Under the majestic ægis of Sir Charles' butler, who hypnotized his Iberian staff, rising superior to ignorance of the language as butlers and highly trained N.C.O.'s can rise, the meal glided like a perfect lyric to its close. Sir Charles spoke the epilogue with stately indulgence.

"Señor, the other day we sat in the sun reviving our youth as old men do. We lamented the beauties of those days, but then I had not seen the señorita. With your permission, I raise my glass to your beautiful daughter."

His words roused two couples from mutual oblivion. Señor Alphonso ceased to gaze into the eyes of Vingie. Rupert tore his glance from the slumberous orbs of Maria Dolores. On the noticeable silence broke the clear tones of Vingie very sweetly:

"Señorita, may I envy your delightful motorcar?"

She referred tactfully to the gold and scarlet horror presented by Jim Andaside. Señor Alphonso, courageous with wine, took up the tale.

"It is indeed a delightful motor-car," he asserted, "and in order to reform the internal communications of my harassed country I had arranged to guarantee the purchase of a vast quantity of these cars. But opposition arose." He looked sternly at Maria Dolores. "And now a competitor arrives, a Señor Pink, with another car, and representations are made to me concerning it, as if I, the chief executive, did not know better than any one else what is good for Iberia."

Sir Charles permitted himself a rich chuckle.

"I'm not a betting man, Señor Alphonso, but I'm prepared to risk a little money on your opinion. I happen to have a few shares in the company that makes your car."

Vingie gazed at the president with wide-open eyes and childish enthusiasm.

"Why not arrange a sporting event, Señor? Suppose you made them both climb the Sierra Morena, and chose the one that got to the top and returned the first?"

"Only a goat could climb to the top of the Sierra Morena," declared Maria Dolores scornfully.

"Well, the winner might be the one that got farthest, and came back quickest," amended Vingie, still with her infantile air.

"It is a brilliant suggestion," declared Señor Alphonso, placing his hand affectionately on Vingie's bare arm. "I, the president, will arrange it. To-morrow I will summon the Señor Andaside and the Señor Pink. The affair will be as amusing as a bull fight, for one of them will certainly be killed, and perhaps both."

"My father is often foolish when he has taken a little wine," observed Maria Dolores. "However, what do I care?" she turned exclusively to Rupert Frack. "I suppose you are greatly beloved by the ladies of your country, Señor?" she suggested with delicacy.

Rupert Frack smiled sorrowfully.

"My country is far away and I have no one to love me. It is hard, is it not, to be a stranger in a strange land?"

"It is our duty to console the exile," murmured the señorita and raised her eyes to his.

When the gold and scarlet motor-car had rolled away, Vingie, sipping iced lemonade, considered her audience thoughtfully.

"A nice pair, those two!" she said at last. "Upon my word, Charles, I had great difficulty in restraining the old gentleman."

"There did indeed seem to be a slight atmosphere of _sangre y arena_ at one time," admitted Sir Charles. "I half feared a family quarrel might break out under our very eyes."

"Of course, Rupert's behavior with that very crude young woman was simply disgraceful," continued Vingie. "I feel positive he was holding her hand under the table the whole time."

She rose to go to bed. Rupert took her empty glass, held her cloak, and arranged it reverentially about her white shoulders.

"I assure you, Virginia, I was thinking of no one but you; for the rest my most sensitive feelings have simply been butchered to make an Iberian holiday," he answered, without a trace of hesitation.

Seated under an awning and on the balcony of the city hall at the president's right hand, Sir Charles gazed down on an animated scene. Two squadrons of the seventeenth Iberian Lancers and police innumerable controlled a vast crowd. Two cars, a four-seater Catapult containing Vingie and Jim Andaside in front, Maria Dolores and Rupert behind, and the licentious Demon Six with Hildebrand Pink as sole passenger, stood bonnet by bonnet in the roadway. Presently the Orderly Trumpeter of No. 1 Squadron sounded the reveille, and at this signal the president arose, shut his eyes tightly and fired a revolver. With a terrific roar, the Demon Six tore away and was lost in a cloud of dust. Five minutes later the president fired again, and with the utmost deliberation Jim Andaside started in pursuit.

"Well," observed the president, "they are brave men. I wish my daughter had not insisted on participating, but she is a law unto herself. Let us retire, my friend, and drink a glass of wine to their safe return."

The road from Peixoes to the Sierra Morena is impossible for ten miles, and then becomes unrecognizable. At the twelfth mile it crosses a river bed, dry at this season, but deep and sandy. Jim Andaside, who had organized mechanical transport during the Great War in Eastern lands where there are no roads at all, ambled delicately over the ruts and bumps without a care in the world.

"Note the attractiveness of cantilever springing and four wheel braking," he said to Vingie, "neither of them standard on a Catapult, but how should the president know that? Don't look so anxious; we shall find Hildebrand quite safely in the river bed."

Twelve miles they lurched and staggered with no other excitement than the pleasant conversation of Rupert Frack and the occasional prayers of Maria Dolores. Then on the brink of the river bed they halted, below their eyes a pathetic sight.

At the foot of the steep descending bank a cloud of dust arose, churned by the revolving wheels of the Demon Six. They revolved indeed, but to no purpose; they gripped nothing; they merely stirred the foot-deep sand. Jim Andaside eyed the steaming radiator of the Demon Six and shook his head sadly.

"Too bad," he murmured, "but it had to be. I felt sure Hildebrand would change down too late. Besides, he has no weight over the back axle. Now we have Maria Dolores."

He turned to Vingie and spoke simply, as to a child.

"In a case of this kind you will always engage first speed on the top of the downward slope, and give her every scrap of gas all the way down it. You will follow in any existing wheel tracks because the ground under them will be more solid. These two precautions will get you up the opposite bank if anything will. I shall utilize those ruts made by some providential ox-cart. Now watch!"

He snicked the gear lever into first, eased in the clutch and accelerated to the utmost. The Catapult roared down into the river bed, skewed a little in the loose dust, recovered at a touch of the steering wheel and rushed up the farther bank. Maria Dolores screamed. Jim Andaside retarded the ignition notch by notch; the rear wheels gripped and slipped and gripped again. Slowly, but safely the Catapult heaved herself over the crest on to level ground. Jim Andaside pushed out the clutch put the gear lever in neutral, and pulled in his side brake.

"And that," he explained calmly, "is how it's done. We'd better go on a bit for the sake of appearances, but Hildebrand will never get out unless he's towed out."

They drifted over a scored and abraded earth for five miles or so, saluting certain officers stationed at intervals to report on the progress, if any, of the two cars. Under the shadow of an over-hanging cliff, Jim Andaside produced a very adequate luncheon basket. In the cool of late afternoon they began the return journey. Amid the river bed the Demon Six still stood, but of Hildebrand Pink there remained no trace.

"You shall drive the rest of the way to show how easy it is--with a Catapult," said Jim Andaside to Vingie. "Remember--first speed, and all the gas."

"In heaven's name no!" exclaimed Maria Dolores.

"Calm yourself, Señorita; Miss Lauriston drives superbly," retorted the owner of the Catapult, and Rupert restrained Maria Dolores with a firm yet gentle touch while Jim and Vingie exchanged seats.

Again the Catapult roared down, skewed, recovered and flung upward. For one awful second Vingie's nerve failed, her foot hesitated on the accelerator. A fierce face glared into hers. A frightful voice snarled, "Gas, damn it--gas!" The Catapult swept up and over; the remaining miles Vingie survived with easy triumph.

At the fine house of the president, Rupert handed Maria Dolores impressively from the car. She stood surveying Vingie with the supreme affection of one cat for another that has secured from it the succulent wing of a chicken. Her eyes spoke a language of knives and daggers, but her tongue dripped honey.

"You have done well, Señorita," declared Maria Dolores. "The victory of the afternoon is indeed yours. Now in celebration I will give a dinner party to you and these gentlemen and Sir Charles and to-night I will show you something. Perhaps the night may yet be mine!"

She swept arrogantly into the coolness of the entrance; Rupert Frack glanced a little wistfully at Vingie, and Jim Andaside shook his head.

"I'd rather wear a shirt of mail this evening if I had one than a boiled shirt!" he murmured. "You," he went on, turning to Vingie, "have scored over her; she was scared blue when you took the wheel. Beware of an Iberian revenge. It may be anything from scratching your face to poisoning your soup."

In spite of his foreboding, Vingie's unscratched face smiled later over her unpoisoned soup. Only when, afterward, in the formal sparsely furnished _salon_ Maria Dolores excused herself did Rupert Frack place his tall exquisite form nearer his temporary _fiancée_. The president leaned forward and indicated with lifted forefinger the point of the story he was telling Sir Charles. Two musicians in Iberian national costume entered carrying guitars and bowed before the president.

At last came Maria Dolores, also in national costume--long wide-skirted dress, high combed hair, and castanets complete--and proceeded to dance the dance of her country.

Vingie sat upright in a stiff chair drinking in the scene. Harsh electric light fell nakedly on the highly colored costume; the musicians squatted on the floor, Maria Dolores turned slowly with stamping of feet, and head thrown back, a provocative smile on her lips and castanets clicking miraculously.

Vingie's eyes sought the faces of all the men; they were set in a curious unblinking stare; even Sir Charles could not take his eyes off this slowly circling figure. Maria Dolores clicked her castanets triumphantly. It was the victory of the evening. Vingie might not have existed for the moment. She seemed like a little girl allowed to sit up late with her elders to witness an entertainment.

Maria Dolores danced three dances, each a little more intriguing than the last, ending in a froth of whirling skirts.

Sir Charles clapped his hands twice, sonorously.

"Magnificent!" he declared to the president. "Your daughter has absolute genius. Really, my dear President, she eclipses anything I have seen on the stage for years." He began to speak in technicalities.

"Her power-to-weight ratio seems pretty good just now, I admit," said Jim Andaside under his breath. "The trouble is, when she's thirty, she'll weigh a ton."

"Rupert at any rate is positively obsessed," retorted Vingie. "He has the rapt look of the devotee seeing his goddess in a vision. We might be in Noah's Ark instead of a drawing-room for all he knows or cares."

"My interest, purely academic, is merely the outward manifestation of an intelligent mind," explained Rupert a little plaintively.

Vingie shrugged contemptuous shoulders.

"Well, I'm frightfully tired. I'd like you to take me home please, if the cabaret show is quite over."

"A perfectly marvelous technique!" declared Sir Charles in the car. "I speak with some authority, having seen every creditable dancer for the last thirty years. Like poets, they are born, not made."

"Oh, the little more stocking and how much it is, and the little less and what worlds away!" mocked Vingie. "I want to talk to you people when we get home. Don't you dare go to bed till I tell you."

In her own drawing-room she lighted a cigarette, curled into a chair, and regarded them coldly.

"What about Pink, Jim?" she began.

"He confessed all," answered Jim Andaside. "He made the car himself out of oddments he picked up from the Disposals Board--old war stuff, you know. I lent him fifty pounds to get out of the country."

"Have you signed your contract with the president?"

"Not yet. I'm waiting for a sign from Maria Dolores. At present she seems a little distant."

"You!" jeered Vingie. "You are extinct, my young friend, Rupert is the blue-eyed darling, just now. She will never do anything for you unless I interfere. She so hates to think she ever thought twice about you when a Rupert existed."

She flicked cigarette ash delicately on to the floor. "This rather vulgar exhibition we've just witnessed has given me an idea, however," she went on. "I suppose I can trust your judgment as to the merits of this young person's dancing, Charles? And I suppose, Rupert, that George Fordingbridge would give his patronage to a theatrical entertainment to the extent of sitting in a box and lending tone to an otherwise undistinguished mob?"

"I think I can promise that much on his behalf," declared Rupert.

Vingie rose gracefully to her feet and stood for one moment fastidiousness incarnate.

"I am going to bed," she announced icily. "Which of you connoisseurs of Iberian limbs would like to open the door for me?"

On the morrow, after the hour of siesta, Vingie put on a simple white frock and called upon Maria Dolores, ostensibly to inspect ancient Iberian lace, the heirlooms of ages. Her hostess received her intimately, clad in a wrapper, a cigarette of the country between her lips. Presently, over the archaic cobwebs of needlework they talked as girl to girl.

"Lace--silks--jewels, all are but toys to give us power over men," declared Maria Dolores. She glanced down at her supple limbs and sighed. "If only there were men worthy of me," she complained. "I am tired of Iberia. I'm a fit mate for an English prince, or an American millionaire."

"You do not love Mr. Andaside?" queried Vingie innocently.

"For a moment he interested me. Later I desired to win the Señor Frack away from you. At the time, I was angry but that is all over. Women should assist one another, Señorita. Men are our common prey."

"Mr. Frack is nothing to me. I have dozens of admirers," said Vingie absently. "Sir Charles decided to visit Iberia as soon as he heard that your distinguished father wished to buy a large number of motor-cars. He felt Mr. Andaside was a trifle too young to act alone. Mr. Frack is a--a kind of secretary to Sir Charles. I believe there is some little difficulty to be cleared up."

"It is very well for my father. He will get a present from the motor-car company and commission from every Iberian who buys a car, but I, what do I get, and I am cleverer than my father; besides he does what I tell him," replied Maria Dolores moodily.

"Sir Charles has talked of nothing but your dancing ever since last night," Vingie went on. "If you were to come to London you would have society at your feet. We know absolutely every one; it would be quite simple to arrange for a theater, a manager, publicity, everything. An artistic triumph such as yours opens all doors, and any one as beautiful as you are might choose practically any man she likes for a husband."

"I have an old aunt who would act as my chaperon," mused Maria Dolores. "If what you say is true I think the little business difficulty of Señor Andaside would vanish."

"I will settle the details in twenty-four hours," promised Vingie.

Maria Dolores rose from her couch and flung away the cigarette.

"Señorita Virginia," she implored, "permit me to embrace you. May you have a thousand lovers, every one of them faithful!"

Half an hour later Vingie stepped daintily across the threshold of the Hotel Nacional and demanded Jim Andaside.

"I've saved you," she said briefly, "but don't waste time being grateful. Get that car of yours and take me to Henry Carter. There isn't a moment to lose."

At Mr. Carter's office she poured her tale into his sympathetic ear. He nodded gravely and made swift notes on a scribbling pad. "I've fed Berriman with a gentle stream of anecdotes," he explained, "and the dust-up with Pink made a good story. The Maria Dolores stunt in London will be a scoop of course. I'll send Berriman an S.O.S. cable."

"How perfectly charming of you," murmured his fair accomplice, and in the light of her eyes he wrote with such eloquence as brought the reply from Mr. Berriman:

"Dorian, eminent manager, agrees produce Maria Dolores, whole story exclusively to _Daily Tale_!"

"You aren't cross with me, Charles, darling? You don't mind hurrying home?" pleaded Vingie that evening, straightening his tie with affectionate fingers. Sir Charles, who was really very fond of her, smiled indulgently.

"On the contrary," he declared, "we shall be back just in time for the Early Summer Handicap. I have a tip straight from the stable at very comfortable odds."

Jim Andaside, a slight but exceedingly tough figure, stood on the pier to say good-by. He declined to leave the land of promise. "I shall remain on the Rhine, so to speak, until the reparation money is paid over," he insisted. "Besides, an Eye-Opening Eight or a Terrible Twelve may come along. One never knows."

The S.S. _Rodriguez_ commenced to shake the miles from her creaming wake. Through sunny days at sea Vingie began to depend exclusively on Sir Charles for spiritual companionship. Almost violently she flung Maria Dolores and Rupert Frack together. When Sir Charles reproved her in his tactful fashion she smiled with lovely patience.

"I feel old and maternal, Charles. Let the young creatures play," she said.

In London Mr. Berriman was found to have exceeded the liveliest expectations. His publicity proved of a superhuman cunning. The public stood on tiptoe to behold a new star. Lord Fordingbridge, invited to dine at Park Street, could hardly take his eyes from Maria Dolores. Afterward he went and sat by Vingie, and spoke with his usual rich charm.

"For people with inherited taste like you and me she's a bit obvious," he rumbled, "but then, my dear, we are a small and dying company. The great mass of the electorate will go off their heads. She will even be pleasin' to some of the young of our own set. I've been fairly clever, for me; her photographs are all over the place you know, and I've tipped her to a few likely young fellows in the Household Brigade--young Norreys and Jack Plinlimmon, and all that crowd. It'll be a wonderful first night. I've got a box and you must promise to sit beside me, and bring Charles."

Vingie nodded absently.

"Stay with me a little while if you will be so kind," she begged. "I feel I've been living among dreadfully crude people. Are there any people nowadays, do you think? I begin to doubt it."

When Mr. Dorian, the well-known manager, saw Maria Dolores he wept for joy, and then bargained for an increased share of profits. He had dark curly hair and a conquering nose, and the shine of his silk hat and patent shoes made one think of diamonds.

On the night when Maria Dolores made her debut at the Ommium Theater, the scenes baffled description and the critics wished to hide themselves in the woods, because they knew it was not art, and were afraid to say so in the face of popular enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, they were right; it was the personality and the supple form of Maria Dolores at the age of nineteen, before she became thirty and weighed a ton.

Lord Fordingbridge flung an enormous bouquet on to the stage with the verve of a boy.

"A thing I haven't done since 1876," he said apologetically to Virginia, "but it's a good thing to let one's self go occasionally and it'll please the dear girl."

His voice dropped to a graver note. "I've paid the check into your account, if you'll forgive the horrible sordid detail; we had a cable from Jim this afternoon to say the deal was settled. How happy Berriman looks down there in the stalls. His is the only paper with any exclusive news of our young friend."

"Well," said Vingie with a little sigh. "I have deserved well of the state I suppose. If you want a monument to me, look over there." She pointed to the rampart of roses on the stage. Lord Fordingbridge smiled gaily.

"Largely, largely no doubt. But we must give a crumb of credit to Rupert. Y'see Dorian absolutely declined to risk his own money and backing had to be found. Rupert suggested Silby, the war-profiteer. He invented a sock with a little asbestos in the wool. Troops simply couldn't wear 'em out. Silby sold thousands of millions of pairs. We put it to him as a semi-official matter, and as he's anglin' for a title, he was delighted. I felt quite proud of Rupert, the dear fellow."

Even as he spoke, Rupert Frack, in faultless kit, entered the box. Vingie summed him up in a comprehensive glance. He smiled down joyfully.

"Bill Norreys is giving Maria Dolores supper," he announced. "She saw him in uniform when he was changing Guard at the Palace. I've ceased to exist. I'm so happy."

"Then perhaps you could spare time to take me home," murmured Vingie. "I'm awf'ly tired. Charles and George are going to be boys again, I understand."

In the car she was very silent. She reserved the small drawing-room in Park Street for the epilogue of their adventure.

She stood by the fireplace, a beautiful figure perfectly turned out from head to foot and with a delicate gesture of resignation removed a diamond and sapphire ring from the third finger of her left hand to the third finger of her right.

"I forgot about it before," she explained. "It's been very instructive to be engaged to you, Rupert. You're very nice, but much too obliging. You not only obliged me but practically any woman who came along, particularly Maria Dolores. I s'pose it's your diplomatic training."

Rupert's expression became crestfallen.

"I tried to be very tactful," he declared. "I didn't want to worry you in any way. But I was always there when you wanted me, and not a fragment of your luggage was lost in that thieving country."

"Probably I shall have to be thrashed into submission," she murmured. "I seem to require a tigerish wooing. You're far too sympathetic to thrash any one. It would hurt you more than it hurt her. Good night, Rupert. Try not to break your heart too badly."

She was standing alone, deep in thought, when Sir Charles returned. She went up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. "If only I could marry you, Charles, I should never want to sow another wild oat as long as I lived. But it would be too bad to do that. You've escaped for about forty years. You shall live on in your sentimental bird-sanctuary."

She kissed him and went, sighing softly, to bed.