Title: The Priceless Pearl
Author: Miller, Alice Duer
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Priceless Pearl" ***


Internet Archive (https://archive.org)



Note: Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive. See
      https://archive.org/details/pricelesspearl00mill



THE PRICELESS PEARL

by

ALICE DUER MILLER

Author of
_"Manslaughter," "Come Out of the Kitchen,"
"Are Parents People?" etc._


[Illustration: Decoration]



New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
1924

Copyright 1923, 1924
By Alice Duer Miller

Printed in U. S. A.



THE PRICELESS PEARL



CHAPTER I


"The girl is simply too good-looking," said Bunner, the office manager,
in a high, complaining voice. "She is industrious, intelligent,
punctual and well-mannered, but simply too good-looking--a disturbing
element in the office on account of her appearance. I made a grave
mistake in engaging her."

The president, who had been a professor of botany at a great
university before he resigned in order to become head of The Universal
Encyclopedia of Necessary Knowledge Publishing Corporation, was a
trifle deaf, but had not as yet admitted the fact to himself; and he
inquired with the patient, slightly contemptuous surprise of the deaf,
"But I do not understand why she is crying."

"It is not she who is crying," answered the office manager regretfully;
"it is Mr. Rixon, our third vice president. He is crying because he
has most unfortunately become interested in the young woman--fallen in
love with her--so my stenographer tells me."

The president peered through his bifocal lenses. He did not wish to be
thought one of those unsophisticated scientists who understand only the
plain unpsychological process of plants. He inquired whether the girl
had encouraged the third vice president, whether, in a word, she had
given him to understand that she took a deeper interest in him than
was actually the fact, "the disappointment of the discovery being the
direct cause of the emotional outbreak which you have just described."

Bunner hesitated. He would have liked to consider that Miss Leavitt was
to blame, for otherwise the responsibility was entirely his own. In
his heart he believed she was, for he was one of those men who despise
women and yet consider them omnipotent.

"I can't say I've ever seen her do more than say good morning to him,"
he answered rather crossly. "But I believe there is a way of avoiding
a man--with her appearance. You have probably never noticed her, sir,
but----"

"Oh, I've noticed her," said the president, nodding his old head. "I've
noticed a certain youth and exuberant vitality, and--yes, I may say
beauty--decided beauty."

Bunner sighed.

"A girl like that ought to get married," he said. "They ought not
to be working in offices, making trouble. It's hard on young men of
susceptible natures like Mr. Rixon. You can hardly blame him."

No, they agreed they did not blame him at all; and so they decided to
let the young woman have her salary to the first of the month and let
her go immediately.

"That will be best, Bunner," said the president, and dismissed the
matter from his mind.

But Bunner, who knew that there was a possibility that even a beautiful
young woman might not enjoy losing her job, could not dismiss the
matter from his mind until the interview with her was over. He decided,
therefore, to hold it at once, and withdrew from the president's room,
where, as a directors' meeting was about to take place, the members of
the board were already beginning to gather.

Bunner was a pale fat man of forty, who was as cold to the excessive
emotion of the third vice president as he was to the inconvenient
beauty which had caused it. He paused beside Miss Leavitt's desk in the
outer office and requested a moment of her time.

She had finished going over the article on Corals and was about to
begin that on Coronach--a Scotch dirge or lamentation for the dead.
She had just been wondering whether any created being would, ever want
to know anything about coronach, when Mr. Bunner spoke to her. If she
had followed her first impulse she would have looked up and beamed at
him, for she was of the most friendly and warmhearted nature; but she
remembered that beaming was not safe where men were concerned--even
when they were fat and forty--so she answered coldly, "Yes, Mr.
Bunner," and rose and followed him to his own little office.

Miss Pearl Leavitt, A. B., Rutland College, was not one of those
beauties who must be pointed out to you before you appreciate their
quality. On the contrary, the eye roving in her neighborhood was
attracted to her as to a luminary. There was nothing finicky or subtle
or fine-drawn about her. Her features were rather large and simple,
like a Greek statue's, though entirely without a statue's immobility.
Her coloring was vivid--a warm brunette complexion, a bright golden
head and a pair of large gray eyes that trembled with their own light
as they fixed themselves upon you, much as the reflection of the
evening star trembles in a quiet pool. But what had always made her
charm, more than her beauty, was her obvious human desire to be a
member of the gang--to enjoy what the crowd enjoyed and do what was
being done. It was agony to her to assume the icy, impassive demeanor
which, since she had been working in offices, she had found necessary.
But she did it. She was hard up.

When Mr. Bunner had sent away his stenographer and shut the door he sat
down and pressed his small fat hands together.

"Miss Leavitt," he said, "I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that
during the summer months when so many of our heads of departments are
away on their vacations, we shall be obliged to reduce our office
staff; and so, though your work has been most satisfactory--we have
no complaint to make of your work--still I am sorry to be obliged to
tell you that during the summer months, when so many of our heads of
departments----"

He did not know what was the matter; the sentence appeared to be a
circular sentence without exits.

Miss Leavitt folded her arms with a rapid whirling motion. Of course,
since the first three words of his sentence she had known that she had
lost her job.

"Just why is it that I am being sent away?" she said.

Sulky children, before they actually burst into tears, have a way
of almost visibly swelling like a storm cloud. It would be wrong to
suggest that anything as lovely as Pearl Leavitt could swell, and yet
there was something of this effect as she stared down at the office
manager. He did not like her tone, nor yet her look.

He said with a sort of acid smile, "I was about to explain the reason
when you interrupted me. Although your work has been perfectly
satisfactory, we feel that during the summer months----" He wrenched
himself away from that sentence entirely. "It is the wish of the
president," he said, "that you be given your salary to the first of
the month--which I hereby hand you--and be told that it will not be
necessary for you to come here after today. In parting with you, Miss
Leavitt, I wish to assure you that the quality of your work for this
organization has been in every respect----"

"I want to speak to the president," said Miss Leavitt.

She did not raise her voice, but no one could have mistaken that her
tone was threatening. She vibrated her head slightly from side to side,
and spit out her _t's_ in a way actually alarming to Bunner, who was a
man susceptible to fear.

"Our decision is quite final--quite final, I'm sorry to say," he said,
fussing with his papers as a hint that she had better go and leave him
in peace.

"That's why I want to speak to him."

"Quite impossible," answered Bunner. "The board is meeting at present
in his room----"

"What!" cried Pearl. "They're all there together, are they?" And before
the office manager took in her intention she was out of his office,
across the main office and in the board room.

Like so many people destined to succeed in New York, Pearl came
originally from Ohio. She was an orphan, and after her graduation from
an Eastern college she had gone back to her native state, meaning to
make her home with her two aunts. It had not been a successful summer.
Not only was it hot, and there was no swimming where her aunts lived,
and Pearl loved to swim, but two of her cousins fell in love with
her--one from each family--and it became a question either of their
leaving home or of her going. So Pearl very gladly came East again, and
under the guidance of her great friend Augusta Exeter began to look for
a job.

She had come East in September, and it was now July--hardly ten
months--and yet in that time she had had and lost four good jobs
through no fault of her own but wholly on account of her extraordinary
beauty. She was not insulted; no one threatened her virtue or offered
to run away with her. It was simply that, like Helen of Troy, "Where'er
she came she brought calamity."

Her first place had been with a publishing firm, Dixon & Gregory.
When Pearl came to them the business was managed by the two sons of
the original firm; the elder Dixon was dead, and the elder Gregory,
a man of fifty-six or eight, came to the office only once or twice
a week. A desk for her had been put in his private room, as it was
almost always vacant. It ceased, however, to be vacant as soon as he
saw Pearl. He had no idea that he had fallen in love with her--perhaps
he had not. He certainly never troubled, her with attentions; as
far as she knew he was hardly aware of her existence. His emotion,
whatever it was, took the form of quarreling with anyone who did speak
to her--even in the course of necessary business. When at last one
day he met her and the younger Dixon going out to lunch at the same
hour and in the same elevator, but purely by accident, he made such a
violent and inexplicable scene that the two younger partners, after
consultation, decided that the only thing to do was to get rid of the
girl quietly--get her to resign. They were both very nice about it,
and themselves found her another place--as secretary to a magazine
editor--a man of ice, they assured her. She never saw the elder Mr.
Gregory again, and a few months later read in the papers of his death.

Her new position went well for several months. The editor was, as
represented, a man of ice; but, as Hamlet has observed, being as pure
as snow and as chaste as ice does not protect against calumny, and the
wife of the editor, entering the office one day to find her husband and
his secretary bending over an illegible manuscript, refused to allow
such dangerous beauty so near her husband, and Pearl lost her second
job.

Her next place was with an ambitious young firm which was putting a
new cleaning fluid on the market. At first, in a busy office, Pearl
seemed to pass almost unnoticed. Then one day the two partners, young
men both and heretofore like brothers, came to her together and asked
her if she would do the firm a great favor--sit for her portrait to
a well-known artist so that they might use her picture as a poster
to advertise their product. Pearl consented--she thought it would be
rather good fun. The result was successful. Indeed, the only criticism
of the picture--which represented Pearl in tawny yellow holding up a
saffron-colored robe at which she smiled brilliantly, with beneath it
the caption, Why Does She Smile? Because Her Old Dress is Made New
by--was that it would have been better to get a real person to sit for
the picture, as the public was tired of these idealized types of female
beauty. But the trouble started over who was to own the original
pastel. It developed that each partner had started the idea from a
hidden wish to own a portrait of Pearl. They quarreled bitterly. The
very existence of the firm was threatened. An old friend of the two
families stepped in and effected a reconciliation, but his decision
was that the girl must go. It did not look well for two boys of their
age--just beginning in business--to have as handsome a woman as that in
the office. People might talk.

It was after this--some time after--that Pearl took the place with the
Encyclopedia company. Her record began to tell against her. Everyone
wanted to know why she changed jobs so often. She thought she had
learned her lesson--not to beam, not to be friendly, not to do anyone
favors. She had made up her mind to stay with the Encyclopedia forever.
She had had no hint of danger. She hardly knew the third vice president
by sight--someone in the office had told her a silly story about his
crying one day, but she hadn't even believed it. And now she had lost
another job--and in July, too, when jobs are hard to find.

Heretofore she had always gone docilely. But now she felt she could
bear it no longer--she must tell someone what she thought.

It was four o'clock on a hot summer afternoon, and round the board-room
table the members were saying "aye" and "no" and "I so move," while
their minds were occupied with the questions that do occupy the mind
at such times--golf and suburban trains, and whether huckleberry pie
in hot weather hadn't been a mistake--when the glass door opened and
a beautiful girl came in like a hurricane. She had evidently been
talking for some seconds when she entered. She was saying, "----are
just terrible. I want to tell you gentlemen, now that I have you
together, that I think men are just terrible." She had a curious voice,
deep and a little rough, more like a boy's than a woman's, yet a voice
which when you once knew Pearl you remembered with affection. "This
is the fourth job I've lost because men have no self-control. I do my
work. I don't even speak to any of you--I'd like to--I'm human, but
I don't dare any more. I attend to business, there's no fault found
with my work--but I've got to go because some man or other can't work
in the office with me. Why not? Because he has no self-control--and
not ashamed of it--not ashamed, that's what shocks me. Why, if a girl
found she couldn't do her work because there was a good-looking man
in the office, she'd die rather than admit she was so silly. But what
does a man do? He goes whining to the president to get the poor girl
dismissed. There it is! I have to go!"

And so on, and so on. The board was so astonished at her entrance, at
the untrammeled way in which she was striding up and down, digging her
heels into the rug and flinging her arms about as she talked, that they
were like people stunned. They turned their eyes with relief to Mr.
Bunner, who came hurrying in behind her.

"Miss Leavitt has been dropped," he began, but she cut him short.

"I've been dropped," she said, "because----"

"Will you let me speak?" said Mr. Bunner--a rhetorical question. He
meant to speak in any case.

"No," answered Pearl. "Certainly not. Gentlemen, I have been
dismissed--I know--because some man in this office has no self-control.
I can't identify him, but I have my suspicions." And she cast a
dreadful glance at the third vice president. "Why should I go? Why
shouldn't he? Crying! Woof! How absurd!"

"Leave the room, Miss Leavitt," said the president; but he weakened the
effect of his edict by leaning forward with his hand to his ear so as
to catch whatever she was going to say next.

"I haven't shed a tear since my mother died," said Mr. Rixon rather
tearfully to the man next him.

"This is not the time to discuss your grievance, Miss Leavitt," said
the treasurer, wondering why he had never kept in closer touch with the
office; "but if you feel you have a just complaint against the company
come to my office tomorrow afternoon----"

"I'll not go near your office," said Pearl, and she began again to
stride about the room, occasionally stamping her right foot without
losing step. "I shall never again go into any office where men are. I
won't work for men. They're poor sports; they have no self----"

"You said that before," said the treasurer.

"----control," Pearl went on, for people in her frame of mind cannot be
stopped. "Why shouldn't he go? But no, you have to be protected from a
girl like a herd of sheep from a wolf--a girl who hasn't even looked
at you, at that. If I had ever spoken to the man----"

"Leave the room instantly, Miss Leavitt," said the president, and this
time he spoke as if he meant it, for he was afraid the identity of the
third vice president might be revealed. Little it mattered to Pearl
what the old man meant.

"I wouldn't mind so much," she went on, "if you did not all pretend
to be so brave and strong--to protect women. You protect each
other--that's who you protect."

"Come, come," said a member of the board. "This isn't the way to keep a
job, you know."

"I don't want to keep this job. I want you for once to hear what a
woman thinks of the men she works for--a lot of poor sports--and not
industrious--none of you work the way girls work for you. Slack, that's
what I call you, and lacking in self-control."

And she went out as suddenly as she had come in, and slammed the door
so hard behind that those members of the board, sitting near it ducked
their heads into their collars in fear of falling glass.

There was a minute's pause, and then the president said with a slight
smile, "Well, Mr. Bunner, I think we all see what you meant when you
said this young woman was a disturbing element in the office."

"There has never been anything like this before," said Bunner; "never
anything in the least like this anywhere I have ever been."

"Well," said the treasurer, "I don't suppose we need distress ourselves
about her finding another job."

There was a certain wistful undercurrent in his tone.

"No," said Bunner, slightly misunderstanding his meaning. "She is
competent and industrious."

"She ought to get married, a pretty girl like that--not go about making
trouble in offices," said the president.

"I have always been of the opinion," said the third vice president,
"that it would be much simpler to run the office entirely with men."

"Oh, it would be much better--much better, of course," said Bunner;
"only women are so much more accurate about detail, more industrious
and less expensive."

And as there was no woman present to inquire why then men were so much
more desirable, the question dropped, and the president recalled the
board's attention to the subject of the paper to be used in their next
edition--the topic under consideration when Pearl made her entrance. It
was rather hard to take any interest in it now.

And so Pearl began once again to go the round of agencies, to interview
or be interviewed by office managers, and hear that if she came back
in October there might be a chance. But October was three months away,
and she could not live three months on something less than a hundred
dollars. She even began to scan the columns of the newspapers--from
clerks, through stenographers, ushers, and finally winders--she never
found out what winders were.

If her dear friend and sage adviser, Augusta Exeter, had been in town
she could have shared her room; but Augusta was in Vermont, visiting
the family of the man she was going to marry. At least, Augusta's last
letter had been from Vermont; but as a matter of fact, three days after
Pearl left the Encyclopedia's employ Augusta came back to New York.
She had had a letter from the agency where her name was registered
practically offering a position which sounded too good to refuse.
Besides, Augusta did not really like farm life in Vermont, and the
Baynes family, for some reason which she could not explain, gave her a
composite picture of Horace, her fiancé, which tended to make her love
him less. Even New York in midsummer was preferable.

Therefore it happened that as Pearl wandered, lonely as a cloud, from
office to office, longing for her friend's wisdom, Augusta herself was
sitting in the outer office of a company, looking for a job.

Though the office was that of the Finlay-Wood Engineering Co., the
position which Miss Augusta Exeter was considering was that of a
governess. She was not at all sure that she wanted the place. College
women are not well disposed toward positions as governesses; yet
as Miss Exeter sat there in the busy outer office and watched the
office boys coming in and out, and the impassive young woman at the
switchboard, enunciating again and again, "Finlay-Wood Company," "Hold
the wire," she went over the advantages of this offer--a high salary,
the two hottest months of the summer at Southampton, and the fact that
as she was to be married in October, she could not take a long-time
position in any case.

Mr. Wood's secretary, with whom so far all the negotiations had
been carried on, had impressed upon her the necessity of being
punctual--"eleven precisely," he had said, for it seemed Mr. Wood was
going to Mexico that afternoon. And so Augusta, who was punctual by
nature, had found herself in the office ten minutes ahead of time. She
sat listening to the telephone girl and watching a door which bore
the simple inscription, "Mr. Wood." And just behind that door a tall
sunburned man in the neighborhood of thirty was standing, slapping the
pockets of his blue serge clothes and saying, "Griggs, I have a feeling
I've forgotten something. What is it I've forgotten, Griggs?"

The desk was as bare as a desk ought to be when its owner is going away
for two months. Griggs ran his eye proudly over it.

"No, Mr. Wood," he said. "I don't think anything has been forgotten.
Nothing was left except the letter to the President, the Spanish
dictionary and the Mexican currency. All that has been attended to."

He consulted a list held in the palm of his hand.

"It was something of my own," said Wood, and he eyed his secretary with
an air that might have appeared stern but was merely concentrated, when
the door opened and the office boy came in and said, "Miss Stone says
she's notified him that there's a lady there to see him, and will we
let her in to him?"

"A lady?" said Griggs severely.

"That's it," said Wood. "It's the governess for my sister. Think of my
nearly forgetting that!"

"You ought not be worried about such things," said Griggs, as if he
were very bitter about it, "with all your responsibilities."

Wood smiled. It wasn't true, but it was the way one's secretary ought
to feel.

"I'd have a lot more to worry me," he said, "if I were married myself."

"You certainly would," answered Griggs, who was married.

"But will we let her in to him?" said the office boy, who clung to this
formula, although the head clerk was trying to break him of it.

"You may let her come in," said Griggs, as if he would perish rather
than allow his chief to hold verbal communication with anything so low
as an office boy, and as he spoke he silently gave Wood a pale-blue
card--one of a dozen on which in beautiful block letters he had written
down the names, degrees, past experience, with notes on personal
appearance, of all the candidates for position of governess in the
household of Wood's sister, Mrs. Conway.

"This is the best of them?" said Wood, and he ran his eye rapidly over
the card, which read:

"Augusta Exeter, A. B. Rutland College; Ph. D., Columbia University,
specialized in mathematics and household management."

He looked up. "Queer combination, isn't it?"

"I thought it was just what you wanted," answered Griggs reproachfully.

"Nothing queerer than that," said Wood, and went on: "Six-month dietary
expert--one year training--appearance, pleasing." He glanced at his
secretary. It amused him to think of the discreet Griggs appraising the
appearance of these young women. "What system did you mark them on,
Griggs?" he asked, but got no further, for the door opened and Miss
Exeter entered, and Griggs, with his unfailing discretion, left.

Wood looked at her and saw that Griggs as usual had been exactly
right--she was neither more nor less than pleasing--a small, slim, pale
girl, whose unremarkable brown eyes radiated a steady intelligence.

Wood had employed labor in many parts of the world, from Chile to
China, and he had a routine about it--a preliminary intelligence test,
which he applied.

"Sit down, Miss Exeter," he said. "I think it will save us both time if
you will tell me all that you know about this position"--this was the
test--"and then I'll fill in."

Augusta sat down. She found herself a trifle nervous. This man
impressed her, for since her childhood she had cherished a secret
romantic admiration for men who exercised any form of power--kings and
generals and men of great affairs. It was a feeling that had nothing to
do with real life and represented no disloyalty to her fiancé, Horace
Bayne, who exercised no power of any kind.

One reason why it had had no relation to life was that she had not met
any men of this type. Even in the outer office she had been impressed
by the sense of a man waited on and protected by secretaries and
office boys as an Eastern princess is waited upon by slaves. And now
when she saw him she saw that he had exactly the type of looks she
admired most--tall, a little too thin, his face tanned to that shade of
_café au lait_ that the blond Anglo-Saxon acquires under the sun--those
piercing bright-blue eyes--that large handsome hand, which, with the
thumb in his waistcoat pocket, was so clearly outlined against the blue
serge of his clothes.

She said rather uncertainly, "I know that Mrs. Conway is a widow with
three children----"

Even this much was wrong.

"Not, a widow," he said; "divorced."

"----with three children," Augusta went on; "a girl of seventeen, a boy
of fifteen and a little girl of eleven. I know that during your absence
you want someone to take the care and responsibility of the children
off your sister's shoulders."

He smiled--his teeth seemed to have the extraordinary whiteness that is
the compensation of a dark skin.

"I see," he said, "that Griggs has been discreet again." He glanced
at his watch. "I'm going to Mexico in a few hours, Miss Exeter. I
have just twenty-five minutes. If in that time I am not thoroughly
indiscreet I can't look to you for any help. The situation is this:
My sister married Gordon Conway when she was very young--eighteen; he
turned out to be a gambler. I don't know whether you've ever known any
gamblers"--Miss Exeter never had--"but they are a peculiar breed--the
real ones--charming--friendly--gay--open-handed when they are winning;
they become the most inhuman devils in the world when they are losing.
Never get tied up to a gambler. During my poor sister's romance and
marriage Conway was winning--large sums--on the races. But that stopped
a month or so after their marriage, and ever since then, as far as I
know, he has lost--in stocks, at Monte Carlo, and finally at every
little gambling casino in Europe. After about six years of it we
managed to get her a divorce. She has entire control of the children,
of course. Conway has sunk out of sight. Oh, once in a while he turns
up and tries to get a little money from her, but fortunately what
little she inherited from my father came to her after her divorce,
or otherwise he'd have managed to get it away from her. She's very
generous--weak--whichever you call it. One of the things I'm going
to ask you to do is to prevent her seeing him at all, and certainly
prevent her letting him have any money. Though it isn't likely to
happen. I believe he's abroad.

"The great point is the children. I'm sorry to say that it seems to
me my sister is ruining three naturally fine children as rapidly as a
devoted mother can. Of course, many parents are over indulgent, but my
sister not only indulges her children but gives them at the same time
the conviction that they are such interesting and special types that
none of the ordinary rules apply to them. The elder girl, Dorothy, is
a pretty, commonplace American girl--no fault to find with her except
that her mother treats her as if she were an empress. If, for instance,
her mother keeps her waiting five minutes she behaves as if she were
an exiled queen faced by treachery among her dependents--won't speak
to her mother perhaps for a day. And if I say--which I oughtn't to do,
for it's no use--'Isn't Dorothy a trifle insolent?' my sister answers,
'I'm so delighted to see that she isn't growing up with the inferiority
complex that I had as a girl.' The boy is a perfectly straight manly
boy, but he smokes constantly--at fifteen--and when I criticize him my
sister says before him, 'Well, Anthony, you know you smoke yourself. I
can't very well tell Durland it's a crime. Besides, I have the theory
that if he smokes enough now he'll be tired of it by the time he grows
up.'"

"But that isn't sound," said Miss Exeter, quite shocked at the sketch
she was hearing. "Habits formed in youth----"

"Of course it isn't sound," said Wood. "And as a matter of fact, my
sister never thought of it until I objected. She evolves these theories
merely for the sake of protecting her children. Oddly enough, she not
only doesn't want to change them herself but she doesn't want any one
else to change them. Three years ago I engaged in a life-and-death
struggle with her to get Durland--the boy--to boarding school. She
advanced the following arguments against it: First, that he was a
perfectly normal, manly boy and did not need to go; second, that he was
of a peculiar, artistic, sensitive temperament and would be wrecked
by being made to conform to boarding-school standards; third, that
none of the successful men of the country had gone to boarding school;
fourth, that success was the last thing she desired for any son of
hers; fifth, that she did not wish to remove him from the benefits of
my daily influence; and sixth, that I was a person of no judgment and
absolutely wrong about its being wise for a boy to go to school."

"And is he at school?" Miss Exeter inquired politely.

"Oh, yes," answered Wood, without seeing anything amusing in her
question. "Although my sister does a good deal to counteract the
effect--by making fun of the teachers and the rules, and always
bringing him, when she goes to visit him, whatever is specially
forbidden, like candy and cigarettes and extra pocket money. You see,
that's where it's going to be hard for you. She not only doesn't want
to discipline them herself but she's against any person or institution
that tries to do it for her. As soon as you begin to accomplish
anything with the children--as I'm sure you will do--she'll be against
you; she'll want you to go."

"That makes it pretty hopeless, doesn't it?" said Miss Exeter.

He shook his head briskly.

"No," he said; "for I have made her promise that she won't send you
away, no matter what happens, until I get back. I know what was in her
mind when she gave the promise--that she could make it so unpleasant
for you that you'd go of your own accord. So, Miss Exeter, I want you
to promise me that you won't go, no matter how disagreeable she makes
it----"

"Oh, Mr. Wood, I couldn't do that," said Augusta.

"There's no use in going at all otherwise," he said. "Oh, come, be a
sport! I'll make it worth while. I'll give you a bonus of five hundred
dollars if you're still on the job when I get back--or I'll bring you
a turquoise--I'm going down to inspect the best mine in the world. You
see, I feel this means the whole future of those children--to be with a
woman like you. I know you could do with them just what I want done."

"You may be mistaken about that, Mr. Wood."

"I may be, but I'm not."

The blue eyes fixed themselves on her. She said to herself that it was
the five hundred dollars--so desirable for a trousseau--that turned the
scale, but the blue eyes and the compliment had something to do with
her decision.

"It seems a reckless thing to promise," she murmured with a weak laugh.

"No, not at all. I wouldn't let you do anything reckless." He spoke
as a kindly grandfather might speak. "And now we have ten minutes
left, and I want to talk to you about the little one--Antonia." His
face softened, and after a slight struggle he yielded to a smile. "The
truth is," he said, "that she's much my favorite. She's intelligent
and honest, and the justest person of any age or sex that I ever knew
in my life." He paused a second. "Perhaps it is because I'm fonder of
her than of the other two, but it seems to me my sister is particularly
unwise about Antonia."

His mind went back to his parting the evening before with this small
niece. He and his sister had been sitting on the piazza of the house
they had taken at Southampton--at least she had taken it and he had
paid for it. Only a few yards away the Atlantic, in one of its placid
lakelike moods, was hissing slowly up and down on the sand. The
struggle about a governess had been going on for several weeks. So far
Mrs. Conway had won, for this was his last evening and none had been
engaged. She had a wonderful method for dealing with her brother--a
method to be commended to all weak people trying to get the maximum of
interest and the minimum of control from stronger natures. She listened
to everything he said as if she were wholly convinced by his words and
intended to follow his advice to the last detail, and then she went
away and did just what she had always meant to do. If he reproached her
she looked at him wonderingly and said: "But, Anthony dear, I did agree
with you at the time; but afterward, when I came to think----" Oh, how
well he knew that dread phrase, "afterward, when I came to think!"

By these methods she had managed to fend off action for three weeks,
agreeing with him most cordially that the children ought to have a
governess, but thinking, after he had gone to New York for the week,
that it would be nice for them to take French lessons with that
charming French lady in the village, or that perhaps the Abernathys'
governess would come over for an hour a day----

And now on his last evening he had outmaneuvered her by announcing that
he was interviewing candidates the next morning before he took his
train, and would send her the best.

"I'm sure it's very kind of you to take all this trouble, Tony," she
said. "Don't send me anyone too hideous, will you?"

"Griggs describes the young woman I have in mind as of pleasing
appearance."

"That means perfectly hideous."

"You wouldn't want a prize beauty, would you?"

"Certainly I would. I like to have lovely things about me. I suppose
you think that's idiotic."

He assured her that he never thought her idiotic--at least not
unintentionally--and went on to obtain the famous pledge--the promise
that she would keep the governess he sent her until his return in
September. She agreed finally, partly because it was getting late and
she was sleepy, partly because she reflected that there were more ways
of getting rid of governesses than by sending them away.

"I'm so sleepy," she said, yawning, "and yet I don't quite like to go
to bed until Antonia comes in."

"Antonia?" said Wood. "I thought she went to bed at nine."

It appeared that Antonia had formed the habit lately of sleeping on the
beach--at least for the earlier part of the night--just digging a hole
and curling up there. Her mother thought it an interesting, primitive,
healthy sort of instinct.

"And yet," she added thoughtfully, as if she knew she were a little
finicky, "I don't like to lock up the house until she comes in."

"I think you're right," said her brother. These were the things that
terrified him so--a little girl out in the blackness of that beach in
her pajamas. How could he go to Mexico and leave her? He rose and went
to the edge of the piazza, which rested on the dunes.

He could see nothing but the stars.

"Shall I call her?" he said.

"I hate to wake her; but--yes, just give a call."

He shouted, and in a few seconds a faint, cheerful hullo reached them,
and a little figure appeared over the dunes.

"Were you asleep, darling?" said her mother.

"No, I was swimming," said Antonia. She stepped within the circle of
light from the windows, and Wood could see that her dark curly hair was
plastered to her head, and her pajamas clung to her like tissue paper.
"I love to swim at night," she said. "It makes you feel like a spirit."

She shared her more important thoughts with her uncle. Then, turning
to her mother, she advanced toward her with outstretched arms as if to
clasp her in a wet embrace.

"Look out for your mother's dress," said Wood, for Edna Conway was as
usual perfectly dressed in white. She smiled at him and took the child
to her breast.

"Dear Anthony," she said, "if you were married you'd know that a woman
loves her children better than her clothes."

He was silent, wondering if she knew how much she had had to do with
the fact that he wasn't married. He had no taste for masculine women,
and yet Edna had made him distrustful of all femininity which sooner or
later developed the sweet obstinacy, the clinging pig-headedness, the
subtle ability, under the idiotic coyness of a kitten, to get its own
way. Well off and physically attractive, he had not been neglected by
women, but always sooner or later it had seemed to him that he had seen
the dread shadow of kittenishness. Cattishness he could have borne, but
the kitten in woman disgusted him.

"And, dearest," his sister was saying to her daughter, "you won't go to
bed in your wet things, will you?"

Antonia shook her finger at her mother.

"Now don't begin to be fussy," she said, not impudently, but as one
equal gives advice to another. Yet even this mild suggestion of reproof
was painful to Edna.

She turned to her brother and said passionately, "I'm not fussy, am I?
I don't see how you can say that, Antonia. It's only that your uncle
wouldn't close an eye if he thought you were sleeping in damp pajamas;
would you, Anthony?" And she laughed gayly.

This was one of her most irritating ways--to pretend that she was just
a wild thing like the children, but that to oblige some stuffy older
person she was forced to ask the children to conform.

"I might close an eye, at that," said Anthony.

The whole incident had finally decided him to take the prospective
governess entirely into his confidence. He had thought at first it
would be more honorable to let her discover the situation for herself,
but now he saw that she would need not only all his knowledge of the
situation but the full conviction that he was backing her, whatever she
did. He became convinced of this even before he saw Miss Exeter. Having
seen her, he had no further hesitation. He thought her as sensible a
person as he had ever met. She sat there in the hard north light of
his office, noting down now and then a few words in a little black
notebook. She was not only sensible--she was to be depended on.

"The truth is," he said, "that Antonia, not to put too fine a point on
it, is not personally clean."

Miss Exeter smiled, for to her mind the tone of agony in his voice was
exaggerated.

"But at a certain age no children are," she said.

"But most children are forced to be, and my sister lets this child run
wild, so that people talk about it. I suppose I oughtn't to mind so
much," he said, looking at her rather wistfully; "but you can't imagine
how I hate to think that people discuss Antonia's being dirty. And all
my sister says is that she's so glad the child isn't vain. Oh, Miss
Exeter, if you could get Antonia dressed like a nice, well brought up
little girl I think I'd do anything in the world for you."

She promised that too. In fact, by the time she finally left the
office and was on her way uptown, late for an engagement she had with
Horace Bayne, she was alarmed to remember how many things she had
promised--not only to stay until he came back but to write to him every
day, a long report of just what had happened in the family and what her
impressions of it were.

"Not letters," he had said, "because I shan't answer them; but
reports--reports on my family, as I am going to make a report on this
mine."

They were to be typewritten. He had no intention of struggling with any
woman's handwriting, though Augusta murmured that hers was considered
very legible.

It was not her custom to take a definite step like this without
consulting Horace--not so much because Horace insisted on it as because
she thought highly of his opinion. She was astonished now, as in the
Subway she thought over the interview, to find how little she had been
thinking of Horace. They had been engaged for something over two
years, one of those comfortable engagements, which until recently had
had no prospects of marriage.

The Rutland College Club is almost deserted in summer. As she ran
upstairs to the library, where she was to meet Horace, she glanced at
her watch and saw to her regret that he must have been waiting almost
an hour, for he was punctual, and usually arrived a little ahead of
the hour. She was sorry--such a busy man; but he would understand--she
would explain----

He rose from a deep chair as she entered--a serious young man whom
everyone trusted at first sight. She saw he looked a little more
serious than usual, and her sense of guilt made her attribute this
seriousness to her own fault. She began to explain quickly and with
unaccustomed vivacity. She sketched the interview--Mr. Wood--his
office--the promise--the letters--the turquoise. Horace kept getting
more and more solemn, although it seemed to her that she made a very
good story of it--more amusing perhaps than the reality had been.

"Isn't it exciting?" she said. "I'm going down on Thursday, under this
contract, to stay two months."

"No, you're not," said Horace.

She stared at him. He had never spoken like that in all the years she
had known him.

"What do you mean, dear?" she said rather reprovingly.

"You were so busy telling me about this Adonis you're going to work
for you did not stop to consider that I might have some news of my
own. I've landed that job in Canada, and I'm going there on Friday and
you're going with me. You're going to marry me the day after tomorrow
and start north on Friday."

She stared at him, many emotions succeeding each other on her face.
She had given her word--her most solemn word. She could hear Wood's
quiet voice asserting his confidence in her. "I know I can depend on
you; if you give me your word I know you'll keep it." She could not
break it. She said this, expecting that Horace would admire her for her
dependability--would at least agree with her that she was doing right.
But instead he looked at her with a smoldering expression, and when she
had finished he broke out. In fact he made her a scene of jealousy--the
first he had ever made--but none the worse for that. For a beginner
Horace showed a good deal of talent. He accused her openly of having
fallen in love with this fellow; she wasn't a girl to do anything as
silly as that except under a hypnotic influence. People did fall in
love at first sight. There were Romeo and Juliet; Shakespeare was a
fairly wise guy--these letters every day--why, if she wrote to him,
Horace, once a week he was lucky--but every day to this man. And jewels
and money--no, not much!

Jealousy, which is popularly supposed to be an erratic and fantastic
emotion, is often founded on the soundest intuition. Augusta found
herself hampered in defending herself by a certain inner doubt; and
her silence enabled Horace to work himself up to such a pitch that he
issued an ultimatum--a dangerous thing to do. She would either marry
him and go to Canada with him, or else everything was over between them.

It was a terrible situation for Augusta. On the one hand, her spoken
word, given to a person whose good opinion she greatly desired, and on
the other, her sincere love of Horace, increased by the decisive stand
he was taking; for it is unfortunately true that if you do not hate a
person for making a scene you love him more.

Perhaps Horace saw this. In any case, he would not retreat an inch.
This was the situation when the door of the library opened and in came
Augusta's friend and classmate, Pearl Leavitt, with whom she had an
engagement for luncheon--only in the general strain and excitement of
the morning she had entirely forgotten the fact.

Pearl, like Augusta herself, was too much occupied with her own mood to
notice that a mood was already waiting for her. It seemed to her that
Augusta and Horace were just sitting there as usual, without much to
say to each other. She had been looking for a job all the morning, and
all the day before, and was discovering that beauty may find it as hard
to get a job as it had been to keep one.

"Hullo, Gussie! Hullo, Horrie!" she said, striding in, full of her own
troubles. "I think men are just terrible."

"You must have changed a lot," said Bayne, who was in no humor to let
anything pass.

He had known Pearl since her freshman year at Rutland, and was
accustomed to seeing her surrounded by a flock of the condemned sex,
whose attentions had never seemed unwelcome.

"Yes, I've changed," said Pearl. "You see, I've worked for men--at
least I've tried to. I've been trying to all morning. If they kept
turning you down because you were lame or marked with smallpox they'd
feel ashamed, but if they turn you down because they think you're
good-looking----" Miss Leavitt here interrupted her narrative to give a
grinning representation of the speaker. "'Forgive my speaking plainly,
but you are too good-looking for office work.' Doesn't it occur to
them that even good-looking people must eat? And they are so smug
and pleased with themselves. Well, here I am with two weeks' salary
between me and starvation--all on account of my looks. I believe I'll
go and teach in a convent, where there are not any men to be rendered
hysterical by my appearance."

And she gave a terrible glance at Horace, and then feeling she had been
too severe she beamed at him--beaming at Horace was perfectly safe--and
added, "I've always liked you, Horrie; but I have no use for your
sex--especially as employers; they are too emotional."

"And what would you say, Pearl," said Horace in a deadly impartial
tone, "if a man offered you a job, and in the first interview told his
life's story, asked you to write to him every day and promised you
jewels if you stayed on the job until he got back--what would you say?"

"I wouldn't say a word," answered Pearl. "I'd take to the tall timber.
I know that kind."

"You are both absolutely ridiculous," said Augusta haughtily.

"You are absolutely right," said Horace.

"You don't mean to say that someone has been trying to wangle Augusta
away from you, Horace?" asked Pearl, generously abandoning all interest
in her own problems for the moment.

The two others said no and yes simultaneously, and began to pour out
the story. Augusta's point was that Horace did not respect her business
honor or else he would not ask her to break--Horace's point was that
Augusta did not really love him or she wouldn't think up all these
excuses--she'd marry him as he asked her to do. Ah, but he hadn't had
any idea of getting married until he heard that she was going to take
this place! He had--he had--he had come there to tell her, only she had
been so excited about this other man---- Nonsense, the trouble with
Horace was that he was jealous. No, he was not at all jealous, but if
he were he had good reason to be--writing to a man every day, and
accepting jewels----

Pearl kept looking from one to the other, deeply interested. In the
first pause--which did not come for a long time--she said gravely, "How
is it, Gussie? Do you really want to marry Horace?"

She said it very nicely, but on her expressive face was written the
thought that she herself could not see how anyone could want to marry
him.

"I do, I do," answered Augusta rather tearfully; "but how can I when
I've given my word?"

"I'll tell you how you can," said Pearl. "You marry him and disappear
into the wilds of Canada, and I'll take your place with the Conway
family."

They stared at each other like people waiting for the sound of an
explosion. They were trying to think of obstacles.

"Except," said Pearl, "that I'm not efficient like you, and not very
good at mathematics."

"You were efficient in the way you ran the junior ball," said Augusta.
"Everyone said----"

A spasm of amusement crossed Pearl's face.

"Did I never tell you about that?" she said. "I vamped the senior at
Amherst who had run theirs, and he not only gave me all the dope but
he did most of my work. I was a mine of information. But that isn't
efficiency."

"I disagree with you," said Augusta.

The more she thought of this idea, the more it seemed to her perfect.
There had always been a kind of magic about Pearl, and wasn't magic
the highest form of human efficiency? It was not breaking one's word
to substitute a better article than that contracted for. To send Pearl
in her place would be keeping her word doubly. She saw Pearl charming
Antonia, dazzling the boy, setting all the Conway household to rights
by ways peculiarly her own.

"But perhaps they won't want Pearl," said Horace. "I mean----"

"They won't have any choice," said the two girls together.

"But I mean," reiterated Horace, "that no one would want a governess
who looked like Pearl."

Then the storm broke over his head. What? Wouldn't he even let her be a
governess? Did he want her just to starve? Would he tell her what she
could do? Starve perhaps--just starve--all men were alike. Again Pearl
began to stride up and down the room, flicking the front of her small
black hat with her forefinger until finally it fell off and rolled
on the floor like an old-fashioned cannon ball. If Horace had spoken
from motives of diplomacy he could not have done better for himself.
His objection made the two girls a unit for the plan. It just showed,
Pearl explained, that if Horace, who had known her all these years,
really considered her looks an obstacle to her taking a place even as
a governess, why, it was hopeless to suppose that she could ever get
another job.

At length they sent him away--he had a business engagement of his own
for lunch--and they settled down quietly to discuss the details of the
plan over one of the small bare gray wood tables of the club's dining
room. Ordinarily they would have spent most of their time complaining
about the club luncheon, which consisted largely of loose leaves of
lettuce and dabs of various kinds of sauces; but now they were so
interested that they were hardly conscious of what they put into their
mouths.

Of course, Pearl Would be obliged to go in the character of Miss
Exeter. Mr. Wood would undoubtedly have given some description of the
governess' personal appearance when he telephoned his sister, as he
had said he meant to do. But Augusta was not alarmed by this idea. Men
were so queer about women's looks that Mrs. Conway would say, "Isn't
that like a man, not even to know a great beauty when he sees one?" As
to the daily letter, how fortunate that he had insisted it should be
typewritten. Anyone could sign Augusta Exeter to a man who had seen her
signature only once.

"I hope you won't be found out; I don't see how you can be," said
Augusta.

"I can't see that it matters much if I am," answered Pearl. "I'll
try to put it off, anyhow, until they have become attached to me for
myself." And then suddenly falling back in her chair, she stared at
her friend with opened eyes. "My dear, I can't do it! How could I have
forgotten? I can't leave Alfred!"

Alfred was not a beautiful young lover, as her tone of lingering
affection might have seemed to indicate, but a peculiarly ugly
black-and-white cat--black where he ought to have been white, and
vice versa--that is to say, black round one eye, which made him look
dissipated, and black about the nose, which made him look dirty. Also
he had lost one paw. Pearl had rescued him from a band of boys in an
alley and cherished him with a steady maternal affection.

"Oh, Alfred," said Augusta, as if this did not make much difference.

This was not only wrong in tone but she had failed to say the thing
Pearl wanted her to say, namely, that Mrs. Conway would be delighted if
the new governess brought her pet cat with her. Pearl explained that
Alfred was really no trouble in the house--he slept all day and caught
mice at night--except one night he did tumble all the way downstairs on
account of his paw.

"And you'd be surprised, Gussie," said Pearl, her whole generous face
lighting up with admiration; "that cat--that little creature made a
noise like an elephant falling, he's so solid."

But Augusta, who was not so easily moved to admiration as Pearl, was
not at all moved now.

"I can't see," she observed coldly, "what it is you see in Alfred that
makes you love him so."

Pearl, who had really a nice nature, wasn't angry.

"It isn't exactly that I love him so much," she answered. "But I feel
so sorry for him; and when I feel sorry for anyone they to a certain
extent own me. I feel as if I could never make up to them for the way
life has treated them. I feel that way to Alfred--about his paw, you
know."

"You didn't feel that way to the man who cried in the Encyclopedia."

"I should say not," answered Pearl. "No, I can't pity him. He was
such a poor sport about it. Men are poor sports where women are
concerned--even Horace. If you had asked him to break his word because
you had had a brain storm he'd have been shocked."

"He'd have been immensely flattered," said Augusta reflectively.

"But he thinks it's absolutely all right for him to break up all your
business arrangements because he goes off halfcocked with a fantastic
idea that you've fallen in love with a man you merely want to work for."

Augusta thought a minute and then she said, "It wasn't quite so
fantastic as you think, Pearl. I was attracted by Mr. Wood. I might
have fallen in love with him if I had been brought into contact with
him much more. Oh, Pearl, haven't you ever felt a sudden charm like
that?"

Pearl shook her head: She could not say,--perhaps she did not really
herself understand why such emotions were forbidden to her, but the
true reason was that if her speaking countenance had ever turned upon
a man with that thought in mind the next instant her lovely nose would
have been buried in a tweed lapel or grating against a stiff collar.

"You know," Augusta went on, "that I really love Horace; and Mr. Wood
took no interest in me, except as a governess for his nieces; but have
you never said to yourself, 'There is the type of man whom I could have
loved madly if only things had been different'?"

Again Pearl's head wagged. Then she said, "Describe my employer to me."

"Well," Augusta began solemnly, "he has a smooth brown face out of
which look two bright-blue eyes like a Chinaman."

Pearl scowled.

"But Chinamen don't have blue eyes," she objected.

"No more they do. Why did I keep thinking of China then? China-blue,
perhaps, or maybe the way they are set. I think there is an angle--a
little up at the corners. Then his shoulders are broad, or his waist
is awfully thin, because his coat falls in that loose nice way, like
the English officers who came to lecture at college."

"Mercy," said Pearl, "what things you notice!"

"And he's very direct, and not at all afraid of saying what has to be
said. And he doesn't lecture you about women's intuition or how he made
his business success or any of those things that men always do talk
about when they offer you a job. And oh, it rings in my ears the way he
said as we parted, 'If you give me your word I know I can trust you to
keep it,' or something like that."

And at this moment the housekeeper of the club came into the dining
room, nominally to see that luncheon was being properly served, but
actually, as she soon explained, because the club was so lonely in
summer, and her little dog had been killed by an automobile the week
before. Pearl was, of course, immensely sympathetic about this loss;
and Augusta, with a flash of efficiency, suggested that Alfred could
live at the club for the two months Pearl was away, and the housekeeper
greeted the idea with enthusiasm.

And so, the last obstacle being removed, these two efficient women
went upstairs to the library and, sitting side by side, with the black
notebook between them, worked the whole thing out, as in their college
days they had so often worked up an examination. All the facts that
Wood had spread out for Augusta, Augusta now spread out for Pearl--the
salary, the bonus, the characters of those involved, the results which
Mr. Wood especially wished to see accomplished: That Antonia should be
made clean and neat and dressed like a normal little girl; that Durland
should be taught algebra thoroughly and made to stop smoking, though
that would be difficult; that Mrs. Conway should not be worried by her
former husband, and certainly prevented from lending him money.

"And there is his address in Mexico, and you're to write every day.
That's the most important thing of all--to write every day."

Pearl took the notebook and put it into her pocketbook.

"And how often does he write to me?" she inquired.

Augusta smiled.

"He never does--he never answers. I suppose it's the first time in
your life, Pearl, you ever wrote to a man who did not answer your
letters."

"I rather like the idea," said Pearl.

They were interrupted by a telegram being brought in and given to
Augusta. She opened it.

"It's from Mr. Wood," she said; and added with surprise, "It seems to
be about you."

"About me?"

"No," said Augusta with relief, "I read it wrong. It's about Mrs.
Conway's jewels. He told me she had a string of priceless pearls that
her husband gave her when they were first married.

"The message says, 'Please see that pearls are kept in safe on account
of recent Long Island burglaries.'" She gave the yellow sheet to her
friend. "Keep that," she said, "and be sure to mention in your first
report that you have received it. That will make absolutely sure that
you're me."

"You ought to say 'you're I' if you are going to be a governess," said
Pearl.

"But I'm not," said Augusta.



CHAPTER TWO


The following Thursday afternoon Pearl stepped from the fast train
to the platform of the Southampton station. Since the train reached
Quogue she had been agreeably aware of the damp saltness in the air,
which comes only from proximity to the open ocean. But now, on the
platform, she smelled nothing but the fumes of innumerable exhausts,
saw nothing but masses of automobiles crowding toward the station like
a flock of parti-colored elephants. She stood dazed for a minute by the
noise of self-starters and the crowd of arrivals, until, darting in and
out under the elbows of chauffeurs and passengers, she saw a little
bareheaded, barefooted figure in a dirty white dress edged with the
finest Valenciennes lace. Pearl felt an instant conviction that this
was her future charge.

"Antonia," she said in her deep voice, and the child made a rush for
her.

"Are you Miss Exeter?" she exclaimed, and she gave a little boyish
shake to her head. "I must say I think you are much more than pleasing.
My mother said you'd be much less. She drew me a picture of what she
thought you'd look like. Mother doesn't draw very well. I'm glad you're
not like that. If I'd taken that as a guide I'd never have found you at
all."

She beckoned to a large green touring car, and having arranged about
Pearl's trunk and seen the bags put into the car, she herself sank
beside Pearl on the wide back seat, while to steady herself on the
slippery leather she raised one leg and clutched the back of the front
seat With her bare flexible toes.

"How do you like Southampton?" she said.

If they had gone down the main street Pearl would have seen some old
gray-shingled houses and elm trees that she would have honestly admired
but they had turned eastward and were now driving down a perfectly
straight road at the end of which, through a dip in the dunes, the deep
blue of the afternoon sea could be seen. The country was flat in every
direction except the north, where a wooded rise in the ground cut off
the horizon. To be candid, Pearl did not greatly admire the prospect,
but she said tactfully, "I love the sea."

"Can you swim?"

"Yes."

"Can you play tennis?"

"Yes."

"Can you drive a car?"

"No."

"Good!" said the child with her friendly smile. "I'm glad I've found
something you can't do. Beckett," she said, leaning forward and
shouting in the ear of the chauffeur, "I mean to teach Miss Exeter to
drive."

"Maybe it'd be as well to learn yourself first, miss," said the man
coldly.

Antonia sighed.

"Beckett's cross," she said, "because I bent the fender coming up. My
legs are too short to reach the foot brake in a hurry. Beckett knows
that, but he doesn't make allowances."

"Is it safe for you to drive, then?" asked Pearl.

"Well, if you ask me, no," said Antonia candidly; "but as long as
mother lets me do it, of course I'm going to. I wonder if you're going
to like us. I don't see how anyone could like Dolly."

"What's the matter with Dolly?"

"Oh, about everything," answered Antonia. "I'll tell you the kind of
person she is: If you forget something she asks you to do she treats
you as if you were a moron to have forgotten it, and if she forgets
something you ask her to do she treats you as if you were a moron to
have asked her to do it."

"There must be something to be said for her," Pearl suggested.

Antonia considered the question. She was, as her uncle had said, the
justest of created beings.

"I suppose there must be, but I don't know what it is. Then there's
Durland--he's great--only he doesn't notice me much. I wish I were a
boy. I want to wear trousers and be free."

"You seem to me pretty fairly free."

Antonia laughed.

"That's funny," she said. "I mean it's funny that you said that exactly
the way Uncle Anthony talks--that gentle tone that makes you feel like
nothing at all. Do you like Uncle Anthony? Do you think he's handsome?"

"Yes, indeed I do," answered Pearl, with the modest enthusiasm which
she thought under the circumstances Augusta would have allowed herself.

"So do I," said Antonia. "So does Miss Wellington, whose mother has
the house next us. She took it before she knew Uncle Anthony was going
to be away all summer--at least that's what mother and I think. Miss
Wellington told me she thought him handsome and she said 'And you can
tell him I said so,' but I didn't--for rather a spiteful reason; I
thought she wanted me to."

"It sounds that way to me, too," said Pearl.

"I'm glad you like him," Antonia went on. "He likes you too. He
telephoned mother about you. He said he had found a pearl--wasn't that
funny?" It was funnier than Antonia knew. "So now mother always speaks
of you as the priceless pearl. Mother's rather amusing, like that.
He said you were not so much on looks--just pleasing, he said. But I
think you are perfectly beautiful. Do you think you're beautiful, Miss
Exeter?"

This was the first crisis. Pearl knew that if she said no Antonia would
distrust her honesty, and if she said yes it might be used against her.
So she compromised.

"I'll answer that question the day I leave," she said.

"I'll tell you something funny about that," said Antonia. "Perhaps I
oughtn't to, but I'm going to. Uncle Anthony made mother promise not to
send you away until he came back, no matter what happened; but mother
says she knows a way to get round that if the worst comes to the worst.
You see, I don't want to hurt your feelings; but we all felt it was
rather hard on us to have a governess at all in summer. Mother thinks
it's hard too. She says it's just one of Uncle Anthony's ideas. She
says a man can't take an interest in anything unless he thinks he's
running it. So she just lets him think he runs the family, and then
when he's away she does what she thinks best. This is our gate now.
What do you think of the house? We only rent it. There's Durland going
in for a swim before dinner. I wonder if he'd wait for us. Durland!
Durland!"

It was quite extraordinary the volume of sound that could issue from so
small a person as Antonia. She sprang out of the car over the closed
door and ran round the house toward the ocean, while Pearl entered the
front door alone.

A slim, gray-haired figure in delft blue came out of a neighboring room
and said "Good heavens, you are not Miss Exeter, are you?"

Pearl smiled her most winning smile.

"Won't I do?" she said.

But merriment did not seem quite in order. Mrs. Conway's manners were
perfect, but she was not going to begin by being any more friendly than
she could help.

She answered politely, "Oh, perfectly, I feel sure. Only you do not
look quite as my brother's description led me to expect; but then men
are not very good at describing women."

Her hair, prematurely gray, gave more the effect of powder. Her
brows were arched so much that she seemed to be looking up from
under a thatch. They were blue eyes; not quite China blue, as Pearl
had heard the family eyes described; they were sad, appealing eyes,
which kept veiling themselves in an effort to seem dignified and
remote. Yes, Pearl thought, there was something pathetic about Mrs.
Conway--something that made her feel just a little bit as Alfred's lost
paw made her feel; so she beamed gently down upon her new employer
while that lady continued:

"I don't see how Antonia ever found you--from his account. Fortunately
the child is wonderfully quick or you would be waiting at the station
still. Where is she, by the way?"

Pearl explained that she had dashed down to the beach to ask her
brother to wait for them, and would it be all right if she went
swimming too? Over Mrs. Conway's shoulder Pearl could catch a glimpse
of the piazza, and beyond that the faultless blue rim of the horizon;
and as she talked she could hear close by the thud and hiss as a wave
went up the beach. She longed to be in the water.

"Oh, yes, go if you want to," said Mrs. Conway. She was not exactly
cordial. Gentle, friendly people like Edna Conway always go too far
when they try to be cold; they have no experience in the rôle. "But try
not to keep them waiting too long. My children hate to be kept waiting."

"I do myself," answered Pearl gayly.

"Really?" said Mrs. Conway, and the arched eyebrows went up under the
gray thatch.

Pearl saw she had said the wrong thing; but whether it was wrong for
a governess to dislike being kept waiting, or presumptuous to put
herself into the same interesting group as the Conway children, she
had no idea. She did not much care either. The smooth blue sea was
waiting for her, and she went springing upstairs, slinging off a string
of beads--translucent pearl-gray glass, the color of her eyes--and
thinking to herself that it was a mercy she had had sense enough to put
her bathing dress in her bag. She tore it out from the lower layers so
violently that shoes and brushes flew into the air like stones from a
volcano; and in a surprisingly short time she was running through the
deserted sitting room, out across the piazza, down the steep wooden
steps to the beach.

At the edge of the water Durland was standing with his back to her.
Although he was a thin boy of fifteen in a striped red-and-blue bathing
suit, he was standing with one knee advanced, his hand on his hip and a
cigarette dangling from his lip, as if he were the late King Edward VII
at Homburg. Beside him, Antonia was digging a hole like a dog--possibly
her sleeping hole for the evening--and talking all the time. She was
talking about Miss Exeter.

Durland was deeply opposed to the idea of Miss Exeter. In the first
place he was opposed to women, as a prisoner is opposed to stone
walls. He was surrounded by them, dominated by them. His mother, his
mother's maid, who had been with them forever, his sister Dorothy--they
all bullied him and cut him off from his fellow men. Sometimes, with
disgust, he heard himself using the feminized vocabulary of the women
about him, and though he was as masculine as possible--smoked and
everything--he could not shake off their influence. Then he hated
governesses as representing that most emasculated form of that most
emasculated thing--learning. His friends had already made fun of him
about it. It had been said on the beach, "I hear they're getting a
governess to keep you in order, Durlie." He had decided to make it
clear that he had nothing to do with the woman. He doubted if he even
allowed her to teach him algebra, though as a matter of fact he wanted
to pass his examination. And then, last but not least of his reasons,
he felt opposed to anything that Antonia so wildly recommended, because
that was one way of keeping her in the complete subjection to him in
which she lived.

So while she chattered of Miss Exeter and her beauty and her youngness
and the sort of niceness of the way in which she looked at you, he
stood gazing out to sea as if the best he could do for his little
sister was just not to hear her at all.

Then Antonia cried "Here she is!" and executed a four-footed leap on
finger tips and toes; and then Durland was aware of a circular motion
of white arms and long white legs whirling past his shoulder, and the
new governess had plunged into the Atlantic.

This really wouldn't do at all--governess doing hand-springs. It looked
peculiar, and yet it did pique the curiosity. He sauntered a step
nearer with a slow, sophisticated, loose-kneed walk. Miss Exeter and
Antonia were behaving foolishly, and noisily, too--splashing each other
and laughing. He himself went in as if the object of a swim were not to
disturb one unnecessary drop of water. He swam a stroke or two under
the surface, and coming up out of a wave found himself face to face
with Pearl. The wonderful radiance of those gray eyes came to rest on
his; and his heart melted within him like a pat of butter. It wasn't
just her beauty though that would probably have been enough; but it was
the immense, generous friendliness toward all the world when the world
would allow her to be friendly that warmed and comforted his young
spirit. He gazed at her, and suddenly the gaze was cut short by Pearl's
decision to stand on her head. Two white feet clapped together in front
of Durland's nose.

If she had been less beautiful he would have said to himself that she
really did not know how to behave. As it was, he thought that she
would certainly lay herself open to unkind criticism. He wanted to
protect her, and he was not without tact. He said, when she came to the
surface, blinking the water from her long, matted eyelashes, "It's nice
to have our own beach, isn't it?--to be able to do what we like--stand
on our heads or anything without being talked about."

She did not seem to get it at all.

"Let's swim out," she said, and laid her ear upon the face of the sea
as if she were a baby listening to the ticking of a watch. He swam
beside her, looking into her face, and she gave him a friendly little
beam every now and then. It was wonderful to be under no necessity of
suppressing her cheerful kindness of heart. "Let it do its deadly work"
was her feeling.

They had a good long swim, and when they came in were met by Mrs.
Conway at the head of the steps. She was dressed for dinner in a faint
pink tea gown with pearls.

She said civilly, but all on one note, "Dinner is ready, Miss Exeter."

Yes, she who had so often waited uncomplainingly for hours for her
children, pretending that the clocks were wrong, or the dinner hour
changed, or that the mistake had been hers, was now feeling outraged at
being obliged to wait ten minutes for this governess her brother had so
obstinately insisted on engaging.

"Oh, I won't be a minute, Mrs. Conway," said Pearl, feeling genuinely
sorry to have inconvenienced anyone, but not feeling at all guilty as
Mrs. Conway wanted her to feel.

"Yes, I do hope you'll contrive not to be very long," she said, and
could not understand the cause for a dark look her son gave her as he
pursued his shivering way upstairs.

She went into the sitting room, where her daughter Dorothy was already
waiting. It was not a miracle that Dolly was ready on time, but a
phenomenon to be explained by the fact that she had a bridge engagement
immediately after dinner.

She was a pretty, round-faced girl, rather like her mother, except that
her hair was still a natural light brown, and her eyes were brown too.
She did not raise her head, as her mother entered, from the fashion
paper which she was languidly studying.

"Not a very promising beginning, is it?" said Mrs. Conway. She knew
Dolly would be annoyed and she wished to cut herself off completely
from the guilty one. "Do you suppose she's going to keep us waiting for
dinner half an hour every evening?"

Dolly bent her head to examine a picture of an ermine wrap.

"Oh, well, mother," she said, "what can you expect if you give in to
every whim of Uncle Anthony's?"

Mrs. Conway made a pathetic little grimace--pathetic because it was so
obviously intended to win Dolly to her side--to make the girl feel that
she and her mother had a secret alliance against the world at large.

"You'll find, my dear," she said, "that in dealing with men it's easier
to yield at the moment and find a way out at leisure."

But Dolly, who had not even looked up long enough to see the grimace,
answered with a bitter little laugh, "It may be easier for you, but not
for us. We have to suffer. That's the trouble with you, mother--you
think of no one in the world but yourself."

Her mother did not answer--she could not. Tears rose in her blue eyes.
She had enormous capacity for being hurt. Strangely enough, there was
something in her that drove those she loved to say exactly the thing
that would hurt her most. It had always been so with her husband, and
now it was so with her children.

A misplaced fortitude always led her to hide the fact that she was hurt.

She said now with false gayety, "Well, my dear, I hope some day you
will find someone who loves you even better than I do, then."

"I'm sure I hope so," said Dolly, turning the page.

Her manner suggested that if she could not do that much her life would
indeed be a failure.

Mrs. Conway stepped out on the piazza. That was the way--you gave
up your life to making your children happy, to shielding them from
grief and anxiety, and then they blamed you and hurt you horribly
for something that was not at all your fault. She felt a moment of
resentment toward her brother. Why had Anthony insisted on this silly
plan? She had been too considerate of Anthony's feelings; she ought
to have refused to have a governess at all. It was much wiser in this
world to be stern and cruel. She decided to be stern and to begin with
Miss Exeter, who entered the sitting room at this moment. She was
wearing a plain cream-colored dress out of which her lovely head--all
brown and rose color and gold--seemed strangely bright colored.

"I suppose you're Dolly," she said in her deep warm voice, and held out
an open hand.

Dolly, like most young people, estimated beauty as the best of gifts.
She might have been almost as much captured by Pearl's as her brother
had been, except that her ego was taken up with the outrage of her
being kept waiting--she, the most important person in the house, who
had taken the trouble not only to order dinner on time but--what did
not always happen--to be on time herself.

She rose, and allowing a limp hand to pass rapidly through Miss
Exeter's, she said, "Do let's go in to dinner, mother."

"Yes, indeed," said her mother, coming in rapidly from the piazza. "We
dine at eight, Miss Exeter. Another evening I'm sure you will be on
time."

This was not perhaps a very terrible beginning to a régime of
sternness; but to Durland, just getting down, it appeared one of the
most disgusting exhibitions of slave driving that he had ever heard.

"It is entirely my fault that we are late," he said, giving his mother
a steady, brave look.

She answered irrelevantly, "Why, Durland, how nice you look! Are you
going anywhere this evening?"

"Very likely," he answered coldly. He thought to himself, "Why must she
give Miss Exeter the impression that I look like a cowboy generally?"
He was of course going nowhere.

So, having completely alienated her two elder children--Antonia had
early supper by herself--Mrs. Conway found herself obliged to direct
her conversation to the interloper. She had her revenge, if she had
only known it, by talking about her brother, questioning Miss Exeter
about him. Had he seemed very much rushed? Did he say anything about
his golf clubs? Wasn't it a delightful office? Wonderful! So cool in
summer.

Pearl hazarded that the harbor was very beautiful, and learned that Mr.
Wood's office looked north--up the Hudson. She must be careful.

Durland inquired with a friendly grin whether Uncle Anthony had
frightened her to death.

"Frightened me?" said Pearl, trying to gain time.

"Some people are awfully afraid of him."

"Naughty little boys are," said Dolly.

It always annoyed her to see her brother sitting at the foot of the
dinner table. They had fought about it for five years--whether she as
eldest child or he as the only man in the house ought to occupy this
place of honor.

"I'm not afraid of him," said Durland.

"Oh, are you a naughty little boy?" said Dolly, laughing in an
irritating way.

Mrs. Conway, to avert war, began talking about the day's schedule--the
problem of how to work in a few lessons without interfering with any of
the more important pleasures of her children.

"Antonia first, I think. Wouldn't that be your idea, Dolly--Antonia at
half past nine? Dolly and Durland sometimes sleep rather late--so good
for them, I think--but Antonia is up early. She reads sometimes from
five o'clock. She reads a great deal--everything."

"Quite the little genius, according to mother," said Dolly.

"She is clever," answered Mrs. Conway passionately. "I don't know why
you two are always so disagreeable about your little sister."

"Because you spoil her so, mother," said Dolly.

"Because she's so dirty, mother," said Durland.

Mrs. Conway made this attack a means of aligning herself with her
children against the governess.

"Oh, well," she said, "that is all going to be changed now. Miss Exeter
is going to make us all over. Antonia is to be clean and tidy, though
why in the world your uncle thinks it desirable for a child of eleven
to think of nothing but clothes I can't see. And Durland is to made
into a mathematician. I suppose I'm very ignorant, but I never could
see what good algebra does a person--all about greyhounds leaping
after hares, and men doing pieces of work at seventy-five cents a day.
I wish I could find some like that. Poor Durland, like so many people
with a creative turn of mind, simply cannot do mathematics."

"More people than creative geniuses are poor at mathematics," said
Pearl genially; and Durland, afraid that she would identify him with
his mother in this ridiculous point of view, looked into those pools of
gray light and said modestly that he was just a dub at problems.

"Then at half past eleven," Mrs. Conway went on, "you'll be free to
take Antonia to the beach--the public beach, where she likes to get a
swim and see her little friends."

"Fight a round or two with her little enemies," said her brother.

"She's only fought once this summer," said his mother. "And I for one
think she was perfectly right. Maud is the most annoying child--ugly
and impertinent like her mother, and very badly brought up."

"Well, that's not a patch on what they think about Antonia," said
Durland, and he turned to Miss Exeter. "Gee, it was great! This Maud
child said something rude about Antonia's bare feet, and she sailed in
and landed her one on the jaw; and they fought so that the nurses and
governesses all ran screaming away and the life-saving men had to come
in and separate them."

Mrs. Conway hated this story about her youngest child.

She rose from table in order to interrupt it, observing that Durland
needn't worry, as now they were all going to be made perfect.

Pearl on the whole felt encouraged. Augusta, with all her efficiency,
could not have swung this job, she thought. It required a solid, almost
irrational good temper, which Augusta did not possess. Mrs. Conway
would have rendered Augusta acid and powerless in one evening. Pearl
was not so efficient in certain ways, but she had good temper and a
robust will.

She and Durland went into the sitting room while Mrs. Conway was
getting Dolly off to her bridge party. Durland did what, alas, men
have been doing for many centuries--he attempted to impress the
object of his affection by doing one of the things most certain to
alienate her. He stood before her, lighting a cigarette, shaking the
match deliberately in the air, his legs rather wide apart. Pearl, who
had sunk into a nice deep chair, sprang up and put her hand on his
shoulder.

"Oh, don't smoke," she said.

Hundreds of women had said that to him. Even the lovely Caroline
Temple--his former love--had said that her parents had forbidden her to
have him at the house on account of his smoking; such a bad example.

"Caroline," he had said quietly, "I simply do openly what all the
others do secretly."

He had not wavered about it. Neither had her parents. He and Caroline
met at the tennis club and at the beach--no longer at her house. But he
had never thought of changing his habits. His cigarette was to him what
a car is to a theatrical star--a symbol of greatness. He was firm now,
even under the pleading of a new idol.

"I'm afraid I can't give it up," he said. "I'm afraid it has too much
of a grip on me for that."

He frowned as one who, looking inward, saw nothing but vice and ruin.
He was disappointed to find that she just let it drop--as if she were
not vitally interested in saving him. But before he had time to commit
the natural mistake of asking her why she did not rescue him from his
worse self, his mother came back into the room.

Her first words were, "Do you think that a good picture of my brother?"

Something mocking and teasing in her tone unnerved Pearl a little; so
that instead of following the direction of Mrs. Conway's eyes she said
rather wildly, "Where?"

Durland came to her rescue by politely giving her a large silver frame
in which was the photograph of a man she was prepared to admire, and
so she did admire him--so much that something tense was apparent as
she gazed into those China-blue eyes, which looked--if one had not had
private information--as if they were brown.

Mrs. Conway watched with sly amusement. The mocking quality in her
question had not arisen, as Pearl half feared, from any doubt as to
the new governess' identity, but rather from the suspicion that there
was more between her brother and this lovely creature than had been
confessed. Like many gentle sweet people, Edna Conway was extremely
suspicious; her mind ran rapidly over a situation, examining though
not necessarily believing all the darkest possibilities. She did not
actually suspect her brother of finding a safe home for a dangerous
girl during his absence, but she did say to herself--perhaps not
unnaturally, "There's more in this than meets the eye."

A voice from the piazza called, "Did Anthony's pearl arrive?" And a
woman in evening dress entered.

"Yes, Cora, this is she," said Mrs. Conway, and she added with a
certain hint of malice, "You ought to know each other--both so
consecrated to doing whatever Anthony wants done. Miss Exeter, Miss
Wellington."

Miss Wellington's emotions were clearly written on her face. She
had been in love with Anthony ever since he succeeded. This which
sounds like a paradox was the simple truth. To her, success was not
necessarily financial--though Wood's had had this agreeable aspect--but
importance and preëminence were to her as essential elements in male
attraction as feminine beauty is to most men. When she was eighteen and
Anthony still in the School of Mines there had been sentimental scenes
which had left her cold. She occasionally referred to them as "the time
when you thought you wanted to marry me," and he did not contradict
her. He had thought he did. He still admired her--she was elegant
in appearance, beautifully dressed, competent in all the practical
aspects of life. If she had married someone else he would have said to
her, "Your marriage was a great blow to me, Cora. I had always fancied
that some day you and I----" But he never would have said it until
after she was safely married.

She had, however, no intention of marrying anyone else--for the simple
reason that Anthony was by far the most attractive man of importance
that she knew. Her feelings on discovering Pearl--the young person she
had heard described as being of merely pleasing appearance--to be an
exuberant beauty, and discovering her, moreover, staring sentimentally
at Anthony's picture, were not suspicions; she had the conviction of
disaster. She couldn't be cordial; and, Pearl, who had the kind of
sensitiveness that comes from generosity, not from egotism, saw that
the moment had come for her to go upstairs and write her first letter
to the man whose face she liked so much.

She had always been a poor correspondent. She had never enjoyed
writing before, but now the idea of pouring herself out--or rather not
herself, but her observation of a situation in which he was vitally
interested--delighted her. All of us, it has been said, can write well
if we have something interesting to say. What Pearl had to say could
not fail to be interesting to the man she was writing to. There was no
motive for caution. At last she had found a man with whom she could
be candid and natural. Late into the night the sound of a portable
typewriter could be heard ticking from the room of the new governess.

It was not easy to put a routine into operation in the Conway
household. At half past nine, the hour set for Antonia's lessons,
Antonia was nowhere to be found. Pearl at last ventured to tap at Mrs.
Conway's bedroom door. Mrs. Conway was sitting up in bed, in white
satin and yellow lace, with her breakfast tray on her lap.

In response to the news that her youngest child was missing, she
answered, "She's probably gone crabbing. I'm afraid that if you want to
do lessons in summer you will have to get up a little earlier. She was
out of the house by seven, I dare say." And she smiled maliciously.

Pearl saw that coöperation was unlikely, hostility probable, and
withdrew.

Durland, her second pupil, presented himself a little ahead of time. He
came downstairs at ten, drank a cup of black coffee and ate a peach.
He was recklessly wearing his last pair of clean white trousers. He was
paler and more like a young bird than usual. He, too, had his problems.

While willing to oblige Miss Exeter in every particular, while eager to
help her and make her appear a worker of miracles, her mere proximity
prevented his mind from functioning at all. Do what she could, her
efforts to get him thinking about the problem of three men, A, B and
C, who, working together, could do a piece of work in three days, was
like trying to crank a dead automobile. She tried beaming upon him, she
tried being severe; either way his intense emotion flooded his mental
processes.

She thought, "I've solved worse problems than this, but I'm sure I
don't know what to do."

He himself gave her the clew. She had explained for the third time
that if you let _x_ equal the number of days that it took A, working
alone--when he interrupted her. He was sitting beside her, leaning his
head on his hand and staring at her in a maze of admiration.

Suddenly he said, "Do you like teaching, Miss Exeter?"

"I like teaching girls," she answered with a quick inspiration.

He drove his unwilling intelligence to take in this incredible
statement.

"Girls," he said, opening his honest blue eyes and wrinkling his
forehead. "Why girls?"

"They're so much cleverer than boys."

She tossed it off as if were a well-known and generally admitted fact.
He was gentle with her.

"People think just the opposite," he said.

"Men do."

"I think you're wrong about that, really," Durland said. "I think
anyone--even a very just man like Uncle Anthony--would say that women
can't think, at least not like men."

"Would he, indeed?" said Pearl. "Well, I don't know him; but he may be
the kind of man who prefers inferior people of both sexes."

Durland, unable to believe she really thought this, looked wistfully
into her face for a sign of relenting.

"Of course," he said, "you are very unusual. You must not judge other
women by yourself."

"I was fifteenth in my class," said Pearl. "Quite stupid compared to
the others; but even I never had any trouble with algebra. I put my
mind on it. That the trouble with boys--they're so scattered."

This was cruel, considering who had scattered him; but like many
cruelties it worked.

As the hour finished, Dolly came downstairs and said, without looking
at anyone, that she herself was going immediately in the motor to
Shinnecock for her golf lesson and could not delay an instant; but if
Antonia were there and ready there was no objection to dropping her
and Miss Exeter at the public beach. At that moment Antonia, who, just
as her mother had suggested, had been crabbing since dawn, appeared
on the lawn, streaked with seaweed and exuding a faintly ancient and
fishy smell. Dolly was like steel and would not allow her a moment for
changing; and so, dropping her crabs and nets on the piazza, Antonia
with Miss Exeter got into the car after Dolly, and were duly dropped at
the little group of dark-red bathing houses that formed the entrance to
the public beach.

Pearl found the child, in spite of her personal untidiness, a most
agreeable companion. She had read widely and with imagination. She
knew a great deal of poetry--rather martial poetry--by heart; all of
Horatius, for instance, which she said she usually recited to herself
in the dentist's chair and from which she gained comfort.

They were walking up the wide steps to the bathing house as she spoke,
and she stopped and bent down to examine a boy's bicycle--she was a
connoisseur of bicycles.

They came in sight of the beach now--all set out with bright-colored
umbrellas like gay poisonous mushrooms. It was the hour when the beach
was given over to children.

Pearl was thinking that it looked very pretty, when once again she
heard Antonia's clarion voice break out at her elbow.

"Hi, there, you kids! Leave that fort alone! It's mine!"

She darted down the narrow boardwalk toward an immense hole in the
sand, scattering a band of neatly dressed children, much as the
effete Romans were scattered by the first onslaught of the northern
barbarians. Pearl could not help laughing as she saw children run
to their governesses or snatched back by their nurses; but the next
moment she was sorry, for she saw that it was being said in various
tongues that Antonia was quite the worst brought-up child in the world.
Pearl was nothing if not a partisan, and she was already completely on
Antonia's side.

She and Antonia were supposed to bathe early so as to leave the two
Conway bathhouses free for Mrs. Conway and Dolly when they appeared at
a later and more fashionable hour. "Everything in our family is done
for Dolly," said Antonia when she was finally dragged out of the water.
"It makes me tired the way mother indulges every whim of hers."

Rebellious or not, however, Antonia was dressed--as much dressed as
she ever was, which was about three-quarters as much as other little
girls--by half after twelve.

She and Pearl went back to the beach and sat down under the
red-and-black-striped umbrella which the life-saving man had stuck in
the sand for them as if he were about to do a pole vault with it. And
presently Durland, ready for his swim, came and plopped down beside
them, and immediately a girl in a one-piece tomato-colored bathing
dress rose from another part of the beach and came and sat on the other
side of him.

Antonia, with a thin brown arm, still smelling very slightly of
crabs in spite of her swim, clasped about Pearl's neck, blew in her
governess' ear the information that this was Caroline Temple, Durland's
best girl. Like so many courtships, this one, to the outside world,
seemed to be carried on principally by the lady. She neither looked at
nor spoke to Pearl and Antonia.

To Durland she said, "Shall we go in now?"

Durland was digging a small hole near Miss Exeter's hand; his shoulder
was turned to Caroline and he did not shift it as he replied, "You can
if you like."

There was a pause. Apparently she didn't like, for she did not move,
and after a time she said in the same tone of lowered confidence, "I
have the car here. I'll drive you home."

"Thanks," said Durland. "I'm on my bicycle." Another pause.

"Shall we play tennis this afternoon?"

"I may," answered Durland.

Pearl began to feel her sex pride wounded. She bent forward, and
beaming upon the newcomer, she said, "You play tennis?"

Caroline just glanced at her.

"Of course I do," she said.

She had not the smallest intention of being rude, for she was a
sweet-tempered child; even less did it occur to her to be jealous
of an elderly woman of twenty-four; but her mind, concentrated upon
the pursuit of Durland, was rendered irritable by inconsequential
interruptions. Durland, however, though no critic of manners, was aware
that a gesture of friendship from a goddess had not been gratefully
received.

"You might be civil about it," he said, and then looking up at Pearl,
he asked in a softened tone of adoration whether she would like to play
tennis that afternoon.

"Doubles?" said Caroline, as if this were, of course, possible though
utterly undesirable.

"Would you like to play doubles?" Durland asked again.

"If it is convenient to your mother," said Pearl.

Durland dismissed such an idea as repellent to him and, glancing over
his shoulder to Caroline, he said, "All right. Miss Exeter and I will
play you--if you can get a fourth."

It was not the way Caroline had designed the set and she said so. She
said clearly and rather complainingly that she had expected to play
with Durland, and yet she did not seem wounded so much as thwarted.

"I'm sure I don't know whom I can get," she said.

"I suppose you can get the faithful Wally--anyone can get Wally."

"I thought you did not like Wally."

"I?" said Durland, as if it were far beneath him ever to have been
aware of Wally's existence; and without any further answer he got up
and walked into the Atlantic so suddenly that Miss Temple, scrambling
as rapidly as possible to her feet, was several yards behind him as he
dived into his first wave.

"Isn't she pretty?" said Antonia. "She's been his best girl for two
summers."

"I don't think he's very nice to her," said Pearl.

"Well," said Antonia, giving one of her little shakes of the head, "it
would seem wonderful to me if Durlie spoke to me at all. However, it
may be over. Like what Shakespeare says--one foot on land. Next time I
have a chance I'll look and see if her picture is still in the back of
his watch."

Presently they were back in the same order--Durland first, and Miss
Temple following. He sat dripping, and taking a cigarette from a
package he had left on the sand, he began groping for a match.

"Oh, Durland," said Miss Temple, "I do wish you wouldn't smoke. It
isn't good for you. It looks so badly." Durland gave a short laugh that
seemed to say that if he had regarded public opinion he would have made
of life a very different thing. In her distress Caroline turned to the
stranger whose presence she had so far refused to acknowledge. "Don't
you think it's wrong for him to smoke?" she said.

It was Pearl's moment.

"Why, no," she answered, "I can't see anything wrong about it."

She put out a lazy hand and took one from the little paper envelope.
Durland's hand, with the match in it, was arrested.

"But--you're not going to smoke--here? On the public beach?"

"Isn't it allowed?" asked Pearl, all innocence. "It must be--you are
smoking. Let me have a match."

"I haven't a match," he said, and threw away his own cigarette so
that she could not get a light from that. It was an important moment
in his life. He thought rapidly. "I hope you won't think me fresh or
anything," he said, "but I don't think a governess ought to smoke, if
you know what I mean--not in public anyhow."

She wasn't angry, only thoughtful.

"Well, that's only your opinion."

It touched him that she knew so little of the world--or of her own
position. He said gently, "I'm afraid you'd find it was everybody's
opinion."

"Ought you to be so much influenced by the opinion of other people?"

"Yes, indeed," he answered. The cigarette with which she was still
playing might separate them forever. His mother, he knew, was just
waiting for a good excuse to send her away, and where could she find a
better one?

She argued it further, tapping the cigarette on her hand as if she were
about to place it between her lips.

"But you don't pay any attention when people say you oughtn't to smoke."

Even then he did not know that a trap had been set for him. On the
contrary, he thought he had an original idea of some beauty when he
said impulsively, "I tell you what, I'll swear off if you will."

She seemed to debate it through an agonizing second or two, while he
looked at her with dog-like eyes. Then she smiled and gave him a strong
hand.

"All right," she said. "That's a bargain."

Durland felt flooded with joy--not only at having saved a beloved woman
but at having done it in just the right way. He picked up the package
of cigarettes and flung it toward the sea. It did not quite reach the
water and Caroline sprang up and brought it back to him.

"I suppose you thought that was empty," she said.

He tossed it away again without thanking her, but at last to her
repeated clamors he yielded the information that he had given up
smoking.

"Oh, Durland," she said, "now you can come to the house again. Is that
why you did it?"

He did not want to deceive the girl, but he could not resist the
temptation of allowing her to deceive herself. He did not answer
directly; but rising, he said, "Anyone who wishes to swim to the
barrels with me may now do so."

It was more like an invitation than anything he had said all morning,
and they were soon swimming side by side.

Presently Mrs. Conway in a dark-blue silk bathing dress with ruffles
appeared and dropped a string of pearls into the lap of the governess
as if they had been beads. Pearl had never had such pearls in her
hands before. They were heavier--much heavier than she had imagined,
and brighter, more iridescent, better worth looking at. She was not
given to envy, but she was aware of thinking that there was something
slightly wrong with a world where Mrs. Conway had pearls and she had
not. Antonia insisted on her putting them around her neck.

"It's much safer--you can't drop them in the sand--Cousin Cora always
does--that's Miss Wellington; she's no relation, but she likes us to
call her cousin--she wants us to call her aunt, but mother says, 'Wait
till she is.'"

"Oh," said Pearl, conscious of a distinct pang, "is she going to be?"

Antonia gave one of her head shakes.

"Mother says, 'Say not the struggle nought availeth.' Older people make
a lot of fun of their best friends, don't they?"

"Would you like her for an aunt?" said Pearl.

"Yes and no," Antonia replied. "I think the wedding would be fun, and
I think I'd be a bridesmaid or something; but as a family we prefer
to keep Uncle Anthony to ourselves. Mother says if he marries Cora
we wouldn't lose him as much as if he married a stranger. There was
a Russian actress one year, with red, hair; I didn't think her a bit
pretty. She used to send mother flowers and seats for her plays. They
were all pretty sad though. Then there was another time--she was
married this time, but mother said----"

Antonia broke off to call Pearl's attention to Dolly, who was coming
down the boardwalk in a bathing dress of as many hues as Joseph's coat.
Everything about her was bent--her back, her knees, her elbows, her
fingers, and every crook was obviously intended to charm the young man
by whose side she was walking, who was staring out to sea and very
thoughtfully putting cotton in his ears. Even Pearl, indifferent as she
then supposed herself to be to all men, could not but admit that he was
as splendid an example of young blond manhood as she had ever seen.
Then as he came nearer she saw a certain pale red-rimmedness about
the eyes, and she thought, "He's the kind you'd have to describe as
handsome, and yet if anyone else did, you'd say, 'Oh, do you think him
handsome? I don't like his looks at all.'"

Antonia meantime was pouring his life history into her ear.

"Allen Williams. He's twenty-one and has been a freshman for two
years--isn't be handsome?--and very vicious--gambles and drinks and
everything. I heard the Williams' governess telling someone the other
day that Monsieur Allen was _déjà très connu dans le monde--le monde
gal--gal_--something or other. I wish I knew more French. You can't
really tell much what goes on on the beach unless you know French. Of
course, he's just amusing himself with Dolly."

"I tell you what I think," said Pearl, suddenly becoming aware that she
had been staring, and not only this, but also stared at. "I think it's
horrid of you to be against your own sister."

"But look at the way she's giggling and wriggling. I feel ashamed of
her," said Antonia.

"That's the very time you ought to stick up for her," said Pearl.

"Well, it's a point of view," said Antonia. "That's what Uncle Anthony
always says when he doesn't agree with you but is too lazy to argue it
out."

Dolly and Mr. Williams had reached them by this time. Dolly was for
passing by, but Williams stopped and said in a voice clearly audible,
"And who is the beautiful girl in the pearls?"

Dolly's voice was too low to be audible. She stopped. Spoiled and
selfish she might be, but she was at heart a lady. She introduced Mr.
Williams to Miss Exeter with perfect civility. Williams took Pearl's
hand and looked at her with something fierce and blank in his eyes.

Oh, how well she knew that look!



CHAPTER THREE


That evening Pearl had the satisfaction of writing Mr. Wood that
Durland had stopped smoking. She gave the whole scene on the beach.
Never before in all her life had she been amused at writing a letter;
she had looked upon them as a duty to be paid to friendship. But to
this man whom she had never seen she enjoyed writing. It was like
patting Alfred--you could express your friendly emotion without fear of
rousing any response whatsoever. Almost every day she had some progress
to report--Mrs. Conway had consented to keep her jewelry in the safe
in her bedroom provided for the purpose. At first she had positively
refused, asserting that as she could never remember the combination
her jewels remained locked up until an expert was sent down from town
to open the safe; and that for her part she would as lief a thief had
them, who might get some fun out of them, as that they stayed locked up
in her safe for the rest of time. But Pearl very competently offered to
make the combination and remember it, and come every morning and get
them out at any hour Mrs. Conway chose. A rumor of burglaries in the
neighborhood induced Edna to yield.

Then before a week was over algebra became to Durland an illumined
subject, a study of mystic beauty and romantic association. He not
only mastered it in the proud determination to prove that men were not
fools but he invented clever discussions to lengthen his brief hour
into an hour and a half; while Antonia, wondering at his industry, kept
insisting that it was time to go to the public beach.

All this Pearl wrote, day by day. But she could not write the thing
which of all others she knew Mr. Wood wanted to hear--that Antonia was
dressed like a nice little girl. The best she could say was that the
child was not actually dirty. Nor could she say that she had gained
Mrs. Conway's friendship. That lady remained aloof, a little malicious,
always in the opposition, treating Pearl's triumphs as petty tyrannies
over the children's free spirits, treating Pearl's failures as
splendid triumphs in the field of human freedom.

When Pearl appealed to her with "I don't think Antonia ought to wear
that torn dress to Olive's for tea, Mrs. Conway," Edna would smile and
answer, "You know, Miss Exeter, I can't think those things a matter of
life and death the way you do. I own I should be sorry if at eleven she
thought of nothing but dress."

"Like Dolly," said Antonia.

That, Pearl discovered, was the secret of Antonia's dislike of
neatness. She was afraid of being like Dolly--Dolly, who represented
simply everything of which Antonia disapproved.

All this Pearl wrote to Anthony; long, long letters composed after the
rest of the household were in bed. "It is long after midnight, and I
should be in bed instead of writing----"

She paused. The well-known illustrator who had done her picture for
the cleaning-fluid firm had told her--and the illustrator was herself
a beautiful woman, experienced in the ways of the world--that all love
letters from unmarried girls ended with the words, "But it is after
midnight, and I ought to be in bed instead," whether they were written
at noon or at night.

Love letters! How absurd!

Letters which amuse the writer to write rarely fail to amuse the
recipient to read. Pearl's letters, arriving as they did in bunches,
amused him not only on account of their dashing style but on account of
the contrast between this style and the pale demure little person he
remembered. Anything written day by day gains a serial interest; and
Anthony, without newspapers, waited for Pearl's letters as the great
interest of life. He had never felt so intimate with his family as
through her careful description of them. His sister, though a fairly
regular correspondent, had to perfection the art of covering the paper
with sentences which by the time they reached her correspondent meant
nothing. "I did so wonder whether the preserved ginger I ordered for
you had caught your steamer of if the man had mistaken the line--he
seemed so stupid----" Pages like this, when he wanted to hear of the
contemporary life of the children.

Yet this time the first sentence of his sister's letter interested him:


     She arrived the day before yesterday--your priceless
     pearl--Antonia's idea of Helen of Troy. But do you think Helen
     would have made a comfortable sort of governess? This young woman
     is entirely untrained--turns handsprings on the beach and goes
     shouting about the tennis courts in a loud Western voice that I
     do hope the children won't learn to copy. Dolly, who is, as you
     know, the most sensitively refined being that was ever made, is
     quite shocked by her. The two younger ones like her well enough,
     but I can't imagine her ever having any control over them. I
     always think one must be a little disciplined oneself in order
     to exercise control over others. I must confess, Anthony, that I
     should pack your selection off tomorrow if I had not given you
     my word to keep her. Cora quite agrees with me that Miss Exeter
     would do better on the variety stage than as a governess. I don't
     think there is any news. Durland has entirely given up smoking,
     as I always said he would--entirely of his own accord. You don't
     believe me, but a mother has a sort of psychic understanding of
     her children.


How could he help being on the other side? Yet the letter gave him
something to think about. Helen of Troy--that pale, thin girl! Well,
he should never understand women's estimates of other women's looks.
He laughed aloud over the note about Durland's smoking, Edna and her
psychic understanding!

But thinking of psychic things--and far away in the folds of that
bare Mexican valley Anthony had time to think--something psychic came
from Miss Exeter's letters which he had not felt in her personality.
He could not call it exactly conceit, but it was like a conviction of
beauty. He did not know how to describe it, but it made him think of
an essay by a novelist which he had read, when or where he could not
remember--was it by Stevenson?--in which the writer had spoken of the
uncontrollable way in which heroines whom you constantly described
as lovely kept turning plain and uninteresting on your hands; and
the other way round--how heroines, with just a few words of friendly
description, suddenly walked through your pages as tremendous beauties,
with no assistance from you. Clara Middleton, in the Egoist, had been
cited as one of the latter class. Well, it seemed to him that this
girl was like that. He had seen her--a nice-looking young woman, but
her letters were the letters of a beauty. Probably it was the profound
subconscious egotism of the woman coming out. The point was that she
was getting away with it. He wrote and asked Durland to send him a
photograph of her. But it did not need much diplomacy on the part of
Pearl to prevent its ever being dispatched.

As a matter of fact, she did not dread discovery very much. It seemed
to her it would be nothing more than an awkward moment--after all,
he already knew her better than he had ever known Augusta--only
before he came back she must have worked all the desired miracles.
Far from dreading his return, she looked forward to it with veiled
excitement--great fun, like taking off your masks at a fancy ball.

She had been with the Conway family almost a month when she witnessed
the first trial of strength between the hostile factions--Dolly against
Antonia. There was only one spare room in the cottage since the
governess had come. Dolly announced at luncheon, very casually, that
she had invited Allen Williams to spend the following Sunday with them.
Antonia broke out at once with the passionate sense of defeat that
betrays the young. She had invited her best, indeed her only, friend
Olive, who was to be abandoned by her family, for the coming Sunday.

"You said I could ask her, mother. I did ask her--you let me ask her.
I asked her first--before Dolly asked Allen--you said I could"--over
and over again; but Dolly's flashing silence was more impressive.
Pearl knew that it was not so much a question of justice as of trial
by torture. Mrs. Conway would yield to whichever of her children could
inflict the most pain upon her, and that, of course, was Dolly. Dolly
did not reiterate her position like Antonia. Now and then she dropped
a frigid sentence that revealed her argument. Her mother had always
told her she might ask anyone she liked for week ends. She had asked
Allen and he had accepted. As for Olive, she lived in Southampton--why
shouldn't she stay in her own house? It was just as an excuse for
little girls to sit up talking all night and steal food out of the
pantry and get the whole household upset.

This was shrewd. The last time Olive had come to stay it had resulted
in the loss of a cook. Mrs. Conway remembered this as Dolly spoke.
Her position was painful. She had promised Antonia she could have her
friend this Sunday, when Olive's parents were away. But then on the
other hand she had also encouraged Dolly to ask anyone she liked to
the house. Yet she disliked young Williams and feared Dolly's growing
devotion to him. Somebody had already said to her that it was a pity
for Dolly to make herself so conspicuous with him--he was no good, that
young man. But part of her tragedy as a mother was that she sympathized
with her children when thwarted in something in which she knew they
ought to be thwarted. She knew now that Dolly's hold on young William's
interest was of the slightest; she knew that the girl had obtained this
promise of a week end visit with difficulty--perhaps even it was mere
convenience--he wanted to go to some party, or to see some other woman.
Mrs. Conway knew that if she decided in favor of Antonia, as perhaps
strict justice would demand, there never would be any other week end
for Williams. Dolly would lose him; and though this was exactly what
she desired, she could not be so cruel as to bring it about. So she
decided in favor of her elder daughter, and managed as usual to anger
both of them.

"I'm afraid, my dear," she said to Antonia, as if she were being
particularly impartial, "that this is one of those terrible occasions
on which you are called upon to be unselfish and noble and all that. I
own I don't care for this young man who says bur-r-rud and wor-ruld,
and seems to me to be quite the dullest person I ever met; but Dolly
is older than you, you know, and must be allowed to have her playmates
first. When you are a big girl and want to have beautiful young morons
to stay----"

"I hope I shan't ride roughshod over other people's rights," said
Antonia with snapping eyes.

"I'm sorry my friends must be insulted, mother, just because I have
ventured to invite them to your house. Believe me, if I had a house of
my own I would not trouble you either with my friends or myself."

Tears rose to Mrs. Conway's eyes. She was so deeply hurt she could not
even pretend that she wasn't; so hurt that she spoke naturally to the
governess when for a second after luncheon, owing to the withdrawal in
opposite directions of her two daughters, she found herself alone with
the interloper.

"Young people are so cruel," she said. "What more could I do for
Dolly? I sacrifice poor little Antonia, I make the house hers--and she
tells me practically she only stays with me because she has to."

As Pearl went upstairs Dolly called her into her room--the first time
she had ever done such a thing. But after all the woman with all her
faults had the virtue of not being a member of the family.

"You see what I mean, Miss Exeter," she said, looking up from polishing
her nails with a feverish rapidity. "Everything in this house is done
for Antonia--or would be if I did not fight for my rights. Nobody likes
to make a scene, but to ask a man like Mr. Williams--you don't know,
but women--older women--married women--like Mrs. Temple--so silly--it
just bores Allen; but he feels he ought to go there, and when he said
he would come here instead, fancy my having to put him off because
Antonia wanted that fat Olive to come, when Olive lives here anyhow."

Pearl's limpid gray eyes gazed at her sympathetically. It was her
nature to be sympathetic, and presently Dolly was telling her how she
had, first met Allen, how he had danced and how wonderfully their
steps went together. It seemed as if she had remembered every syllable
that had ever fallen from his lips, and loved to repeat them, though
they were of a conspicuously commonplace character. Then she confided a
secret--he had asked himself. She would never have dared to ask him.

"Dared!" said Pearl, every inch the feminist.

"Oh, well," Dolly retreated rapidly, "this house is so full of
uninteresting children like Antonia and Durland--under your feet all
day long; but when Allen said himself, telling how he didn't want to go
to the Temples, 'Why don't you ask me?'----"

Her voice softened over the remembered tones; of course she had asked
him.

Pearl's heart sank at this news. She wondered if she were vain to
attach a dread significance to his initiative. She remembered that
peculiar fierce stare from those pale eyes. Well, she wouldn't speak to
him--that was all there was to that.

Presently she left Dolly and went to knock on Antonia's door, which was
suspiciously shut; usually Antonia lived and dressed open to corridors.

Yes, as Pearl feared, Antonia was lying on her bed, crumpled as to
clothes and damp about the cheeks. Miss Exeter could see now, she said;
she was treated like a step-child. Her mother didn't love her as she
loved Dolly, and how could anyone love Dolly?--that's what she couldn't
understand.

Pearl had not thought it worth while to try to argue Antonia's
case with Dolly, but the child was so clear-minded she did try to
put Dolly's side of the case to her. Antonia admitted it all, but
impatiently.

"And why is he willing to come," she said--"a man like him? He's just
making a convenience of Dolly, or something. He doesn't think anything
about her at all."

It was exactly Pearl's own impression. Then why was he coming?

He came on Friday afternoon by the fast train, and Dolly in her new
pink hat and her white motoring coat--just back from the cleaner and
smelling a little bit of gasoline, but so much more becoming than her
gray one--went to meet him. She and Allen and Mrs. Conway were all
dining out that evening, and Pearl had organized a picnic for herself
and Antonia and Durland, far up the beach, with the moon and a fire
of driftwood and a great deal of excellent food. They did not see the
house guest that evening.

The next morning at half past nine Pearl was obliged to go to the
garage to find Antonia; she was studying the oiling system of the green
car. There was nothing unfriendly in her attitude to study; she was
perfectly willing to learn, if she could only manage to remember that
lesson time had come.

They had lessons on the piazza. Pearl, looking out over the dazzling
sea and thinking how pleasant a swim was going to be, had said "How
do you spell 'separate,' Antonia?" and Antonia, twining her bare toes
about the calf of the other leg, had got as far as "Well, I know it's
an _e_ where you expect an _a_ or just the other way," when Williams,
bending his head slightly under the curtains, stepped from the dining
room upon the piazza.

He looked extremely polished and soaped. He had on white trousers, a
gray coat, a blue tie. Antonia, who had never seen him so near before,
stared at him, forgetting even to say good morning. He bowed rather
formally to the governess, but to Antonia he said, "Where were you
last evening? I was watching for you and you didn't appear."

He sat down and drew her toward him with an immaculate brown hand.

Pearl had never seen Antonia embarrassed before. The child kept
glancing up at Williams as if fascinated, and glancing quickly away
again as if dazzled. Then she turned both knees inward, seemed to dig
her toes into the boards and answered in a low, husky voice that they
had been out on a picnic.

"I think you might have asked me," said Williams.

He spoke in that tone of false comedy--as if anything you said to a
child must be ridiculous--that was peculiarly annoying to Pearl.

Antonia bent her head and muttered that she had not thought he would
have enjoyed it.

"I should have enjoyed it," he said, and drew Antonia closer, so that
over her head he could give Pearl a hard, significant look.

Pearl rose to her feet. This was a situation she understood thoroughly.
She was not going to lose another job on account of a man--a boy
rather, younger than herself. In spite of Williams' protests and
teasing efforts to retain the child, she swept her up to her bedroom
to finish her lessons. But she no longer had Antonia's full attention.

When asked again to spell "separate," Antonia answered, "He is
handsome, isn't he?"

"Not to my mind," Pearl answered firmly. "He's clean and healthy
looking."

"He's beautifully clean," said Antonia. "Think of going about with
someone like that!" The measure of her collapse might be taken when a
few minutes later she dashed to the window to watch him drive away with
her sister, and turning back she exclaimed sadly, "Gee, I never thought
I'd wish I was Dolly!"

Pearl thought to herself that there was no great difficulty in seeing
through this young man's plans. He wasn't the kind who wept on the desk
like the third vice president of the Encyclopedia company. No, he was
going to use Antonia's open admiration as an avenue to the governess.
Well, the situation could not prolong itself. This was Saturday, and he
would be going early Monday morning. There oughtn't to be much trouble
in keeping out of his way. She could count on Dolly's coöperation. She
sighed, wishing that Mrs. Conway were more friendly. Dolly would keep
him playing golf as late as possible; they would not meet again until
luncheon, and that was perfectly safe.

She miscalculated. Williams' will was stronger than Dolly's. It was a
day of long, regular waves, high but without force, turned back from
the shore by a northerly wind. Antonia was standing near shore diving
them, wave after wave, and shaking her short hair out of her eyes after
each one passed over her head. Pearl had swum out beyond the line of
breakers and was sitting on a barrel, enjoying the sensation of being
pulled gently in and out as each swell rolled past her. Suddenly on the
shore she saw Williams and Dolly appear in their bathing things. She
understood it all. Dolly had been lured to the beach at this early hour
by the idea of an undisturbed tête-à-tête. The girl sat down, as if
confident that Williams was going to do the same, but he stood gazing
out to sea. Pearl felt his eyes reach her, and then he dived into one
of the great crested billows and she saw that he was making straight
for her barrel. He was coming fast, but he was coming under water. When
he reached the barrel Pearl was not there. Looking back, he saw her
almost at the shore.

He was, however, the kind of man in whom opposition rouses a sort of
malignant persistence. All through luncheon she kept catching his pale
eye. She thought Durland noticed it, and hoped that Dolly didn't.
Antonia hardly moved her eyes from his face.

After lunch, when they were all in the sitting room, Antonia ran away
to get him a match before anyone else had noticed he needed one. Dolly
smiled.

"What's this, Allen?" she said. "Is Antonia another of your victims?"

Williams frowned, not because he was in the least annoyed but to
indicate that he was a man impervious to flattery. Pearl had one of her
inspirations.

"If it's true," she said, "Mr. Williams has it in his power to do us
all a great favor. Do ask him, Dolly, to say to Antonia that he likes
to see a little girl neatly dressed like other little girls."

"That would, indeed, be a miracle," said Dolly, not wanting anything
Allen might accomplish to be underestimated.

"Certainly, if I can," said Allen, looking at the governess.

Pearl was standing turning over the papers on the table, ready for
flight, although with Durland and Dolly both in the room she felt
perfectly secure. She was delighted with her idea.

"It would be a great help in my life," she said, "if you would." And
she looked straight at him and smiled as if she saw before her a
combination of a god and a saint. It was a look that went straight to
his rather stupid head, through which all sorts of ideas began to dance
brightly.

"And what do I get out of it?" he asked.

Dolly laughed. "Oh, Allen," she said, "you must not be so mercenary."

And Pearl, avoiding his hard, demanding eyes, slipped quietly out of
the room just as Antonia returned with the matches.

Pearl had not been in her room more than five minutes when a knock came
at the door, instantly followed by the entrance of Antonia. The first
impression was that the child was in physical pain. Her whole face was
trembling, her hand was clasped over her mouth, and the instant the
door was shut behind her she burst out crying.

Mr. Williams had said she was dirty!

Pearl, full of pity and feeling horribly guilty, denouncing Williams in
her heart as a heavy-handed idiot, could not but marvel over the power
of romantic love. Everyone, even the adored Durland, had been saying
for years that Antonia was dirty, and eliciting nothing from her but
pitying smiles; and now this agony of shame and remorse was occasioned
by the same words from a total stranger.

Suffering like this, Pearl knew, could be allayed only by action. She
invented action. Antonia should appear for church the next morning,
clean, faultless, perfect in every detail. Antonia shook her head
dumbly--she had nothing--it was Saturday and all her white dresses were
in the wash--her light-blue crêpe de chine had raspberry-ice stains on
it--and she had hidden it away; her green linen was covered with motor
oil. Mrs. Conway's maid had long ago refused to take any responsibility
for Antonia's wardrobe, and Pearl could not blame her.

But the value of the plan was its difficulty. Antonia's agony would
not have been soothed by anything easy, and this was not easy. It took
all afternoon and most of the evening. Under some crab nets a pair of
gray suède slippers were found, which Pearl cleaned with gasoline and
a little powder; stuffed into the crown of a riding hat to make it
smaller was a pair of fine gray silk stockings; her best black hat,
worn only once, had fallen into the water and was a ruin; but retrimmed
with a pink rose from an evening dress of Pearl's, it looked better
than before. At last a crumpled pink linen dress was discovered wrapped
about some precious phonograph records. Pearl borrowed the maid's
electric iron and went to work at this. She was so tired when she had
finished that she omitted, for the first time, her daily letter to
Anthony.

Dressing Antonia the next morning was an excitement. The child's
spirits had revived so that she could look at the situation with her
customary detachment.

"I'm like that thing in the Bible," she said. "I've put away childish
things."

"It will be great fun, you'll find, being as nice-looking as you can
be," said Pearl.

Antonia nodded.

"But the other was fun too," she said.

Everything turned out exactly as Pearl had intended. Dolly did not
come down to breakfast, and Williams did. So, by a miracle, did
Mrs. Conway. Antonia's entrance created a sensation--her carefully
curled hair, her spotless linen, her long slim legs in their gray silk
stockings. Not only Williams but even Durland administered honeyed
words of praise. Mrs. Conway approved of her child, but allowed no
credit to Miss Exeter.

"It's so silly to worry about those things," she said. "I always knew
that she would eventually begin to take care of her appearance. I shall
write Anthony that feminine vanity has asserted itself just as I knew
it would."

Mrs. Conway and Pearl and Durland and Antonia went to church,
accompanied, as Pearl knew they would be accompanied, by Williams. He
said it was entirely on account of Antonia--was a privilege to go to
church with a little girl who looked as pretty as she did. Although
he spoke in an irritating tone, as if you could make fun of a child
without a child suspecting it, Pearl saw that Antonia was flattered at
receiving any of his priceless attention.

In the few weeks of Pearl's stay she had become attached to the little
wooden church on the dunes. She always sat so that she could look out
through the door of the south transept, the upper half of which was
usually open, and see the ocean; when it was rough it seemed to roll
out a deeper accompaniment than the organ's to:


     _Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,_
     _For those in peril on the sea._


There was a tradition that this was always sung.

Sometimes an impatient dog would stand on its hind legs and look in,
seeking a praying master; and once a wolfhound had bounded over the
half door of one transept and, not finding his owner, had bounded out
at the other.

During the sermon Pearl, it must be confessed, was engaged in composing
her daily report to Anthony. At last she had accomplished the great
achievement--at last she could tell him the thing he most wanted to
hear. She made up her mind that she would begin: "All through church
I looked at Antonia's pretty little profile under a black hat trimmed
with pink roses----" Life presented itself to her in the form of her
letters to Wood, thus offsetting the sense of loneliness that Mrs.
Conway's mocking aloofness caused her. She was still composing when,
after church was over, they walked--Mrs. Conway and Williams ahead and
Pearl with Durland on one side and Antonia on the other--the few yards
that separated the church from the public beach. Antonia's appearance
was much noticed.

Pearl heard an elderly gentleman murmur to Mrs. Conway, "Your little
daughter is lovely--lovely. Is beauty contagious?" And he gave a
glance at Pearl, who was looking perfectly unconscious but caught Mrs.
Conway's bitter reply: "Thank you; I see you feel she was never exposed
to it before."

For the first time in her life Antonia was the center of a group
of boys--many of them in their first long trousers; all with stiff
turned-down collars, white against the sunburn and freckles of their
summer complexions. They were telling her, with the perfect candor of
youth, that she might have been the recipient of their attentions long
before this if she had been dressed as she was dressed today.

"How could I go round the links with a girl without shoes?" one
conservative had wailed, revealing a hidden struggle. And Bill Temple,
Caroline's elder brother, a year older than Durland, and likely to
be junior tennis champion, had said loudly in passing, "Gee, the kid
certainly looks great in that get-up!" If he had composed "Helen, thy
beauty is to me----" all in her honor he could not have given her a
fuller joy.

Pearl was so happy that she allowed her generous nature to lead her
into making an acknowledgment to Williams. She had just heard him agree
to motor to New York after dinner that evening--his stay was a question
of only a few hours now, and on the crowded beach----

She looked up at him and said, waves of gratitude and friendliness
rolling toward him like a perfume, "We owe all this to you."

He answered without the least change of expression and in a tone that
did not carry an inch beyond Pearl's left ear, "Have you any idea what
you do to men?--drive them mad----"

She did not answer at all, but stepped back and allowed other people to
come between them; and presently, knowing that the Conway car would be
crowded, she invited the willing Durland to walk home with her along
the beach.

There were a good many outsiders at luncheon, and though Williams
followed her closely into the dining room she slipped into a chair
between the two children, and all through the meal was aware of
Williams' steady, rather sulky stare from across the table.

After luncheon was over she disappeared. She had the afternoon to
herself, for Antonia was going out with her mother. Pearl took a
parasol and went and sat on the beach, concealed by the jutting of a
dune. She took a book with her, but hardly read. She sat there for an
hour, and about four, knowing that Dolly and Williams had arranged
to play golf and that she would now have the house to herself, she
went back, thinking about the Sunday papers. Almost the only hardship
she felt in her position was that her rights to the newspapers were
not properly respected--the butler, who was a baseball enthusiast,
regularly removing the papers to the pantry as soon as Mrs. Conway had
read the headlines.

The sitting room was deserted and the newspapers strewn about the
table--a condition which should have suggested to Pearl that the room
had been too recently occupied for the servants to have had time to
come in and put it to rights. But she didn't think of that. She took up
the first sheet that came to hand and saw a long illustrated article
about the turquoise mines of Mexico, into which she plunged with a
thrill of interest. She was standing with both arms outstretched, her
gold-colored head a little bent.

Suddenly she felt two hard, masculine arms go round her, a kiss on the
back of her neck, another on her reluctantly turned cheek. It happened
in a second. As she struggled ungracefully, angrily, she saw over
Williams' shoulder the figure of Durland rising from the hammock on the
piazza.

If Wood had received that batch of Sunday letters at the mine he would
have torn open Pearl's first--as likely to promise the most amusement.
But he got them at his hotel in Mexico City, and conscious of great
leisure--for he was staying there a week or so on his way home while
he dickered over taxes with a governmental department--he adopted a
different method. He ranged them before him inversely in the order of
interest. They came--first Durland's. He wondered what Durland wanted,
for his nephew was never moved to the momentous effort of writing
except under the stress of great financial necessity; second, Edna's;
third, that of Miss Wellington, who did not write often; and last
Pearl's thick typewritten budget.


     _Dear Uncle Anthony_: I know mother is writing her point of view
     about this, and I want you to know the truth. I was there and
     mother was not. Miss Exeter could not have helped what happened.
     If it was any of our faults it was Dolly's--not only for having
     that kind of a thug to stay but for being as usual an hour late in
     getting off, so that Miss Exeter thought they had gone. You can
     imagine how I felt in seeing a great beast like Williams coming
     up behind her and grabbing her like that. I let him know what I
     thought, but I would like to have pasted him one on the jaw. I
     wish you had been here. Mother is all wrong--a dreadful injustice
     is being done a very wonderful woman. She is patient, but I don't
     suppose she will stand much more. I wouldn't if I were her.

     Your affectionate nephew,
     DURLAND CONWAY


Wood tore open his sister's letter. His thought was, "Impossible!"


     _Dear Anthony_: I am sorry, after the trouble you took ["A lot you
     are," he thought] that your priceless pearl will really have to
     go. It has been an impossible situation from the first, but I have
     loyally tried to carry it through for your sake--you seemed to
     care so much about it. I have never liked the girl. She has a sort
     of breezy aggressiveness that I can't stand, and Cora Wellington
     felt just the same. I did not write you, but that first evening
     Cora said to me, "Where is Anthony's judgment--sending you a
     girl like that?" I do not like the effect she has had on the
     children--taking all the spirit out of poor Durland, and Antonia
     appeared dressed for church this morning like a little French doll.

     However, when Durland discovered her this afternoon clasped in
     the arms of a detestable young man by the name of Williams--Allen
     Williams, whom Dolly, poor child, has had spending Sunday, much
     against my inclination--I did feel that things had reached a point
     when even you would hardly blame me for getting rid of her. I sent
     for the girl and told her she must go. I was surprised and, I own,
     hurt, Anthony, when she answered that you had extracted a secret
     promise from her not to go until you released her.

     I hope you see what a disagreeable and humiliating position you
     have put me in. I think I should have ignored both her promise
     and my own, except that the girl has acquired such a hold over
     Durland and Antonia that they go on like little maniacs about the
     injustice I am doing her. Dolly and Cora entirely agree with me.
     However, I have consented to keep her until I get a telegram from
     you releasing us both. I do hope you will immediately send it on
     the receipt of this letter.


Wood laid the letter down with a feeling of the most intense surprise.
Allen Williams--a young man unfavorably known to him as an admirer
of the most conspicuous of the year's Broadway beauties--that man
spontaneously interested in a girl like Miss Exeter--a ruthless,
stupid young animal like Williams attracted by that pale, honest,
intellectual, badly dressed girl--without an effort on her part. No,
that was too much to ask him to believe.

He opened Cora's letter. Cora wrote a large, sprawling hand, and her
only rule was never to write upon the next consecutive page, so that
her correspondent went hopelessly turning her letters round and about
to find the end of a sentence. Wood caught "----getting herself kissed
in poor Edna's blameless sitting room in broad daylight, and thus
getting rid of her and an undesirable suitor of Dolly's at one fell----"

He twisted the letter about, trying to find the end of this, but coming
only upon a description of moonlight on the ocean, he tossed it aside
and opened that of the culprit herself.


     I regret to say, [it began in vein that struck Wood as none too
     serious] that I have caused a scandal. A young man called Williams
     tried to kiss me--in fact he did--when I was reading the paper
     and didn't even know he was in the house. I should have dealt
     with him; but Durland, who saw it all, was so cunning and manly,
     and ordered him out of the house. Your sister is naturally annoyed
     with both of us and won't believe I was not to blame. She keeps
     quoting something you once said to Dolly under circumstances
     described as similar--that no man kisses a girl if he knows it's
     really against her will. If you did say that, Mr. Wood, you're
     wrong. If a man wants to kiss a girl something in his psychology
     makes him feel sure she wants him to. But the loathsome creepiness
     a girl feels at having a man whom she doesn't like touching her is
     something no man can possibly understand.

     Williams has behaved technically correctly and actually
     horridly--saying sourly enough that it was entirely his fault,
     that he alone was to blame, but letting everyone see that he feels
     I led him on--only that, of course, a gentleman's lips are sealed.
     However, he was instantly shipped back to New York on a slow train
     that stops at every station.

     As soon as he was gone Mrs. Conway and I had rather a scene.
     She wanted me to go at once. I said I could not go without your
     permission. She finally agreed to let me wait until you had been
     heard from. I need not say I shall do exactly as you wish. It will
     not be particularly easy to stay after this, but I will do it if
     you wish--or go--just as you telegraph.


Whatever Anthony Wood's faults might be, lack of decision was not
usually one of them. He folded the letters neatly on his table, took
his panama hat from the peg, went to the telegraph office and sent his
sister the following message:


     Letters received. Please keep Miss Exeter until my return. Should
     be back within two weeks.


And then, rapid decisions being at times dangerously like impulses, he
sent a second one to Miss Exeter herself, which read:


     Wish to express my complete confidence in you.


The days before those two messages came were trying ones in the Conway
household, which was now divided into two hostile parties--Pearl,
Durland and Antonia on one hand; Mrs. Conway and Dolly, occasionally
reenforced by Miss Wellington, on the other. Miss Wellington did not
make matters any easier by suggesting to Edna that something similar
must have taken place in the case of Anthony himself--just what you'd
expect from that sort of girl--that hair, that great curved red mouth.
She understood from dear little Dolly that Williams had told her--as
much as a man could tell such a thing--that he could hardly have done
anything else.

What Williams had really said, for few men are as bad as their adoring
women represent them, was that her mother was taking the incident too
seriously.

Pearl could not have borne life if it had not been for her daily
letter, which she continued to write. Mrs. Conway hardly spoke to her;
and if she did, she spoke slowly, enunciating every word carefully as
if Pearl's moral obliquity had somehow made her idiotic. Durland, loyal
to the death, was not much help, because he merely hated his family
and scowled through every meal. Antonia, on the other hand, was one of
those rare natures who could be an ally without being a partisan.

"Of course," she would say calmly to anyone who would listen to her,
"Allen only came here at all in the hope of seeing Miss Exeter, but you
can't expect Dolly to understand that."

Anthony's two telegrams arrived one evening at dinnertime and were
handed by the butler, one to Mrs. Conway and one to the governess.
Pearl's heart sank on seeing there were two. She thought it must mean
he was deciding against her; and though she found her present position
unpleasant, she did not want Mr. Wood to decide against her. She
opened hers and read its few words at one glance. It was not her habit
to blush, but she blushed now with a deep emotion--of gratitude and
admiration. Not many men would have stood by her, she thought, in a
situation like this. She knew where Antonia got her sense of justice.
Or, she thought with something very like jealousy, was it really
Augusta in whom he was expressing his confidence, not in her at all?
Yes, of course, anyone who had once seen Augusta would feel confidence
in her.

The next day she settled back to the routine--lessons with Antonia and
then with Durland--the public beach--a silent luncheon--then sometimes
a little feeble tennis with Antonia; but more often now her mother took
the child out with her, as if Pearl were not a proper person to be
given charge of a pure young child. Left alone, Pearl would take her
book and parasol and retire to the Conway's beach. She seldom read,
for, to be candid, she was not a great reader; but she would sit and
stare at the empty sea--empty at least if the wind were from the south;
but when it turned and blew from the north, then the whole ocean would
be dotted with fishing boats out of Gardiner's Bay; and Pearl, lying
there idly, would watch the rowboats putting out and taking in the
nets. Sometimes Antonia was permitted to be her companion, and then
she read aloud to the child. Antonia was in the stage of development
when she loved poetry, but poetry of a stirring, narrative quality--The
Ballad of East and West, The Revenge, The Burial of Moses. She would
lie with her head in Miss Exeter's lap, gazing up into the unquenchable
blue of the sky, and say "I'm going to learn that one by heart," and
would get as far as the second verse when it was time to go in and
dress. After dinner Pearl and Durland would play Russian bank, which he
had proudly and lovingly taught her; and Dolly and Mrs. Conway would
run over to Miss Wellington's, where they could abuse the governess to
their heart's content.

One night--just between night and day--Pearl woke with an overmastering
sense of dread. She had been dreaming that the sea, a perpendicular
wall miles and miles high, was coming over the dunes. After two or
three days of damp heat the waves had been rising; local weather
prophets were talking about the August twister. Now, as she sat up in
bed, listening and looking into the dark, she became aware that the
wind had risen; the wooden house was creaking and trembling like a ship.

She was frightened, as an animal must be frightened without reason and
out of all proportion. In the medley of little sounds she thought she
detected the sound of something hostile. The pearls--she thought of the
pearls.

It would have been easy to lock her door--no, not easy, for as she sat
rigid in her bed she found the idea of motion terrifying; but she could
have summoned courage to cross the floor and lock the door. Only, Pearl
was afflicted by a sense of responsibility.

She turned on her light--that helped her. She was no longer terrified
like an animal; she was merely frightened like a human being. She got
up, put on her dressing gown and, crossing the hall by a supreme effort
of courage, entered Mrs. Conway's darkened room. Perfectly gentle,
regular breathing greeted her ear. She knew where the switch was and
turned on the light.

Mrs. Conway sat up in bed and said, "Is anything wrong--the children?"

Pearl's fears melted in the face of human companionship. She felt calm
again and rather foolish as she explained that she had felt alarmed
for no special reason--had thought about the pearls. Mrs. Conway
glanced at the closed safe.

"I thought," she said, "that the argument for keeping valuables in the
safe was that we could sleep calmly. The safe can't be opened unless
you give the combination."

"It was childish of me," said Pearl. "I was frightened."

Mrs. Conway smiled at her more kindly than she had ever done. It
was one of the contradictions in her nature that she was physically
brave--a fact obscured to most observers on account of her moral
cowardice. Like most brave people, she was kind to the timid.

"It's the storm," she said. "It gets on some people's nerves. I hope
the roof isn't leaking; it nearly always does in one of these storms.
What were you afraid of?"

"I don't exactly know," said Pearl.

"Would you like me to go back to your room with you? Would you like to
sleep on my sofa?" Edna asked.

But that was too ignominious. A faint wild dawn was breaking, and Pearl
knew that with the night her terror had gone. She went back to bed.

The next morning the wind was still blowing like a hurricane from
the south, though the rain had stopped. Great waves were running
up the beach, in some places as far as the sand hills, and forming
a long, narrow pool at the base of the dunes. As soon as lessons
were over Antonia dragged Miss Exeter to the beach--it was no easy
matter, for the wind blew the sand stingingly against face and hands.
There was no use in going to the public beach that morning, for the
bathing apparatus of barrels and life lines had been washed away, the
bathhouses were threatened, and there was a rumor that the sea was
washing into Lake Agawam.

Pearl and Antonia sat on their own dunes, watching the wild scene,
and suddenly Antonia said, "Look here, Miss Exeter, I want to ask you
something. Perhaps I oughtn't to."

Pearl had so completely lost any sense of having a guilty secret that
she answered tranquilly, "Go ahead."

"Is Uncle Anthony in love with you--like Mr. Williams?"

Ah, Pearl knew what that meant: Antonia had taken a long drive with
her mother and Miss Wellington the day before! She picked her words
carefully.

"I only saw your uncle once," she said.

"But Allen only saw you once or twice--and look at the darn thing!"

"Mr. Williams is not in the least in love with me."

"Miss Wellington said that some women have the power of rousing----"

"Antonia, I don't want to hear what she said."

"You don't like her, do you?"

"No."

"Shake," said Antonia heartily. "I don't like her, though she's very
kind to me; but it doesn't seem to me"--Antonia's voice took on the
flavor of meditation--"that she quite tells the truth. For instance,
just before Uncle Anthony went away, she telephoned to him one morning
and asked him to come over. He was playing a game of parcheesi with
me--I'd teased him a good deal to play--and he said he couldn't come,
and she--well, I couldn't hear what she was saying, but at last he
said, rather ungraciously, 'All right then, I'll come.' And he went,
and he took me with him. And we only stayed about ten minutes,
although she wanted us to stay longer. And then later at the bathing
beach I heard her telling someone that she was late--she was sorry--she
couldn't help it, because Anthony Wood came in just as she was
starting--of course she adored having him run in like that, but it did
take a good deal of one's time--'one's time'--that's what she said. I
call that a lie, don't you?"

"I certainly do," said Pearl.

"That's what I like about you, Miss Exeter; you say right out what
you think--even to a child." Antonia looked thoughtful. "It's a great
mistake not to tell children the truth; it makes it so hard for them
to know what to do. For instance, we have an aunt--a great aunt--Aunt
Sophia. She's awful, or as you would say, just terrible, but it seems
she's going to leave us all her money. Now if mother would tell us
that, it would be simple; but she doesn't. She says to be nice to Aunt
Sophia because she's such a dear. She isn't a bit a dear. So I had
to find out all by myself why mother, who's so awful to most of her
relations, is so nice to Aunt Sophia. I did. And it's the same thing
about my father. He tried to kidnap me once--at least he met me on my
way to school and asked me to take a drive with him. I wouldn't do
it. Mother said it was lucky I didn't. But it wasn't luck. It was good
judgment. Grown-up people are queer about that. When they do something
wise they say it was wise. But when a child does something wise they
say it was lucky. Children have more sense than people think; they have
to have."

"You have," said Pearl, who had never thought of all this before.

"Now this morning, do you know why mother wanted to get us all out of
the house?" Antonia continued.

Pearl felt tempted to say that Mrs. Conway always wanted to get her
out of the house, but she merely shook her head, and Antonia went on,
"Because she is going to have an interview with my father."

"With your father?" Pearl sprang to her feet. "Are you sure?"

Antonia nodded.

"When mother is going to see father she looks the way I feel as if
I looked when I'm going to the dentist--don't you know, you say to
yourself, 'I wouldn't think twice about this if I were brave'--and then
you think about it all the time. You know, mother doesn't think she
tells us everything, but she really does, except about my father. And
so, you see, if it's something about my father I always know, because
mother's worried without saying why."

This reasoning seemed sound to Pearl. She felt that in order to fulfill
Anthony's instructions she must go to Mrs. Conway's assistance at once.
She did not like to burst in upon them from the open windows of the
sitting-room, and so ran round the house to the front door. A small,
shabby automobile was standing in the circle, and as Pearl bounded up
the steps a man came out quickly and got into it--a pale man, with long
white hands and something of Durland's birdlike quality. She saw that
she was too late. She went into the sitting-room.

Mrs. Conway was standing in the middle of the room, supporting one
elbow in one hand and two fingers of the other resting against her
chin. She looked so white that every grain of rouge seemed to stand
out--away from her cheeks. She turned her eyes coldly upon Pearl.

"Well?" she said.

Pearl had not thought at all what she was going to say, and blurted
out, "Oh, Mrs. Conway, I thought you might need me! I thought I could
help you if--Mr. Wood said----"

Edna, rather to her own surprise, suddenly lost her temper.

"I'm tired of being considered a perfect fool," she said. "Anthony!
I know what Anthony thinks--that I'm always going to give Gordon
all the children's money. As a matter of fact, I know better than
anyone--though it isn't always very easy to say no, no, no, to a man
who has been your husband and who insists if he had five dollars he
could make a fortune; but I do say it--I always have--always--almost
always. It's a little too much to be watched over and lectured by you,
Miss Exeter."

After which speech Mrs. Conway left the room.

Luncheon was more than usually silent that day, although Edna attempted
to take an interest in the children's morning, asking whether it had
been pleasant in the water.

"My goodness, mother," Antonia answered, "have you looked at the water?
We'd certainly have been drowned if we'd gone in."

After lunch was over Edna was obliged to address Miss Exeter directly.

"I think you went off this morning without unlocking my safe," she said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Pearl.

Mrs. Conway smiled faintly.

"It was quite what I expected--it always happens with safes," she said.
"But now perhaps you will get me my pearls."

Pearl went eagerly, and as she went she remembered that she had
remembered to unlock the safe--just before she went to the beach with
Antonia. Yes, as she thought, the safe was very slightly ajar. She took
the long, slim, blue velvet case from its compartment and brought it to
Mrs. Conway in the drawing-room.

It was empty!

The surprise was like a physical blow, and yet no one at first supposed
that the pearls were actually gone. Mrs. Conway, as so often happens to
anyone who has sustained a loss, was instantly severely lectured by her
three children on her habitual carelessness.

Then a superficial search was made on her dressing table, on the glass
shelves in the bathroom. Then a recapitulation was made--a joint effort
on the part of everybody--of just what had occurred since the pearls
were last seen.

Everyone agreed that Mrs. Conway had been wearing them at dinner
the night before. She had gone to bed rather early, and distinctly
remembered that she had put the pearls in their slim blue velvet
case and put the case in the safe and shut the safe, which was then
automatically locked. She did not remember seeing the safe unlocked in
the morning.

No, Pearl explained, the reason for this was that she, Pearl, had
knocked at the door about eleven, just after finishing Durland's
algebra lesson. There had been no answer, because Mrs. Conway was in
her bath--her bathroom opened out of her bedroom. Pearl had been in a
hurry, so that she had just run and unlocked the safe and had called to
Mrs. Conway that it was unlocked. There had been no one in the room at
the time; but the maid--the maid had been Dolly's nurse when she was a
baby, and was therefore absolutely above suspicion--had been sewing in
the next room.

Mrs. Conway did not contradict this story. She simply raised her
eyebrows and said that she had not noticed that the safe was open.

Evidently it must have been open all day long--very unfortunate.

Pearl felt and probably looked horribly guilty. Of course she ought
to have looked to see whether the pearls were in their case when she
opened the safe. She usually did. She remembered, too, her strange
terror of the night before. Was it possible that that had been based
on something real? Had she really heard a footstep under the noise of
the storm? Could there have been a burglar in the house, hidden perhaps
all night, and stepping out at the right moment about noon when the
upstairs rooms were deserted?

It was Pearl who insisted on telephoning to New York for a detective.
Mrs. Conway at first objected and said she would feel like a goose if
the pearls were immediately discovered--caught in the lace of her tea
gown, or something like that. But Pearl was quite severe. If there had
been a robbery, she knew that every minute was of importance.

Just before dinner she called an agency. Two detectives arrived by
motor about ten o'clock that night. They had a long secret conference
with Mrs. Conway. Then one went back to New York and the other--the
head man, Mr. Albertson--took up his residence in the house.

Pearl went to bed more worried than ever. It didn't seem to her that
the detectives had really taken hold of the situation. She herself
could think of a dozen things they might have done that night. It did
not occur to her that their first action was to look up the past record
of everyone in the household.



CHAPTER FOUR


Human nature being as it is, it is probable that the loss of the pearls
was nothing to Edna Conway in comparison with the satisfaction of being
able to telegraph her brother that his priceless Pearl was suspected of
having stolen them. She was a kind-hearted woman and would not normally
have wished to put even the most degraded criminal in prison; but there
seemed an ironic justice in the fact that a woman sent to reform the
manners of her children should turn out to be a thief. She valued her
pearls too. They were not only beautiful and becoming but they had a
sentimental association. Her husband had given them to her when they
were first married, after a tremendous success at Monte Carlo. They had
cost a great deal of money in the days when pearls were cheap, and yet,
as he had got them from a ruined Polish nobleman, they had not cost
their full value. He had said to her as he gave them to her, "There, my
dear, if I never give you anything else----" As a matter of fact, he
never had given her anything else; in fact, he had often tried to take
them away from her when things had first begun to go wrong. But Edna
had managed to cling to them, feeling that they would always keep away
that wolf which idle well-to-do middle-aged women appear to dread more
than any other group in the community.

Edna was not only kind-hearted but she was normally utterly lacking
in persistence; she would not have been able to conceal suspicions
from anyone over a protracted period. But malice is a powerful motive,
and she managed in the days that followed the loss to play her part
admirably. The idea that Anthony was already hurrying home to meet the
imposter who had slipped into the real Miss Exeter's place gave her a
determination she usually lacked.

It was perhaps stupid of Pearl not to guess that her fraud had been
detected as soon as the detectives set to work. But Pearl was so much
interested in the recovery of the jewels that it never crossed her
mind she herself was suspected. She did notice a slight change for
the better in Mrs. Conway's manner--a certain sugary sweetness--a
willingness to be in the same room with her, especially if the
detectives were for any reason busy--a new interest in all her plans.

The thought that occupied her mind was the idea that Wood was on his
way home; that at last she and the man she had been writing to every
day for weeks were to meet face to face. How could he fail to be
pleased with her--she who had made Antonia neat, Durland studious, and
had at least suggested to Dolly's egotism that there were other women
in the world at least as attractive as she? Pearl thought a great deal
about their first meeting; there would be a certain awkwardness about
it, especially if it took place in the presence of the family, as it
probably would. Still, she could manage it. She would say in a few
simple words that she was Augusta Exeter's best friend, and had taken
her place. He was sure to be amused and smile that nice smile which
Augusta had described. The interview went on and on in her imagination,
a different way each time she imagined it; but always agreeable, always
exciting, always ending in Mr. Wood expressing his gratitude and
admiration.

Yet this man about whom she was thinking so constantly was actually
speeding toward her, feeling as bitter about her as it is possible to
feel about a person you have never seen. We forgive anything better
than being made ridiculous. It was not mere vanity, though, that made
Anthony so angry. He knew that much of his power over his sister had
been destroyed. Everything that he suggested in the future would be met
by Edna's amused "Another priceless pearl, Anthony." Yes, he said to
himself as he sat with folded arms and stared out of the train window,
he had made a fool of himself. What did he know of the real Miss
Exeter? He had no one but himself to blame.

He had been on the point of starting home when he received Edna's
second telegram announcing her loss. Everyone, as the author of
Cranford has observed, has a pet economy, and Edna's economy was
telegrams. She never cabled or telegraphed if she could help it, and
then she usually obscured her meaning by compressing it into as few
words as possible. When Anthony opened this one and saw its great
length and her name at the bottom of it he knew that something was
terribly wrong. It said:


     Pearls stolen from safe. Only governess had combination.
     Detectives discover she is imposter. Real Miss Exeter married and
     went to Canada two days after you saw her in New York. This woman
     has no idea she is suspected. Is closely watched and has had no
     opportunity of disposing of jewels. Pearls thought to be still on
     place or hidden on beach. Please return immediately. Be careful
     about telegrams. She might get them first.


As soon as Anthony read that message he felt a conviction that it was
all true. Whether or not she had stolen the pearls, he knew she was an
imposter, for he realized now that he had known from the beginning that
he had been in correspondence with a beautiful woman. He had tried to
tell himself that the quality he felt in her letters was the vanity
of a plain one, but all along he had known in his heart that in some
strange and subtle way beauty has exuded from every line she wrote. He
had been made a fool of by a beautiful and criminal woman. Well, he
would hurry home and settle that score in short order. He was not a
cruel man, he said to himself, but this did not seem a situation that
called for mercy.

It was, of course, necessary that someone should meet Anthony on his
arrival in New York and acquaint him with all the details. As Edna was
unwilling to leave her household, the duty fell to Miss Wellington, who
complained a great deal and leaped at the chance.

So when Anthony got off the train in the Pennsylvania Station there was
not only his secretary but his old friend, Cora Wellington, waiting
to greet him. The secretary remained to see about the bags, while he
and Miss Wellington drove to his apartment. The robbery was still a
secret--not to be told to the papers--even the secretary did not know
of it. As they drove up the long incline to the level of Seventh Avenue
Cora said the thing that Anthony wanted to hear and yet would not say
even to himself:

"Really, Anthony, I think Edna might have guessed that it was not the
governess you had sent. You couldn't have selected such a person--dyed
yellow hair and a sort of exuberant, almost coarse good looks that you
wouldn't admire in any woman and would not tolerate in a governess, I'm
sure."

It was agreeable to hear, but he would not admit it.

"Poor old Edna," he said. "I don't feel exactly in a position to
criticize. This woman must be clever."

"Clever!" exclaimed Miss Wellington. "It's uncanny! Instantly she
obtained an almost hypnotic influence over Durland and Antonia. Even
Dolly was on the point of succumbing--if it had not been that the
woman overreached herself in her affair with young Williams. Between
ourselves, Anthony, though I haven't said this to Edna, I don't feel
at all sure that that affair did not go a great deal further than the
kiss."

Anthony frowned in silence. This was almost more than he could bear.
He said to himself that it was the idea of Antonia being brought into
contact with such a situation that disgusted him.

Cora was kind enough to sit in his drawing-room and wait while he had
a bath and dressed. It was a nice room and she thought as she waited
how she would rearrange the furniture if ever she should come to live
there. There were photographs of the children about--Antonia as a baby,
Durland in his first sailor suit, a picture of Edna with the three
children grouped about her like English royalties.

She was wearing the pearls.

Then Anthony came out of his room, looking handsome and sleek and brown
and very well dressed in blue serge; and they went out and had luncheon
together, and then started at once for their drive of a hundred miles
in Anthony's car.

She answered all his questions--and one he did not ask. She
volunteered: "I must confess, Anthony, when I first saw this girl--saw
how unsuitable she was--I felt your wonderful judgment must have been
clouded by your having fallen in love with her."

"Recollect, please," he returned, "that even if it had been the girl I
saw, I had only seen her once."

"Don't people fall in love at first sight?"

Anthony smiled.

"I don't," he said; and he went on to describe the slow process by
which a love which can be depended on to last must necessarily grow.

To Miss Wellington, who had known Anthony for fifteen years, the
description was perfectly satisfactory.

They reached Edna's house a little after five. Dolly had gone away
the day before to soothe her wounded feelings at a house party in
the Adirondacks. Durland was playing golf and Antonia having supper
with her friend Olive. Edna alone received the traveler. She did not
reproach him; she gave him the greeting of a woman simply crushed by
anxiety.

He said, "I'm awfully sorry about this, Edna. You've had a disagreeable
time--aside from the pearls, I mean."

She raised her large sullen eyes.

"If only you had not made me promise, Tony--so that I was not free
to turn a thief out of my house until she had actually stolen my
valuables. A woman has an intuition when she's allowed to follow it."

He had not a word to say in answer. He had an interview with the
detective--the head man, Mr. Albertson; the other one was engaged in
watching Miss Exeter--the false Miss Exeter, who was sitting, as her
custom was of an afternoon, on the beach. It was this habit of sitting
for hours alone on the beach that had led to the theory that the pearls
were hidden there, waiting the right opportunity to be dug up and
dispatched to a confederate.

Mr. Albertson was a tall, gray-haired man of the utmost dignity.
His figure would have been improved by a faithful addiction to the
daily dozen, and his feet were extraordinarily large. He had a calm,
grand manner and was extremely chivalrous in his attitude toward all
women--even those he was engaged in sending to jail. He reminded
Anthony of the walrus--or was it the carpenter?--who wept so bitterly
for the oysters while he sorted out those of the largest size. Mr.
Albertson melted with pity for that sweet young creature as he
detailed the growing mass of evidence against her: The burglaries in
Southampton since her coming; the fact that she had insisted on having
the combination of the safe; the fact that Mrs. Conway had locked the
pearls in the safe and that only Miss Exeter had gone to the safe
afterward; the mysterious appearance of Miss Exeter in Mrs. Conway's
room during the night before the robbery, and, of course, her alias.
It had been largely a matter of form, Mr. Albertson said--the sending
of his men to look up her record. It had been a shock to them all to
find that the agency which had originally sent Wood the names of
governesses could offer proof that their Miss Exeter had married and
gone to Canada. So far they had not been able to get any information as
to this woman who had slipped into her place. Some of her things had a
P on them. Mr. Albertson mentioned that there was a notorious English
thief--Golden Polly or Golden Moll.

"She's called by both names," said Mr. Albertson. "This girl answers
her description very good."

Wood nodded. Had he in fact been getting a daily letter all these weeks
from Golden Moll? The idea intrigued him not a little.

"I think I'll go and have a talk with her," he said.

"By all means, by all means," said Mr. Albertson. "We've just been
waiting for you, you know--just to see how she'll act when confronted
with you. She hasn't a notion, you know, that you've left Mexico. But,"
he went on in his deep rich voice, "I'd speak her fair if I was you.
Kindness, Mr. Wood, never does any harm. What are we put in this world
for except to help each other--women especially? If I was you I'd say,
'Look, girlie, we want to help you. We have you dead to rights, and
you'd better come across. Come across, girlie,' I'd say, 'and make it
easy for everyone.'" Mr. Albertson had already recommended this speech
to Mrs. Conway without success, and now it seemed to him that Mr. Wood
was not really going to make it.

"Ay, yes," Anthony said rather noncommittally.

He turned from Mr. Albertson quietly, as is some people's manner when
they are doing something important and, crossing the piazza, stood a
moment at the top of the steps.

The sun had just set behind his right shoulder, and to those who love
the sea the bare flat scene had at this moment an extraordinary beauty.
All round the circle of the horizon there was a grayish lilac color.
The sea was blue and gray, the beach was pink, with gray shadows under
the dunes--estrange blending colors that come with no other light.
The storm was over, and the sea, though not smooth, was heaving with
a slow, regular swell. The beach, even to the dunes, was strewn still
with seaweed and lumber and all the flotsam and jetsam of a high tide.

Immediately in front of Anthony was a large rose-colored parasol, the
owner of which had evidently forgotten to put it down, although for an
hour now it could have been of not the slightest use. Nothing appeared
beneath it but the tip of a white suède slipper.

Anthony stood and looked, a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth.
There she was--possibly the Golden Moll of Albertson's suspicions,
certainly the writer of interesting letters, the reformer of his
niece's manners, the stealer of the pearls.

Then he heard Antonia's voice behind him, calling his name. Ordinarily
she would have stolen up behind him and clung round his neck with her
feet off the ground; but now she evidently wanted him to get the full
effect of her changed appearance, for she stood ten feet off and spoke
to him. Oddly enough, she was wearing the very clothes which Pearl
had described--the pink linen, the hat with the pink rose, the gray
silk stockings and gray suède pumps. Nothing, Anthony thought, could
have been more accurate. The child was very beautiful, just as he had
hoped--hardly dared to hope--to see her.

She gave him just that second to take her all in, and then sprang at
his neck.

"Oh, don't you think I look nice?" she said passionately. "It's all
Miss Exeter--your priceless pearl--and she is priceless. Don't you
think I look nice? I like her better almost than anyone I ever knew,
because she's so straight. Don't you think I look nice?"

"Indeed I do," said her uncle. He managed to free his neck from the
yoke of Antonia's arms and held her off and turned her round. "Yes," he
said, "you look exactly as I like to see you."

Antonia smiled and then sighed.

"I feel every stitch I have on," she said, "particularly the shoes
and stockings." She raised first one leg and then the other and shook
it, with a gesture not at all graceful. "I've never worn them except
in winter before. But still, it does make a difference in one's
popularity--clothes--particularly with boys. Boys are funny, Uncle
Anthony."

Nothing interested Anthony more than to discuss the problems of life
with his niece, but at the moment his mind was not sufficiently
disengaged. He was sorry to interrupt her, but he was obliged to go and
have a few words with her governess.

"That's all right," said Antonia. "I'll go too." And she slipped her
arm through his and, leaning her head against the point of his shoulder
prepared to descend the steps.

But Anthony explained to her that he wished to talk to Miss Exeter by
himself. Antonia was disappointed. She had looked forward to being
present when her uncle and the governess met again, but she adjusted
herself as usual.

"There's Mr. Albertson," she said. "I'll get him to come and sit with
me while I have supper, and tell me stories of crime. He says there
aren't any people like Sherlock Holmes, and that stories like that make
it hard for real detectives. I suppose that's true, and yet it's horrid
to face facts sometimes, isn't it, Uncle Anthony? It makes real life
seem pretty dull sometimes."

"Real life is not dull, Antonia," said her uncle, "take it from me."

He watched her safely into a conversation with Mr. Albertson, and then,
with his hands in his pockets, he sauntered down the steps, across the
sand toward that rose-colored parasol.

"Good afternoon, Miss Exeter," he said pleasantly.

It had been kept a profound secret that Anthony was on his way
home. The detectives had pointed out to Mrs. Conway that this was
important--that if the woman knew she was about to be unmasked she
might be goaded into sudden action--perhaps even into destroying the
pearls.

Hearing a strange voice calling her by name, Pearl came out of a
trance into which the sunset and the sea had thrown her; glancing up
from under her parasol, she saw at once that the speaker was Anthony
Wood, and that he was exactly as she had imagined him. Seeing this,
her heart gave a peculiar leap, and she beamed at him, more freely and
wonderfully than she had ever beamed at anyone in the world. The look
affected him--it would have affected any man; not just her beauty, for
he had seen a good deal of beauty in his day, but this warm, generous
honesty combined with beauty was something he had never seen. For
a second or two they just looked at each other, Pearl beaming and
beaming, and Wood looking at her, his face like a dark mask, but his
turquoise eyes piercing her heart.

She spoke first. She said in her queer deep voice, "Oh, I'm so glad
you've come, Mr. Wood."

"Are you?" he said.

Of all the sentences with which she might have greeted him--sentences
of excuse, of explanation, of appeal--he had never thought of her
saying this, and saying it with all the manner of joy and relief.

"Indeed I am," she went on, still on that same note. "Have you seen
Antonia?"

"Yes, I have."

"And isn't she----"

"We'll leave that for a moment," he said, for her effrontery began
to annoy him, and his tone was curt. But instead of being alarmed or
apologetic, she gave a little chuckle.

"Oh, yes, I know," she said; "of course you want an explanation; only I
wanted to be sure you'd seen my great achievement first, for it is an
achievement, isn't it?"

His eyebrows went up.

"Do you really expect to be praised for anything you may have done,"
he said, "before you offer some explanation as to why you are here
masquerading as Miss Exeter?"

Pearl's face fell. He was really quite cross. It seemed hard to her
that the meaningless sort of beam with which she accompanied a casual
good morning had been enough to reduce the third vice president to
weeping on his desk, while a particularly concentrated beam--a beam
designed to say in a ladylike, yet unmistakable manner that the one
man of all men was now standing before her--seemed to have no effect
whatsoever on said man. She tried it nevertheless.

Anthony, seeing it, suddenly became angry. Did this woman, he thought,
who was perhaps a thief and was certainly an impostor, really suppose
she was going to charm him, Anthony Wood, by her mere beauty--he who
was well known to be indifferent to women? She would learn----

But what she would learn was not formulated, for she now surprised
him by jumping to her feet and running like a gazelle toward the
sea, crying out something to him which he did not catch. He started,
however, in full pursuit--his first thought being that she intended
to drown herself; the second that she meant to fling the pearls into
the sea--the well-known trick of destroying the evidence in a tight
place. She ran on. The sea was up to her knees--up to her waist, fully
dressed as she was; she was now swimming. They had the sea entirely to
themselves. Even the detectives, trusting to Mr. Wood, had withdrawn
for a bite to eat; and at five o'clock all those fortunate people who
come to the seaside for the summer are engaged in golfing or playing
bridge, and seem to ignore the existence of the Atlantic Ocean.

Anthony had hesitated at the brink of the sea long enough to take off
first his shoes, second his watch and third the light coat which he
had worn driving the car, so that he was some little distance behind
her. Swimming hard and for the most part under water, he did not see
for some time the object which had attracted Pearl's attention. Neither
suicide nor the pearls were the object of her plunge, but a small white
dog which appeared to be drowning. Some children up the beach had been
throwing sticks for it, and now at the end of a long afternoon it had
got caught in some current and was obviously in trouble, every third or
fourth wave washing over its little pointed nose.

Pearl, never doubting that Wood was actuated by the same motives as
herself, panted out, "Can we get there in time?"

He came alongside her now.

"You're not going to drown too!" he said.

She shook her wet head. Together they towed the exhausted little
creature back. As soon as she could walk Pearl picked it up in her arms
and strode ashore.

"Don't you think it was a crime for those children to go away and leave
him like that?" Her gray eyes, instead of beaming, glowed angrily.

"Are you so against crime?" said Anthony, trying to smooth the water
out of his hair.

She did not even take the trouble to answer but became absorbed in
tending the dog. It was a white dog, at least its hair was white; but
now, soaked and plastered to its body, the general effect was of a
cloudy pink with gray spots. It was the offspring probably of a spotted
carriage dog and a poodle. Between it and Pearl a perfect understanding
seemed to have been at once established. She knelt beside it, and
suddenly looking up at Anthony with one of her spreading smiles, she
said, "I'm afraid it's awfully ugly."

"It has personality," he answered. He could not but be aware that
Pearl's thin dress was clinging to her almost as closely as the dog's
soft coat.

"Let me have your coat," she said.

He held it out, expecting that she meant to put it on, for every line
of her figure was visible, and every line was lovely. But Pearl was
utterly unconscious of herself. She took the coat and wrapped the dog
in it, so that only its head stuck out, with its adoring eyes turned
to her. As he watched her he found he knew positively that she had not
taken the pearls. It was no logical process; he did not say, "This girl
is too kind or too generous or too without selfconsciousness or too
much at peace." Perhaps it was a combination of all these ideas, or
perhaps it was just the miracle of personality; but somehow or other he
knew positively and for all time that she was not a thief; that she,
on the contrary, was just what in his opinion a woman ought to be. He
looked down at the bent golden head, dripping pure drops of crystal.
Dyed! What a spiteful goose Cora Wellington was!

Then Durland came down the steps.

"What's happened?" he asked.

"We've been rescuing a dog," said Anthony. "Miss--Exeter and I." So far
he knew no other name for her.

Durland smiled at him above her head, as much as to say, "Could
anything be more ridiculously attaching than women are--this woman in
particular?" And Anthony smiled back in a similar manner.

Then there was a shout, and Antonia, having finished her supper and
exhausted at least for the moment Mr. Albertson's narrative powers,
came flying down the steps, eager to know why it was that Miss Exeter
and her uncle had been in swimming with their clothes on. When
explained, it appeared to her the most natural thing in the world.

"Isn't he sweet?" she said, when she had heard the story. "I think
Horatius would be a good name for him--on account of 'Never, I ween,
did swimmer, in such an evil case, struggle through such a raging
flood'--you know. Do you think mother will let us keep him? Or do you
want to keep him, Miss Exeter? Oh, dear, I suppose you do!"

"No, I can't," said Pearl, with regret. "I'd like to, but Alfred hates
dogs."

Anthony was surprised to hear his own voice saying sharply, "And who is
Alfred?"

"He's my cat," said Pearl, turning her whole face up to him. "Everyone
says he's very ugly, but I love him."

They smiled at each other; it was so obvious that Anthony refrained
from saying, "Lucky creature."

Presently they moved toward the house--first Pearl, bearing Horatius
still wrapped in Anthony's motoring coat; then Durland, most solicitous
lest the dog should be too heavy for Miss Exeter; then Anthony carrying
his shoes and coat and waistcoat; and then Antonia, dancing about. They
approached the house in a quiet and rather sneaky way, by the kitchen
entrance. Anthony had no wish to meet his sister, who supposed that he
had been grilling a criminal. The children felt grave doubts that their
mother would welcome Horatius at all--not that she was a cruel woman,
but that she feared strange curs about the house. Fortunately the cook,
who had a great weakness for Antonia, was cordial, and allowed Horatius
to dry out behind the kitchen stove.

It was now high time to dress for dinner, so there was a good excuse
for stealing softly up the back stairs.

While Anthony was tying his tie a knock came at the door, and Edna
came in with the manner of a person confidently expecting important
intelligence.

She said in a low voice, but with an immense amount of facial
gesticulation to take the place of sound, "Albertson told me you had an
interview. What did you find out?"

For the first time Anthony realized that he had been an hour in the
company of the false Miss Exeter without having even asked her true
name. He might at least have done that. A weak man would have answered
irritably that what between stray dogs drowning and Edna's children
interrupting he had not had an opportunity to ask the woman anything.
But he was not weak. He simply told, her the truth. He saw that she
accepted the story with reservations. A drowning dog was all very well,
but how about her pearls?

Dinner ought to have been a terrible meal, with Edna bitter and
suspicious and the two detectives looking in at the window every now
and then--just to show that they were on the job; but, as a matter of
fact, it was extremely gay and pleasant. Antonia was allowed to hover
about the room in honor of her uncle's return, and Pearl and Anthony
were--or appeared to be--in the highest spirits.

Need it be recorded that Pearl had on her best dress? It was a soft,
black, shining crêpe which she had run up one afternoon in the spring
when she felt most depressed about not being able to find a position.
Dressmaking often lightened her black moments; it was to her an
exciting form of creation. It had been quickly and casually done, but
it had turned out well. Round her neck she wore the silliest little
string of bright blue-glass beads, which someone had once given a doll
of Antonia's in the dead past when Antonia played with dolls, and which
Antonia herself occasionally wore. Antonia had left them in Pearl's
room, for her new-found personal neatness did not as yet extend to the
care of her possessions, and in an impulse Pearl had put them on and
found the result good. So did Antonia.

"Oh, see!" she said as they sat down at table. "She has on my beads."

"Fancy Miss Exeter wearing someone else's beads!" said Edna in a tone
hard to mistake for a friendly one.

"But don't they look well on her?" said Antonia. "Uncle Tony, don't
you think they look well on her? How could you describe her as 'of
pleasing appearance'? It nearly made me miss her at the station
that first day. I went dodging about, trying to find a pale, plain
girl--that's what mother told me to look for. I think Miss Exeter is
beautiful, don't you?"

"Antonia!" said her mother scornfully, as if nonsense were being talked.

Anthony, however, never allowed his niece to put him in a hole.

"I certainly do," he said, and he looked straight at Pearl, and she
looked straight at him and laughed and said, "You'd be a brave man to
say no when Antonia takes that tone."

"I should be worse than brave--I should be a liar," said Anthony.

The sentiment, which brought a lovely beam from Pearl, brought him a
dark glance from his sister. She thought it was not like Anthony to be
silly about a woman, and then the encouraging idea occurred to her that
he was luring her on in order to win her confidence--clever creature
that he was.

As soon as dinner was over the children rushed away to feed Horatius;
and Edna, who felt the need of uninterrupted conversation with her
brother, led him across the lawn to Miss Wellington's house. It was
not easy, for he showed the same reluctance to go that people show
toward leaving a wood fire on a cold day; but when Miss Exeter--who,
of course, everyone knew wasn't Miss Exeter--said she had a letter to
write he rose to his feet.

"A letter?" he said, the idea being, of course, that now he was at
home, there could be no more letters in the world.

Pearl nodded. It really was important, for she had always promised
Augusta to write her a full account of the first meeting with her
respected employer; and, as a matter of fact, Pearl was bursting with
eagerness to express her emotion to someone. If she wrote at once the
letter could be posted that evening, when, about nine o'clock, a man
came to deliver and receive mail.

As Edna and her brother went out they passed Mr. Albertson on guard,
and Edna conveyed the information to him that "she" had gone to write a
letter. Albertson made a reassuring gesture and they passed on.

Cora was all eagerness and cordiality.

"And what has Anthony discovered about her?" were her first
words--spoken to Edna, but directed toward him.

Edna came nobly to his assistance, gave an account of the rescue of
Horatius quite as if she thought it a natural, explainable incident,
which she was really very far from thinking.

"And what are his impressions?" said Cora.

Anthony found this question almost as embarrassing as the first one.
He could not share his impressions. They were mingled--that the girl
was beautiful--that swimming was a sensuous and graceful motion--that
wet garments clinging to lovely limbs had not been sculptured since
the Greeks made statuettes--that absolute integrity is consistent with
masquerading under another name than your own and stealing someone
else's references. But, alas, these convictions were as impossible to
share as a religious revelation. He turned for help to the most ancient
methods.

"And what do you think of her, Cora?" he said, as if he really cared.

"I wrote you what I thought," said Cora, and went into it again, while
he sat smoking and trying to remember whether or not he had ever read
that letter of Cora's with the long description of moonlight on the
sea. He rather thought he hadn't.

"Ah," said Edna, willing to do Cora a kindness, "so you and Anthony
correspond, do you?" At which Cora laughed self-consciously, and
Anthony looked like a graven image--his well-known method of concealing
emotion. This time the emotion was simply irritation, but Edna said to
herself, "Well, after all, she wouldn't be so bad."

In the short pause that followed, Durland bounded suddenly into the
room. His eyes, which were normally blue like his mother's, looked
almost white in the sudden lights of the room. They were very wide
open, and his small face was pale under his freckles and set with anger.

"Look here, Uncle Anthony," he said, "did you know what is going on in
our house? Did you know they suspected Miss Exeter of stealing mother's
pearls?" No one answered, and he continued, his voice shaking a little:
"She asked me to give a letter she had been writing to the man who
comes with the evening mail, and as I did Albertson came out and tried
to take it from me--but that was a little too much." The letter was
still in his hand, crumpled from the struggle. "I never heard of such
a thing! It's an outrage! Did you know of this, mother?" There was
something menacing in his tone.

"My dear boy," said Edna, in that patronizing tone that people use as
if their ability to conceal something from a child were a tremendous
proof of their own superiority. "I'm afraid it will be a great shock
to you, but you must face the fact that she did steal my pearls--at
least so we believe; and that she is not Miss Exeter at all--she is
a notorious English jewel thief known by the agreeable sobriquet of
Golden Moll."

"You don't know that, Edna," said her brother quickly.

"I should say not!" cried Durland. "Mother, I think it's perfectly
rotten of you to think it's even possible."

Edna turned to her brother.

"You see, Anthony," she said, "what you've done to me, introducing this
woman into my house--turning my own children against me."

Cora smiled at the boy soothingly.

"But Durland doesn't know that we have proof that she took the
pearls," she said, as one calmly able to make all smooth and easy.

"No, Durland," said his mother, "I have not been able to tell you--the
detectives would not let me until your uncle got back--that we have
proof. Miss Exeter is not Miss Exeter at all--just an imposter. Oh,
tell him, Anthony--tell him that she's--a common, everyday thief."

"I can't do that," said Wood, "because I don't think so."

"You mean," said his sister, as if now, indeed, a chasm had opened at
her very feet, "that you have any doubt that she stole the pearls?"

"I'm perfectly certain that she didn't," said Wood.

Edna burst out at this into a wail of reproach and anger, ending with
the not unnatural accusation that her brother must be in love with the
woman too.

"Yes, perhaps I am," said Anthony.

The idea was new to him, and not repugnant; but he spoke more to annoy
his sister than from any more serious motive; but as he spoke he saw
that Pearl and Mr. Albertson were in the room and must have heard him,
Pearl, however, was too much excited already to register any further
excitement. She strode into the room as she strode into the board
room of the Encyclopedia; and almost at once catching sight of her
letter, still in Durland's hand, she made a grab for it; only Edna was
quicker--or rather nearer--and succeeded in getting it first. Pearl
turned to Anthony.

"Mr. Wood," she said, "I want my letter--I won't have anyone read my
letter. It's an outrage!"

Mr. Albertson felt his moment had come.

"Now look, girlie," he said, "we about have the goods on you. Think of
your folks! We want to help you." He took the letter from Mrs. Conway.
"I know," he said, "that a lady's correspondence ought to be sacred,
but----"

"But," said Edna, not able to refrain from interrupting--"but ask her
why it is she doesn't want her letter read."

"Well, I reckon I can figure that out for myself," said Mr. Albertson.

But in this instance--perhaps the only one of his long and successful
career--he was wrong. He could not figure out why it was Pearl objected
so violently to allowing that letter to be read.

The reason was this: She had always promised Augusta that she would
communicate her first impressions of Mr. Wood, and as soon as he and
his sister left the house to go to Miss Wellington's she had run
upstairs, and on the much-used typewriter she hastily ticked out a
prose lyric on the subject of her meeting with the only man she ever
could have or ever had loved. It began:


     My dear, he came this afternoon. Why didn't you tell me what he
     was like? Oh, I know you said he was attractive. Attractive!
     He's incredible! He's devastating! And that voice! You never
     said a word about that voice, which makes me shake every time he
     speaks--like a telegraph wire in a wind. Oh, Augusta, isn't it
     silly? But I think I love him----


That was just the way it began.

At the sight of that letter in Mrs. Conway's hands, a storm of emotion
swept over Pearl, even before she remembered just what she had said.
But as phrase after phrase flashed before her eyes and seemed actually
to tingle down to the tips of her fingers, she sprang like an animal
at its prey, and would have had it, too, if it had not been for Mr.
Albertson, who catching her elbow as she went by, not only stopped her,
but spun her completely round--so vigorous had been her motion.

Frustrated in action, Pearl burst into speech. She said that she must
and would have that letter back; she said that opening other people's
letters was a state's prison offense; she went on like a maniac, and
every word she uttered made Mr. Albertson feel more and more convinced
that the letter must be read. Still, he was a chivalrous man; he
believed in chivalry as some people believe in Christianity--as the
important highway in their lives, from which at moments they are
obliged to stray.

"Now look, girlie," he said again, in accents even more honeyed, "don't
excite yourself. Why would you mind me reading your letter, which I see
is to another lady?"

"It's none of your business why I mind," said Pearl. "I just do. Oh,
Mr. Wood," she said, turning to Anthony, "don't let them read my
letter!"

"I won't," he said. "I'll read it myself."

"Oh, no!" said Pearl with a little scream.

There was a pause. Anthony already had the letter in his hands now. He
looked very gravely at Pearl.

"I'm sorry you mind," he said. "But this letter must be read either by
my sister or me or Albertson. Which one would you rather have read it?"

It was a hard choice. Pearl looked deliberately from one to another,
and then she looked at Anthony.

"You," she said.

In complete silence he opened it and read it carefully through. Pearl
stood motionless, watching him, studying his face. If he had laughed,
if he had even smiled, she would have killed him. She was hardly aware
of Albertson and Edna and Cora and Durland, all also watching him, to
read in his face what he was reading on the paper. None of them read
anything. His face was like a mask. He folded the letter and replaced
it in the envelope. Then he took out his pocketbook and put the letter
in it and put the pocketbook back in his pocket.

Then he said, "I wish to have a word with Miss Exeter alone." There was
a small room that opened off the room in which they were sitting; he
walked toward it. "May we go in here, Cora?" he said. He made a motion
with his hand, and Pearl, like a person bewitched, preceded him.

"Don't be long, Tony," Edna called to him.

"I may be some time," he answered, and shut the door behind him.

Five minutes passed--ten. To those waiting it seemed an hour. Once Mr.
Albertson walked near the door and bent his head.

"Can you hear anything?" said Edna.

"Not a thing," said, Mr. Albertson.

"You wouldn't be such a cad as to listen, would you?" said Durland.

Nobody answered him. More time elapsed; and then Albertson, springing
up, walked with a firm step to the door and turned the handle. It was
locked. Albertson shook back a long gray lock from his forehead.

"What do you make of that?" he said.

Miss Wellington laughed.

"Mrs. Conway has the right explanation, I think," she said. "She's done
the trick with Mr. Wood too."

"Not at all," said Edna. "How can you be so low, Cora? I only said
that to make Anthony angry. He's finding out--luring her to tell him
everything."

"Kidding her along, you mean?" said Mr. Albertson, who hated people not
to use the right word.

"They've probably both got out of the back window by this time," said
Miss Wellington.

This time Mr. Albertson frankly leaned his ear against the crack of the
door.

"No, they're there yet," he said, moving away again. "I can hear them
talking--low."

Another silence succeeded to this information, and then Mrs. Conway's
butler appeared in the doorway. He looked about and said over his
shoulder, "Yes, sir, she's here." He drew back and ushered in Gordon
Conway.

Edna looked at the man who had been her husband and said irritably,
"You, Gordon; This is really a little too much!"

"Hullo, father," said Durland.

"Hullo, Durlie," said his father, as if he were trying to be cordial;
and then, seeing Albertson, he added in a tone really cordial, "Why,
Albertson, how do you do? I haven't seen you since the night what's his
name--who had that crooked wheel in Hester Street--was pulled. Off the
force?"

The two men shook hands.

"Gordon," said Edna, again determined to know the worst, "what do you
want?"

"Why, oddly enough--nothing at all," replied Mr. Conway.

He did not give the same impression of furtiveness and wasted pallor
that Pearl had gained when she had caught a glimpse of him on the
steps. No one could say he had a color, but he was distinctly less
corpselike. There was nothing shabby about him now either. He was very
well dressed in a dark morning suit; his boots, his tie, the wrist
watch which he kept glancing at as if his time was rather short, were
all of the most elegant sort.

"No, my dear," he went on, "you ought to welcome me most cordially,
for I have come to make you a present--quite a present." And fishing
languidly in his pocket he produced the string of pearls.

"A present!" cried Edna. "Those are my pearls!"

"They are now," said her husband politely, "because I have made up my
mind to give them to you."

"You gave them to me originally--they were always mine."

Conway shook his head a number of times.

"So you have always said, Edna; but saying a thing over and over again
does not make it any truer. I did not give them to you----"

"You did," said Edna.

"Ah, Edna," he answered sadly, "how you can take the grace out of life!
You can make even the present of a splendid string of pearls seem
ungracious. I never gave them to you. I let you wear them while you
were my wife--a mistake, for when you ceased to be my wife you would
not give them back--natural, but hardly honest."

"That's absolutely untrue," said Edna.

He did not allow her to ruffle him.

"But now," he went on, "I do give them to you--freely and completely.
Be witness, Albertson, that I present this string of pearls to this
lady--who was once my wife."

Edna was examining them pearl by pearl.

"They seem to be all right," she said. "The number is right. What's
this?" she added, indicating an emerald drop which had never been on
them before.

"That's an extra; that's interest on the money," answered Conway with a
flourish; "that's an expression of thanks for your courtesy in letting
me have them at a moment when they meant so much to me."

This recalled the question of how he had obtained them. "Gordon," she
said, "did you steal those out of my safe?"

He shook his head. "You can't steal what is already your own."

"I can't see how in the world you got them," said Edna, "unless that
woman is a confederate. Did she give them to you?"

"I don't even know what woman you mean, Edna," he answered. "If you
mean a magnificent Hebe who was coming into the house in a hurry as I
was going out the other day, I may say I should always be glad to be
her confederate in anything--one of the few times in my life, Edna, I
was actually sorry to leave your house. No, I did not go to your safe,
although I am interested to know that you have one."

"That's where they were," said Edna indignantly, looking round. "The
pearls were locked up in the safe. I know that."

"Like so much of your more positive information, my dear, that, too, is
wrong," said Conway. "You had them on when I called. And as we talked
they came unfastened, and you took them off and laid them on the table
beside you. Something told me that you had not been aware of what you
did, and so when you refused so very roughly to lend me the sum of
money I needed I simply took back my pearls--when you were not looking."

"Gordon," said Edna, "you stole my pearls." And her tone had a note
of triumph as if the old delight of putting him in the wrong had not
entirely died.

"I took my pearls from the table," said Conway, "and turned them for a
few days into cash, with which I know you will be glad to know I made
a lot of money--a pot of money, Albertson--there is money still to be
made on the races for a smart fellow who knows how; and then, my dear,
with a quixotic impulse I gave you the pearls, as I have always thought
of doing. Some men might have given them to a younger and more amiable
woman, but my nature has always been distinguished by a peculiar form
of loyalty. I give them to you--for the sake of old times."

"You brought them back for the sake of not going to jail," said Edna,
her eyes flashing at him. He smiled gently.

"Edna," he said, "as time goes on you learn nothing--absolutely
nothing. Durland, when are you going to begin to grow? Good night,
Albertson. Remember that you are a witness to this gift. Good night."

And he had taken his departure before anyone spoke again. It was
Durland who spoke first. His voice shook a little.

"You see, mother," he said, "what a terrible injustice you have done
Miss Exeter. She might sue you, only she's too generous. Oh, if you had
only told me that my father had been about that day--only you never
tell me anything, as if I were a baby. You will apologize to her, won't
you?"

"I do not seem to be likely to get the chance of speaking to her at
all," said Edna, glancing at the closed door.

Cora Wellington rose to her feet.

"I'm sorry to be inhospitable, Edna," she said, "but I have had a
long, hard day attending to your business, and I want to go to bed.
In fact, I think I'll go." And she walked firmly out of the room and
upstairs, where, since the house--like the Conways'--was lightly built,
she could be heard rapidly walking about on her heels in the room
immediately overhead.

"Well," said Mr. Albertson, "It looks like I may as well be getting
back to the Great White Way myself. I congratulate you on the happy
termination of this affair, Mrs. Conway. I do not think that emerald is
genuine, but I presume it is the sentiment that will appeal to you. I
feel as happy as you do that that sweet young lady is as innocent as a
baby."

It cannot be said that Edna looked particularly happy over this point.
She raised her shoulders.

"But we don't know yet who she is. She certainly is not Miss Exeter."

Albertson smiled.

"You will find it was just a girlish prank," he said. "And I think we
may presume that Mr. Wood now knows the whole story. I think if you'll
permit me I'll call my assistant and we will get the car and be off."

Mrs. Conway, once again wearing her pearls, and Durland, still talking
of apologies, accompanied Mr. Albertson back to the other house.

So the room was empty. Gradually it seemed to lose even the
remembrance of its late occupants. The down cushion of the chair in
which Edna had been sitting rose softly to its accustomed level with
something like a sigh of relief. A wicker sofa, of stiffer nature,
creaked in every fibre. A drooping flower in a glass vase gave a little
shiver and shed every last petal on the table, as if it had been
waiting all the evening to do this. Even the window curtains ceased
swaying in the sea-breeze. It was as if the room and everything in it
settled down to a breathless expectancy.

And at last the door of the little room opened and Pearl and Anthony
came out. They did not appear at all surprised to find the room empty.
They would not have been surprised to find the universe empty--to hear
phantom newsboys calling an extra announcing that no one existed but
themselves--"Rumor confirmed that only Pearl and Anthony Exist."

Pearl looked about her with that beautiful starry blankness that
certain emotions bring to any human countenance--a thousand times
starrier than ever before.

"I wonder," she said, without the slightest trace of real interest,
"what has happened."

"Haven't you been listening to me," said Anthony. "A miracle has
happened--we have fallen in love."

Nevertheless he understood her meaning; and just to please her he
walked to the door and glanced into the corridor. It was as essentially
empty as the room. Then as he returned to her, although she was staring
in the opposite direction and he made not the slightest sound on the
thick rug, she turned her face slowly up and over her shoulder, and met
his lips with hers. Nor did either of them mention this as a miracle or
even an example of uncharted psychic powers.

It was a long kiss; an inexperienced onlooker might have thought it a
quiet ritual rather than a manifestation of human passion. When it was
over, they stood once more in complete silence. Then Pearl said:

"I think we ought to go back to our sister's house."

"I suppose so," said Anthony. And again by an apparently mystical
understanding they moved not across the lawn toward Mrs. Conway's
house, but out across the dunes toward the beach.

There was no moon, but the milky way like a narrow cloud rose straight
out of the sea, and the Scorpion was brightly festooned above the
southern horizon.



+-------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber's note:                              |
|                                                 |
|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |
|                                                 |
+-------------------------------------------------+





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Priceless Pearl" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.