sharply.
“Nothing at all; just sitting on the steps. What’d she say?”
His father evidently considered it wiser not to repeat the text of accusation. “You know what you did,” he said heavily.
“Oho!” Hedrick’s eyes became severe, and his sire’s evasively shifted from them.
“You keep away from the porch,” said the father, uneasily.
“You mean what I said about Ray Vilas?” asked the boy.
Both parents looked uncomfortable, and Mr. Madison, turning a leaf in his book, gave a mediocre imitation of an austere person resuming his reading after an impertinent interruption.
“That’s what you mean,” said the boy accusingly. “Ray Vilas!”
“Just you keep away from that porch.”
“Because I happened to mention Ray Vilas?” demanded Hedrick.
“You let your sister alone.”
“I got a right to know what she said, haven’t I?”
There was no response, which appeared to satisfy Hedrick perfectly. Neither parent met his glance; the mother troubled and the father dogged, while the boy rejoiced sternly in some occult triumph. He inflated his scant chest in pomp and hurled at the defeated pair the well-known words:
“I wish she was my daughter—about five minutes!”
New sounds from without—men’s voices in greeting, and a ripple of response from Cora somewhat lacking in enthusiasm—afforded Mr. Madison unmistakable relief, and an errand upon which to send his deadly offspring.
Hedrick, after a reconnaissance in the hall, obeyed at leisure. Closing the library door nonchalantly behind him, he found himself at the foot of a flight of unillumined back stairs, where his manner underwent a swift alteration, for here was an adventure to be gone about with ceremony. “Ventre St. Gris!” he muttered hoarsely, and loosened the long rapier in the shabby sheath at his side. For, with the closing of the door, he had become a Huguenot gentleman, over forty and a little grizzled perhaps, but modest and unassuming; wiry, alert, lightning-quick, with a wrist of steel and a heart of gold; and he was about to ascend the stairs of an unknown house at Blois in total darkness. He went up, crouching, ready for anything, without a footfall, not even causing a hideous creak; and gained the top in safety. Here he turned into an obscure passage, and at the end of it beheld, through an open door, a little room in which a dark-eyed lady sat writing in a book by the light of an oil lamp.
The wary Huguenot remained in the shadow and observed her.
Laura was writing in an old ledger she had found in the attic, blank and unused. She had rebound it herself in heavy gray leather; and fitted it with a tiny padlock and key. She wore the key under her dress upon a very thin silver chain round her neck. Upon the first page of the book was written a date, now more than a year past, the month was June—and beneath it:
“Love came to me to-day.”
Nothing more was written upon that page.
CHAPTER FOUR
Laura, at this writing, looked piquantly unfamiliar to her brother: her eyes were moist and bright; her cheeks were flushed and as she bent low, intently close to the book, a loosened wavy strand of her dark hair almost touched the page. Hedrick had never before seen her wearing an expression so “becoming” as the eager and tremulous warmth of this; though sometimes, at the piano, she would play in a reverie which wrought such glamour about her that even a brother was obliged to consider her rather handsome. She looked more than handsome now, so strangely lovely, in fact, that his eyes watered painfully with the protracted struggle to read a little of the writing in her book before she discovered him.
He gave it up at last, and lounged forward blinking, with the air of finding it sweet to do nothing.
“Whatch’ writin’?” he asked in simple carelessness.
At the first sound of his movement she closed the book in a flash; then, with a startled, protective gesture, extended her arms over it, covering it.
“What is it, Hedrick?” she asked, breathlessly.
“What’s the padlock for?”
“Nothing,” she panted. “What is it you want?”
“You writin’ poetry?”
Laura’s eyes dilated; she looked dangerous.
“Oh, I don’t care about your old book,” said Hedrick, with an amused nonchalance Talleyrand might have admired. “There’s callers, and you have to come down.”
“Who sent you?”
“A man I’ve often noticed around the house,” he replied blightingly. “You may have seen him—I think his name’s Madison. His wife and he both sent for you.”
One of Laura’s hands instinctively began to arrange her hair, but the other remained upon the book. “Who is it calling?”
“Richard Lindley and that Wade Trumble.”
Laura rose, standing between her brother and the table. “Tell mother I will come down.”
Hedrick moved a little nearer, whereupon, observing his eye, she put her right hand behind her upon the book. She was not deceived, and boys are not only superb strategic actors sometimes, but calamitously quick. Appearing to be unaware of her careful defence, he leaned against the wall and crossed his feet in an original and interesting manner.
“Of course you understand,” he said cosily. “Cora wants to keep this Corliss in a corner of the porch where she can coo at him; so you and mother’ll have to raise a ballyhoo for Dick Lindley and that Wade Trumble. It’d been funny if Dick hadn’t noticed anybody was there and kissed her. What on earth does he want to stay engaged to her for, anyway?”
“You don’t know that she is engaged to Mr. Lindley, Hedrick.”
“Get out!” he hooted. “What’s the use talking like that to me? A blind mackerel could see she’s let poor old Lindley think he’s High Man with her these last few months; but he’ll have to hit the pike now, I reckon, ‘cause this Corliss is altogether too pe-rin-sley for Dick’s class. Lee roy est mort. Vive lee roy!”
“Hedrick, won’t you please run along? I want to change my dress.”
“What for? There was company for dinner and you didn’t change then.”
Laura’s flushed cheeks flushed deeper, and in her confusion she answered too quickly. “I only have one evening gown. I—of course I can’t wear it every night.”
“Well, then,” he returned triumphantly,
