Part 44 (1/2)

”Oh, that!” said Sharlee. ”Well, that question is not so easy to answer as you might think. It opens up a peculiar situation: to begin with, he is a sort of an orphan, and--”

”How do you mean, a sort of an orphan?”

”You see, that is just where the peculiar part comes in. There is the heart of the whole mystery, and yet right there is the place where I must be reticent with you, mother, for though I know all about it, it was told to me confidentially--professionally, as my aunt's agent--and therefore--”

”Do you mean that you know nothing about his people?”

”I suppose it might be stated, crudely, in that way, but--”

”And knowing nothing about who or what he was, you simply picked him up at the boarding-house, and admitted him to your friends.h.i.+p?”

”Picking-up is not the word that the most careful mothers employ, in reference to their daughters' att.i.tude toward young men. Mother, don't you understand? I'm a democrat.”

”It is not a thing,” said Mrs. Weyland, with some asperity, ”for a lady to be.”

Sharlee, fixing her hair in the back before the mirror, laughed long and merrily. ”Do you dare--do you _dare_ look your own daughter in the eye and say she is no lady?”

”Do you like this young man?” Mrs. Weyland continued.

”He interests me, heaps and heaps.”

Mrs. Weyland sighed. ”I can only say,” she observed, sinking into a chair and picking up her book, ”that such goings on were never heard of in my day.”

XXII

_In which Professor Nicolovius drops a Letter on the Floor, and Queed conjectures that Happiness sometimes comes to Men wearing a Strange Face._

Queed sat alone in the sitting-room of the Duke of Gloucester Street house. His afternoon's experiences had interested him largely. By subtle and occult processes which defied his a.n.a.lysis, what he had seen and heard had proved mysteriously disturbing--all this outpouring of irrational sentiment in which he had no share. So had his conversation with the girl disturbed him. He was in a condition of mental unrest, undefined but acute; odds and ends of curious thought kicked about within him, challenging him to follow them down to unexplored depths.

But he was paying no attention to them now.

He sat in the sitting-room, wondering how Nicolovius had ever happened to think of that story about the Fenian refugee.

For Queed had been gradually driven to that unpleasant point. While living in the old man's house, he was, despite his conscientious efforts, virtually spying upon him.

The Fenian story had always had its questionable points; but so long as the two men were merely chance fellow-boarders, it did as well as any other. Now that they lived together, however, the multiplying suggestions that the old professor was something far other than he pretended became rather important. The young man could not help being aware that Nicolovius neither looked nor talked in the slightest degree like an Irishman. He could not help being certain that an Irishman who had fled to escape punishment for a political crime, in 1882, could have safely returned to his country long ago; and would undoubtedly have kept up relations with his friends overseas in the meantime. Nor could he help being struck with such facts as that Nicolovius, while apparently little interested in the occasional cables about Irish affairs, had become seemingly absorbed in the three days' doings of the United Confederate Veterans.

Now it was entirely all right for the old man to have a secret, and keep it. There was not the smallest quarrel on that score. But it was not in the least all right for one man to live with another, pretending to believe in him, when in reality he was doubting and questioning him at every move. The want of candor involved in his present relations with Nicolovius continually fretted Queed's conscience. Ought he not in common honesty to tell the old man that he could not believe the Irish biography, leaving it to him to decide what he wanted to do about it?

Nicolovius, tramping in only a few minutes behind Queed, greeted his young friend as blandly as ever. Physically, he seemed tired; much dust of city streets clung to his commonly spotless boots; but his eyes were so extraordinarily brilliant that Queed at first wondered if he could have been drinking. However, this thought died almost as soon as it was born.

The professor walked over to the window and stood looking out, hat on head. Presently he said: ”You saw the grand parade, I suppose? For indeed there was no escaping it.”

Queed said that he had seen it.

”You had a good place to see it from, I hope?”

Excellent; Miss Weyland's porch.

”Ah!” said Nicolovius, with rather an emphasis, and permitted a pause to fall. ”A most charming young lady--charming,” he went on, with his note of velvet irony which the young man peculiarly disliked. ”I hear she is to marry your Mr. West. An eminently suitable match in every way. Yet I shall not soon forget how that delightful young man defrauded you of the editors.h.i.+p.”