The Fighting Chance

"I wonder if you know Howard Quarrier?" she said.

After a second's hesitation he replied: "Yes--a little. Everybody does."

"You do know him?"

"Only at--the club."

"Oh, the Lenox?"

"The Lenox--and the Patroons."

Preoccupied, driving with careless, almost inattentive perfection, she thought idly of her twenty-three years, wondering how life could have passed so quickly leaving her already stranded on the shoals of an engagement to marry Howard Quarrier. Then her thoughts, errant, wandered half the world over before they returned to Siward; and when at length they did, and meaning to be civil, she spoke again of his acquaintance with Quarrier at the Patroons Club--the club itself being sufficient to settle Siward's status in every community.

"I'm trying to remember what it is I have heard about you," she continued amiably; "you are--"

An odd expression in his eyes arrested her--long enough to note their colour and expression--and she continued, pleasantly; "--you are Stephen Siward, are you not? You see I know your name perfectly well--" Her straight brows contracted a trifle; she drove on, lips compressed, following an elusive train of thought which vaguely, persistently, coupled his name with something indefinitely unpleasant. And she could not reconcile this with his appearance. However, the train of unlinked ideas which she pursued began to form the semblance of a chain. Coupling his name with Quarrier's, and with a club, aroused memory; vague uneasiness stirred her to a glimmering comprehension. Siward? Stephen Siward? One of the New York Siwards then;--one of that race-Suddenly the truth flashed upon her,--the crude truth lacking definite detail, lacking circumstance and colour and atmosphere,--merely the raw and ugly truth.

Had he looked at her--and he did, once--he could have seen only the unruffled and very sweet profile of a young girl. Composure was one of the masks she had learned to wear--when she chose.

And she was thinking very hard all the while; "So this is the man? I might have known his name. Where were my five wits? Siward!--Stephen Siward! … He is very young, too … much too young to be so horrid. … Yet--it wasn't so dreadful, after all; only the publicity! Dear me! I knew we were going too fast."

"Miss Landis," he said.

"Mr. Siward?"--very gently. It was her way to be gentle when generous.

"I think," he said, "that you are beginning to remember where you may have heard my name."

"Yes--a little--" She looked at him with the direct gaze of a child, but the lovely eyes were troubled. His smile was not very genuine, but he met her gaze steadily enough.