Van traced a family-tree on the tablecloth with a salt-spoon, for his
guest's better information.
"That doesn't enlighten me on the semi-royal status of your Aunt
Maritzburg," objected O'Barreton. "How did she grow so great?"
"Vicissitudes, Barry," explained the host patiently. "Just vicissitudes.
The father and the two elder brothers died off and left the third son to
assume the government of a grand duchy, which he did not want, and
compelled him to relinquish the mahl-stick and brushes which he loved.
My aunt was his grand-duchess-consort, and until her death occupied with
him the ducal throne. If you'd look these things up for yourself, my
son, in some European 'Who's Who,' you'd remember 'em--and save me much
trouble."
After dinner Cara disappeared, and Benton wandered from room to room
with a seemingly purposeless eye, keenly alert for a black gown, a red
rose, and a girl whom he could not find. Von Ritz also was missing, and
this fact added to his anxiety.
In the conservatory he came upon Pagratide, likewise stalking about with
restlessly roving eyes, like a hunter searching a jungle. The foreigner
paused with one foot tapping the marble rim of a small fountain, and
Benton passed with a nod.
The evening went by without her reappearance, and finally the house
darkened, and settled into quiet. Benton sought the open, driven by a
restlessness that obsessed and troubled him. A fitful breeze brought
down the dead leaves in swirling eddies. The moon was under a cloud-bank
when, a quarter of a mile from the house, he left the smooth lawns and
plunged among the vine-clad trees and thickets that rimmed the creek. In
the darkness, he could hear the low, wild plaint with which the stream
tossed itself over the rocks that cumbered its bed.
Beyond the thicket he came again to a more open space among the trees,
free from underbrush, but strewn at intervals with great bowlders. He
picked his way cautiously, mindful of crevices where a broken leg or
worse might be the penalty of a misstep in the darkness. The humor
seized him to sit on a great rock which dropped down twenty feet to the
creek bed, and listen to the quieting music of its night song. His eyes,
grown somewhat accustomed to the darkness, had been blinded again by the
match he had just struck to light a cigarette, and he walked, as it
behooved him, carefully and gropingly.
"Please, sir, don't step on me."
Benton halted with a start and stared confusedly about him. A ripple of
low laughter came to his ears as he widened his pupils in the effort to
accommodate his eyes to the murk. Then the moon broke out once more and
the place became one of silver light and dark, soft shadow-blots. She
was sitting with her back against a tree, her knees gathered between her
arms, fingers interlocked. She had thrown a long, rough cape about her,
but it had fallen open, leaving visible the black gown and a spot he
knew to be a red rose on her breast.