“There’s a lady waiting to see you, sir,” Dick’s man servant informed him on his arrival at his apartment one evening when he had been dining at his club, and was putting in a leisurely appearance at his own place after his coffee and cigar.

“A lady?”

“Yes, sir, she has been here since nine. She says it’s not important, but she insisted on waiting.”

“The deuce she did.”

Dick’s quarters were not, strictly speaking, of the bachelor variety. That is, he had a suite in one of the older apartment houses in the fifties, a building that domiciled more families and middle-aged married couples than sprightly young single gentlemen. Dick had fallen heir to the establishment of an elderly uncle, who had furnished the place some time in the nineties and when he grew too decrepit to keep his foothold in New York had retired to the country, 210 leaving Dick in possession. Even if Dick had been a conspicuously rakish young gentleman, which he was not, the traditional dignity of his surroundings would have certainly protected him from incongruous indiscretion in their vicinity.

Betty rose composedly from the pompous red velour couch that ran along the wall under a portrait of a gentleman that looked like a Philip of Spain, but was really Dick’s maternal great grandfather.

“Why, Betty,” Dick said, “this isn’t convenable unless you have a chaperon somewhere concealed. We don’t do things like this.”

“I do,” Betty said. “I wanted to see you, so I came. In these emancipated days ladies call upon their men friends if they like. It’s archaic to prattle of chaperons.”

“Still we were all brought up in the fear of them.”

“Mine were brought up in the fear of me. I like this place, Dicky. Why don’t you give us more parties in it? You haven’t had a crowd here for months.”

“Everybody’s so busy,” Dick said, “we don’t 211 seem to get together any more. I’m willing to play host any time that the rest want to come.”

“You mean Nancy is so busy with her old Outside Inn.”

“You are busy there, too.”

“I’m not so busy that I wouldn’t come here when I was asked, Dicky.”

“Or even when you weren’t?” Dick’s smile took the edge off his obviously inhospitable suggestion.

“Or even when I wasn’t,” Betty said impudently. “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Thorndyke?”

“Can’t I call you a cab, Miss Pope?”

“I don’t wish to go away.”

“Betty, be reasonable,” Dick said, “it’s after ten o’clock. It is not usual for me to receive young ladies alone here, and it looks badly. I don’t care for myself, of course, but for you it looks badly.”

“If it’s only for me—I don’t care how it looks. Come and sit down beside me, and talk to me, Dicky, and I’ll tell you really why I came.”

Dick folded his arms and looked down at her. Betty’s piquant little face, olive tinted, and pure 212 oval in contour, was turned up to him confidently; under the close seal turban the soft brown hair framed the childish face, while the big dark eyes danced with mischief. She patted the couch by her side invitingly.

“I’ll go away in fifteen minutes, Dicky dear. It certainly wouldn’t look well if you put me out immediately, after all your establishment knowing that I waited here an hour for you.”

Dick took out his watch.

“Fifteen minutes, then,” he said. “What’s your trouble, Betty?”

“Well, it’s a long sad story,” she temporized. “Perhaps I had better not begin on it now that our time is so short. You wouldn’t like to hold my hand, would you, Dicky?”

“I’m not going to, at any rate.”

“I thought you’d say that,” she sighed. “Have you seen Nancy lately?”

“Yesterday.”

“She’s looking better, don’t you think so?”

“Yes.”

“Preston Eustace is back.”

“Is that so? I didn’t know he was here yet. I knew he was coming.”

“He’s to be here six months, or so.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No, Caroline told me.” Her voice was carefully steadied but Dick noticed for the first time the shadows etched under the big brown eyes, and the flush of excitement splotched high on her cheek-bones. She had been engaged to Preston Eustace for three months succeeding her twentieth birthday.

“On second thoughts I think I will hold your hand, Betty,” he said, covering that childlike member with his own rather brawny one. “You are not a very big little girl, are you, Betty?”

“My mother used to tell me that I was a very destructive child.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you were that yet.”

“Don’t let’s talk about me. Let’s talk about you, Dicky.”

“About me?”

“Yes, please. I think you’re a very interesting subject.”

Having arrived at some conclusion concerning this unprecedented attack upon his privacy, Dick was disposed to be kind to his unexpected visitor. The fact that Preston Eustace was in 214 town and Betty had not seen him shed an entirely new light on her recklessness. Like every other incident in Betty’s history her love-affair had been very conspicuously featured.

“The interesting things about me just at present are—” he was just about to say “six shirts of imported gingham” but he bethought himself that she would be certain to demand to see them, so he finished lamely with—“my game of golf, and my new dogs.”

“What kind of dogs?”

“Belgian police dogs.”

“Where do you keep them?”

“I haven’t taken them over yet.”

“I heard that you had bought a place up in Westchester, but I asked Nancy, and she said she didn’t know. I don’t think Nancy appreciates you, Dick.”

“That so often happens.”

“I mean that seriously.”

“It’s a serious matter—being appreciated. The only person who I ever thought really appreciated me was Billy’s old aunt. Every time she saw me she used to say to me, ‘You’re such a clean-looking young man I can’t take my eyes off you.’”

“You are clean-looking, and awfully good-looking too.”

“Do you mind if I smoke, Betty?” Dick carefully disengaged his hand from her clinging fingers, and a look of something like intelligence passed between them, before Betty turned her ingenuous child’s stare on him again.

“Not if you’ll give me a cigarette, too.”

Dick fumbled through his pockets.

“It’s awfully stupid, but I haven’t any about me,” he said, fingering what he knew that she knew to be the well filled case he always carried in his inner pocket. He did not approve of women smoking.

But “Poor Dicky!” was all she said.

“Your fifteen minutes are up, Betty,” he said presently, taking out his watch.

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to go then.”

Dick rose politely.

“You really don’t care whether I go or stay, do you?” she sighed.

“I would rather have you go, Betty,” he said gravely.

Betty’s eyes filled with sudden tears, that Dick to his surprise realized were genuine.

“I wanted you to want me to stay,” she said incoherently.

“I suppose you’re just a miserable little thing that doesn’t want to be alone,” he concluded. “Come, I’ll take you home.”

The telephone bell on the table beside him rang sharply.

“I’m just going out,” he said to Billy, on the wire. “Betty is here with a fit of the blues. I’m going to take her home. Ride up with us, will you?”

“He’ll meet us down-stairs in ten minutes,” he said. “I’ll order a taxi.”

“I don’t want to see Billy,” Betty said rebelliously. She rose suddenly, pulling on her gloves, and took a step forward as if about to brush by him petulantly, but as she did so she staggered, put her hand to her eyes, and fell forward against his breast.

Dick picked up the limp little body, and made his way to the couch where he deposited it gently among the stiff red pillows there. Then he began to chafe her hands, to push back the tumbled hair from which the fur hat had been displaced, and finally fallen off, and to call out her name remorsefully.

“Betty, dear, dearest,” he cried, “I didn’t know, I didn’t dream,—I thought you were just trying it on. I’m so sorry, dear, I am so sorry.”

She moaned softly, and he bent over her again more closely. Then he gathered her up in his arms.

“Betty, dear, Betty,” he said again.

She opened her eyes. Her two soft arms stole up around his neck, and she lifted her lips.

“You little devil,” Dick cried, almost at the same instant that he kissed her.

“She deserves to be spanked,” he told Billy grimly at the door. “She got in my apartment when I was out, and insisted on staying there till I came in, to make me a visit.”

“He doesn’t understand me,” Betty complained, as she cuddled confidingly in the corner of the taxi-cab, “when I’m serious he doesn’t realize or appreciate it, and he doesn’t understand the nature of my practical jokes.”

“I don’t like—practical jokes,” Dick said. “Have you seen Preston Eustace, Billy?”

“I haven’t seen Caroline,” Billy said, as if that disposed of all the interrogatory remarks that might be addressed to him in the present or the future.

“It’s a nice-looking river,” Betty said, looking out at the softly gleaming surface of the Hudson, as their cab took the drive. “It looks strange to-night, though, laden with all kinds of queer little boats. I wonder how it would feel to be drifting down it, or up it, on a barque or a barkentine—I don’t know what a barkentine is—all dead like Elaine or Ophelia,—with your hands neatly folded across your breast?”

“For heaven sake’s, Betty,” Billy cried, “I don’t like your style of conversation. I’m in a state of gloom myself, to-night.”

“I didn’t say I was in a state of gloom,” Betty said. They rode the rest of the way in silence, but when Dick got out of the cab to open her door for her, she whispered to him, “I’m awfully ashamed, Dick,” before she fled up-stairs through the darkened hallway of her own home.

“Queer little thing,—Betty,” Billy said as Dick stepped back to the cab again, “you never know where you have her. Full of the deuce as she can stick. Unscrupulous little rascal, too, but made of good stuff.”

“Don’t you think so?” Billy inquired presently as Dick did not answer.

“Think what?”

“That Betty’s a queer sort of girl.”

Dick took his pipe out of his pocket and began stuffing it full of tobacco. When this was satisfactorily accomplished, he struck a match on his boot heel, and lit the mixture, drawing at it critically meanwhile.

“Damn’ queer,” he admitted, between puffs.