“I don’t see why the colonel didn’t invite some of the ladies,” Mrs. Harrigan complained.

“It’s a man-party. He’s giving it to please himself. And I do not blame him. The women about here treat him abominably. They come at all times of the day and night, use his card-room, order his servants about, drink his whisky and smoke his cigarettes, and generally invite themselves to luncheon and tea and dinner. And then, when they are ready to go back to their villas or hotel, take his motor-boat without a thank-you. The colonel has about three thousand pounds outside his half-pay, and they are all crazy to marry him because his sister is a countess. As a bachelor he can live like a prince, but as a married man he would have to dig. He told me that if he had been born Adam, he’d have climbed over Eden’s walls long before the Angel of the Flaming Sword paddled him out. Says he’s always going to be a bachelor, unless I take pity on him,” mischievously.

“Has he...?” in horrified tones.

“About three times a visit,” Nora admitted; “but I told him that I’d be a daughter, a cousin, or a niece to him, or even a grandchild. The latter presented too many complications, so we compromised on niece.”

“I wish I knew when you were serious and when you were fooling.”

“I am often as serious when I am fooling as I am foolish when I am serious....”

“Nora, you will have me shrieking in a minute!” despaired the mother. “Did the colonel really propose to you?”

“Only in fun.”

Celeste laughed and threw her arm around the mother’s waist, less ample than substantial. “Don’t you care! Nora is being pursued by little devils and is venting her spite on us.”

“There’ll be too much Burgundy and tobacco, to say nothing of the awful stories.”

“With the good old padre there? Hardly,” said Nora.

Celeste was a French woman. “I confess that I like a good story that isn’t vulgar. And none of them look like men who would stoop to vulgarity.”

“That’s about all you know of men,” declared Mrs. Harrigan.

“I am willing to give them the benefit of a doubt.”

“Celeste,” cried Nora, gaily, “I’ve an idea. Supposing you and I run back after dinner and hide in the card-room, which is right across from the dining-room? Then we can judge for ourselves.”

“Nora Harrigan!”

“Molly Harrigan!” mimicked the incorrigible. “Mother mine, you must learn to recognize a jest.”

“Ah, but yours!”

“Fine!” cried Celeste.

As if to put a final period to the discussion, Nora began to hum audibly an aria from AÏda.

They engaged a carriage in the village and were driven up to the villa. On the way Mrs. Harrigan discussed the stranger, Edward Courtlandt. What a fine-looking young man he was, and how adventurous, how well-connected, how enormously rich, and what an excellent catch! She and Celeste—the one innocently and the other provocatively—continued the subject to the very doors of the villa. All the while Nora hummed softly.

“What do you think of him, Nora?” the mother inquired.

“Think of whom?”

“This Mr. Courtlandt.”

“Oh, I didn’t pay much attention to him,” carelessly. But once alone with Celeste, she seized her by the arm, a little roughly. “Celeste, I love you better than any outsider I know. But if you ever discuss that man in my presence again, I shall cease to regard you even as an acquaintance. He has come here for the purpose of annoying me, though he promised the prefect in Paris never to annoy me again.”

“The prefect!”

“Yes. The morning I left Versailles I met him in the private office of the prefect. He had powerful friends who aided him in establishing an alibi. I was only a woman, so I didn’t count.”

“Nora, if I have meddled in any way,” proudly, “it has been because I love you, and I see you unhappy. You have nearly killed me with your sphinx-like actions. You have never asked me the result of my spying for you that night. Spying is not one of my usual vocations, but I did it gladly for you.”

“You gave him my address?” coldly.

“I did not. I convinced him that I had come at the behest of Flora Desimone. He demanded her address, which I gave him. If ever there was a man in a fine rage, it was he as he left me to go there. If he found out where we lived, the Calabrian assisted him, I spoke to him rather plainly at tea. He said that he had had nothing whatever to do with the abduction, and I believe him. I am positive that he is not the kind of man to go that far and not proceed to the end. And now, will you please tell Carlos to bring my dinner to my room?”

The impulsive Irish heart was not to be resisted. Nora wanted to remain firm, but instead she swept Celeste into her arms. “Celeste, don’t be angry! I am very, very unhappy.”

If the Irish heart was impulsive, the French one was no less so. Celeste wanted to cry out that she was unhappy, too.

“Don’t bother to dress! Just give your hair a pat or two. We’ll all three dine on the balcony.”

Celeste flew to her room. Nora went over to the casement window and stared at the darkening mountains. When she turned toward the dresser she was astonished to find two bouquets. One was an enormous bunch of violets. The other was of simple marguerites. She picked up the violets. There was a card without a name; but the phrase scribbled across the face of it was sufficient. She flung the violets far down into the grape-vines below. The action was without anger, excited rather by a contemptuous indifference. As for the simple marguerites, she took them up gingerly. The arc these described through the air was even greater than that performed by the violets.

“I’m a silly fool, I suppose,” she murmured, turning back into the room again.

It was ten o’clock when the colonel bade his guests good night as they tumbled out of his motor-boat. They were in more or less exuberant spirits; for the colonel knew how to do two things particularly well: order a dinner, and avoid the many traps set for him by scheming mamas and eligible widows. Abbott, the Barone and Harrigan, arm in arm, marched on ahead, whistling one tune in three different keys, while Courtlandt set the pace for the padre.

All through the dinner the padre had watched and listened. Faces were generally books to him, and he read in this young man’s face many things that pleased him. This was no night rover, a fool over wine and women, a spendthrift. He straightened out the lines and angles in a man’s face as a skilled mathematician elucidates an intricate geometrical problem. He had arrived at the basic knowledge that men who live mostly out of doors are not volatile and irresponsible, but are more inclined to reserve, to reticence, to a philosophy which is broad and comprehensive and generous. They are generally men who are accomplishing things, and who let other people tell about it. Thus, the padre liked Courtlandt’s voice, his engaging smile, his frank unwavering eyes; and he liked the leanness about the jaws, which was indicative of strength of character. In fact, he experienced a singular jubilation as he walked beside this silent man.

“There has been a grave mistake somewhere,” he mused aloud, thoughtfully.

“I beg your pardon,” said Courtlandt.

“I beg yours. I was thinking aloud. How long have you known the Harrigans?”

“The father and mother I never saw before to-day.”

“Then you have met Miss Harrigan?”

“I have seen her on the stage.”

“I have the happiness of being her confessor.”

They proceeded quite as far as a hundred yards before Courtlandt volunteered: “That must be interesting.”

“She is a good Catholic.”

“Ah, yes; I recollect now.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I haven’t any religion such as requires my presence in churches. Don’t misunderstand me! As a boy I was bred in the Episcopal Church; but I have traveled so much that I have drifted out of the circle. I find that when I am out in the open, in the heart of some great waste, such as a desert, a sea, the top of a mountain, I can see the greatness of the Omnipotent far more clearly and humbly than within the walls of a cathedral.”

“But God imposes obligations upon mankind. We have ceased to look upon the hermit as a holy man, but rather as one devoid of courage. It is not the stone and the stained windows; it is the text of our daily work, that the physical being of the Church represents.”

“I have not avoided any of my obligations.” Courtlandt shifted his stick behind his back. “I was speaking of the church and the open field, as they impressed me.”

“You believe in the tenets of Christianity?”

“Surely! A man must pin his faith and hope to something more stable than humanity.”

“I should like to convert you to my way of thinking,” simply.

“Nothing is impossible. Who knows?”

The padre, as they continued onward, offered many openings, but the young man at his side refused to be drawn into any confidence. So the padre gave up, for the futility of his efforts became irksome. His own lips were sealed, so he could not ask point-blank the question that clamored at the tip of his tongue.

“So you are Miss Harrigan’s confessor?”

“Does it strike you strangely?”

“Merely the coincidence.”

“If I were not her confessor I should take the liberty of asking you some questions.”

“It is quite possible that I should decline to answer them.”

The padre shrugged. “It is patent to me that you will go about this affair in your own way. I wish you well.”

“Thank you. As Miss Harrigan’s confessor you doubtless know everything but the truth.”

The padre laughed this time. The shops were closed. The open restaurants by the water-front held but few idlers. The padre admired the young man’s independence. Most men would have hesitated not a second to pour the tale into his ears in hope of material assistance. The padre’s admiration was equally proportioned with respect.

“I leave you here,” he said. “You will see me frequently at the villa.”

“I certainly shall be there frequently. Good night.”

Courtlandt quickened his pace which soon brought him alongside the others. They stopped in front of Abbott’s pension, and he tried to persuade them to come up for a nightcap.

“Nothing to it, my boy,” said Harrigan. “I need no nightcap on top of cognac forty-eight years old. For me that’s a whole suit of pajamas.”

“You come, Ted.”

“Abbey, I wouldn’t climb those stairs for a bottle of Horace’s Falernian, served on Seneca’s famous citron table.”

“Not a friend in the world,” Abbott lamented.

Laughingly they hustled him into the hallway and fled. Then Courtlandt went his way alone. He slept with the dubious satisfaction that the first day had not gone badly. The wedge had been entered. It remained to be seen if it could be dislodged.

Harrigan was in a happy temper. He kissed his wife and chucked Nora under the chin. And then Mrs. Harrigan launched the thunderbolt which, having been held on the leash for several hours, had, for all of that, lost none of its ability to blight and scorch.

“James, you are about as hopeless a man as ever was born. You all but disgraced us this afternoon.”

“Mother!”

“Me?” cried the bewildered Harrigan.

“Look at those tennis shoes; one white string and one brown one. It’s enough to drive a woman mad. What in heaven’s name made you come?”

Perhaps it was the after effect of a good dinner, that dwindling away of pleasant emotions; perhaps it was the very triviality of the offense for which he was thus suddenly arraigned; at any rate, he lost his temper, and he was rather formidable when that occurred.

“Damn it, Molly, I wasn’t going, but Courtlandt asked me to go with him, and I never thought of my shoes. You are always finding fault with me these days. I don’t drink, I don’t gamble, I don’t run around after other women; I never did. But since you’ve got this social bug in your bonnet, you keep me on hooks all the while. Nobody noticed the shoe-strings; and they would have looked upon it as a joke if they had. After all, I’m the boss of this ranch. If I want to wear a white string and a black one, I’ll do it. Here!” He caught up the book on social usages and threw it out of the window. “Don’t ever shove a thing like that under my nose again. If you do, I’ll hike back to little old New York and start the gym again.”

He rammed one of the colonel’s perfectos (which he had been saving for the morrow) between his teeth, and stalked into the garden.

Nora was heartless enough to laugh.

“He hasn’t talked like that to me in years!” Mrs. Harrigan did not know what to do,—follow him or weep. She took the middle course, and went to bed.

Nora turned out the lights and sat out on the little balcony. The moonshine was glorious. So dense was the earth-blackness that the few lights twinkling here and there were more like fallen stars. Presently she heard a sound. It was her father, returning as silently as he could. She heard him fumble among the knickknacks on the mantel, and then go away again. By and by she saw a spot of white light move hither and thither among the grape arbors. For five or six minutes she watched it dance. Suddenly all became dark again. She laid her head upon the railing and conned over the day’s events. These were not at all satisfactory to her. Then her thoughts traveled many miles away. Six months of happiness, of romance, of play, and then misery and blackness.

“Nora, are you there?”

“Yes. Over here on the balcony. What were you doing down there?”

“Oh, Nora, I’m sorry I lost my temper. But Molly’s begun to nag me lately, and I can’t stand it. I went after that book. Did you throw some flowers out of the window?”

“Yes.”

“A bunch of daisies?”

“Marguerites,” she corrected.

“All the same to me. I picked up the bunch, and look at what I found inside.”

He extended his palm, flooding it with the light of his pocket-lamp. Nora’s heart tightened. What she saw was a beautiful uncut emerald.