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Second Latchkey, The

<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> <h3>THE COUNTESS DE SANTIAGO</h3> "You don't wish to tell me the name?" Ruthven Smith was saying. The repetition irritated the girl, whose nerves were strained to snapping point. She could not parry the man's questions. She could not bear his grieved or offended reproaches. If he persisted, through these moments of suspense, she would scream or burst out crying. Trembling, with tears in her voice, she heard herself answer. And yet it did not seem to be herself, but something within, stronger than she, that suddenly took control of her. "Why should I not wish to tell you?" the Something was saying. "The name is the same as your own—Smith. Nelson Smith." And before the words had left her lips a taxi drew up at the door. There was one instant of agony during which the previous suspense seemed nothing—an instant when the girl forgot what she had said, her soul pressing to the windows of her eyes. Was it he who had come, or—— It was he. Before she had time to finish the thought, he walked in, confident and smiling as when she had left him a few minutes—or a few years—ago; and in the wave of relief which overwhelmed her, Annesley forgot Ruthven Smith's question and her answer. She remembered again, only with the shock of hearing him address the newcomer by the name she had given. "I hear from Miss Grayle that we are namesakes," Mr. Ruthven Smith said, as "Nelson Smith" sprang in and took the girl's bag from her ice-cold hand. "I—he asked me ... I told him," Annesley stammered, her eyes appealing, seeking to explain, and begging pardon. "But if——" "Quite right. Why not tell?" he answered instantly, his first glance of surprise turning to cheerful reassurance. "Now Mrs. Ellsworth is eliminated, I'm no longer a secret. And I expect you'll like to meet Mr. Ruthven Smith again when you have a house to entertain him in." So speaking, he offered his hand with a smile to his "namesake"; and Annesley realized from the outsider's point of view the peculiar attraction of the man. Ruthven Smith felt it, as she had felt it, though differently and in a lesser degree. Not only did he shake hands, but actually came out to the taxi with them, asking Annesley if he should tell his cousins of her engagement, or if she preferred to give the news herself? It flashed into the girl's mind that it would be perfect if she could be married to her knight by Archdeacon Smith; but she had been imprudent too often already. She dared not make such a suggestion without consulting the other person most concerned, so she answered that she would write Mrs. Smith or see her. "To say that you, too, are going to be Mrs. Smith!" chuckled the Archdeacon's cousin in his dry way, which made him seem even older than he was. "Well, you can trust me with Mrs. Ellsworth. If she goes on as she began to-night, I'm afraid I shall have to follow your example: 'fold my tent like an Arab, and silently steal away.' Ha, ha! By the by, I dare say she's owing you salary. I'll remind her of it if you like—tell her you asked me. It may help with the trousseau." "Thank you, but my wife won't need to remind Mrs. Ellsworth of her debt," the answer came before Annesley could speak. "And she will be my wife in a day or two at latest. Good-night! Glad to have met you, even if it was an unpromising introduction." Then they were off, they two alone together; and Annesley guessed that the chauffeur must have had his instructions where to drive, as she heard none given. Perhaps it was best that their destination should not be published aloud, for there are walls which have ears. It occurred to the girl that precautions might still have to be taken. But in another moment she was undeceived. "I thought old Ruthven Smith would be shocked if he knew the 'safe refuge' I have for you is no more convent-like than the Savoy Hotel," her companion laughed. "By Jove, neither you nor I dreamed when we got out of the last taxi that we should soon be in another, going back to the place we started from!" "The Savoy!" exclaimed Annesley. "Oh, but we mustn't go there, of all places! Those men——" "I assure you it's safer now than anywhere in London!" the man cut her short. "I can't explain why—that is, I could explain if I cared to rig up a story. But there's something about you makes me feel as if I'd like to tell you the truth whenever I can: and the truth is, that for reasons you may understand some day—though I hope to Heaven you'll never have to!—my association with those men is one of the things I long to turn the key upon. I know that that sounds like Bluebeard to Fatima, but it isn't as bad as that. To me, it doesn't seem bad at all. And I swear that whatever mystery—if you call it 'mystery'—there is about me, it sha'n't hurt you. Will you believe this—and trust me for the rest?" "I've told you I would!" the girl reminded him. "I know. But things were different then—not so serious. They hadn't gone so far. I didn't suppose that Fate would give you to me so soon. I didn't dare hope it. I——" "Are you sure you want me?" Annesley faltered. "Surer than I've ever been of anything in my life before. It's only of you I'm thinking. I wanted to arrange my—business matters so as to be fair to you. But you'll make the best of things." "You are being noble to me," said the girl, "and I've been very foolish. I've complicated everything. First, by what I told Mr. Ruthven Smith about—about us. And then—saying your name was Nelson Smith." "You weren't foolish!" he contradicted. "You were only—playing into Fate's hands. You couldn't help yourself. Destiny! And all's for the best. You were an angel to sacrifice yourself to save me, and your doing it the way you did has made me a happy man at one stroke. As for the name—what's in a name? We might as well be in reality what we played at being to-night—'Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith.' There are even reasons why I'm pleased that you've made me a present of the name. I thank you for it—and for all the rest." "Oh, but if it isn't really your name, we sha'n't be legally married, shall we?" Annesley protested. "By Jove!" he exclaimed. "I hadn't thought of that. It's a difficulty. But we'll obviate it—somehow. Don't worry! Only I'm afraid we can't ask your friend the Archdeacon to marry us, as I meant to suggest, because I was sure you'd like it." "I should. But it doesn't matter," said the girl. "Besides, I feel that to-morrow I shall find I've dreamed—all this." "Then I've dreamed you, at the same time, and I'm not going to let you slip out of my dream, now I've got you in it. I intend to go on dreaming you for the rest of my life. And I shall take care you don't wake up!" Afterward there came a time when Annesley called back those words and wondered if they had held a deeper meaning than she guessed. But, having uttered them, he seemed to put the thought out of his mind, and turn to the next. "About the Savoy," he went on. "I want to take you there, because I know a woman staying in the hotel—a woman old enough to be your mother—who'll look after you, to please me, till we're married. Afterward you'll be nice to her, and that will be doing her a good turn, because she's apt to be lonesome in London. She's the widow of a Spanish Count, and has lived in the Argentine, but I met her in New York. She knows all about me—or enough—and if she'd been in the restaurant at dinner this evening she could have done for me what you did. I had reason to think she would be there when I bolted in to get out of a fix. But she was missing. Are you sorry?" "If she'd been there, you would have gone to her table and sat down, and we—should never have met!" Annesley thought aloud. "How strange! Just that little thing—your friend being out to dinner—and our whole lives are to be changed. Oh, you must be sorry?" "I tell you, meeting you and winning you in this way is worth the best ten years of my life. But you haven't answered my question." "I'll answer it now!" cried the girl. "Meeting you is worth all the years of my life! I'm not much of a princess, but you are St. George." "St. George!" he echoed, a ring of bitterness under his laugh. "That's the first time I've been called a saint, and I'm afraid it will be the last. I can't live up to that, but—if I can give you a happy life, and a few of the beautiful things you deserve, why, it's something! Besides, I'm going to worship my princess. I'd give anything to show you how I—but no. I was good before, when I was tempted to kiss you. You're at my mercy now, in a way, all the more because I'm taking you from your old existence to one you don't know. "I sha'n't ask to kiss you—except maybe your little hand if you don't mind—until the moment you're my wife. Meantime, I'll try to grow a bit more like what your lover ought to be; and later I shall kiss you enough to make up for lost time." If, five hours ago, any one had told Annesley Grayle that she would wish to have a strange man take her in his arms and kiss her she would have felt insulted. Yet so it was. She was sorry that he was so scrupulous. She longed to have him hold her against his heart. The thought thrilled her like an electric shock a thousand times more powerful than the tingling which had flashed up her arm at the first touch of his hand, though even that had seemed terrifying then. But she sat still in her corner of the taxi, and gave him no answer, lest she should betray herself. Her silence, after the warmth of his words, seemed cold. Perhaps he felt it so, for he went on after an instant's pause, as if he had waited for something in vain, and his tone was changed. Annesley thought it, by contrast, almost businesslike. "You mustn't be afraid," he said, "that I mean to stay at the Savoy myself. Even if I'd been stopping there, I should move if I were going to put you in the hotel. But I have my own lair in London. I've been over here a number of times. Indeed, I'm partly English, born in Canada, though I've spent most of my life in the United States. Nobody at the Savoy but the Countess de Santiago knows who I am, and she'll understand that it may be convenient for me to change my name. Nelson Smith is a respectable one, and she'll respect it! "Now, my plan is to ask for her (she'll be in by this time), have a few words of explanation on the quiet, not to embarrass you; and the Countess will do the rest. She'll engage a room for you next to her own suite, or as near as possible; then you'll be provided with a chaperon." "I'm not anxious about myself, but about you," Annesley said. "You haven't told me yet what happened after you went upstairs at Mrs. Ellsworth's, and how you knew those men were gone. I suppose you did know? Or—did you chance it?" "I was as sure as I needed to be," Nelson Smith answered. "A moment after I switched on the electricity in the room up there I heard a taxi drive away. I turned off the light so I could look out. By flattening my nose against the glass I could see that the place where those chaps had waited was empty; but in case the taxi was only turning, and meant to pass the house again, I lit the room once more, for realism. "That's what kept me rather long—that, and waiting for the dragon to go. Otherwise I should have been down before Ruthven Smith trapped me. "For a second it looked as if the game of life was up. And then I found out how much you meant to me. It was you I thought of. It seemed beastly hard luck to leave you fast in that old woman's clutches!" Annesley put out her hand with a warm impulse. He took it, raising it to his lips, and both were startled when the taxi stopped. They had arrived at the Savoy: and though Annesley seemed to have lived through a lifetime of emotion, just one hour and thirty minutes had passed since she and her companion drove away from these bright revolving doors. The foyer was as brilliant and crowded as when they left at half-past ten. People were parting after supper; or they were lingering in the restaurant beyond. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the newcomers, and Annesley settled down unobtrusively in a corner, while her companion went to scribble a line to the Countess de Santiago. When he had finished, and sent up the letter, he did not return, and again the girl had a few moments of suspense, thinking of the danger which might not, after all, be over. Just as she had begun to be anxious, however, she saw him coming with a wonderful woman. Annesley could have laughed, remembering how he had said the Countess would "mother" her. Any one less motherly than this Juno-like beauty in flame-coloured chiffon over gold tissue it would be hard to imagine. The Spanish South American Countess was of a camelia paleness, and had almond-shaped dark eyes with brooding lashes under slender brows that met. In contrast, her hair was of a flame colour vivid as her draperies, and her lips were red. At first glance Annesley thought that the dazzling creature could not be more than thirty; but when the vision had come near enough to offer her hand, without waiting for an introduction, a hardness about the handsome face, a few lines about the eyes and mouth, and a fullness of the chin showed that she was older—forty, perhaps. Still, Annesley hoped that her lover had not asked the lady to "mother" his fiancée. She had not the air of one who would be complimented by such a request. As Annesley put her hand into that of the Countess, she noticed that this hand was as wonderful as the rest of the woman's personality. It was very long, very narrow, with curiously supple-looking fingers exquisitely manicured and wearing many rings. Even the thumb was abnormally long, which fact prevented the hand from being as beautiful as it was, somehow, unforgettable. "This is a pleasure and a surprise," began the Countess, smiling, her eyes appearing to take in the full-length portrait of Annesley Grayle with their wide, unmoving gaze. When she smiled she was still extremely handsome, but not so perfect as with lips closed, for her white teeth were too short, somewhat irregular, and set too wide apart. She spoke English perfectly, with a slight foreign accent and a roll of the letter "r." "My friend—Nelson Smith" (she turned, laughing, to him), "has told me ex-citing news. We have known each other a long time. I think this is the best thing that can happen. And you will be a lucky girl. He, too, will be lucky. I see that!" with another smile. Annesley was disappointed because the beautiful woman's voice was not sweet. "Now you must engage her room," Nelson Smith said, abruptly. "It's late. You can make friends afterward." "Very well," the Countess agreed. "And you—will you come to the desk? Yet, no—it is better not. Miss Grayle and I will go together—two women alone and independent. Lucky it's not the season, or we might find nothing free at short notice. But Don—I mean Nelson—always did have luck. I hope he always will!" She flashed him a meaning look, though what the meaning was Annesley could not guess. She knew only that she did not like the Countess as she had wished to like her lover's friend. There was something secret in the dark eyes, something repellent about the long, slender thumb with its glittering nail. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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