"Oh, Mr. Conward," she said. "You know who is speaking? Yes. You must come up to-night. I do want to talk with you. I--I've been insulted--in my own house. By that--that Elden. It's all very terrible. I can't tell you over the telephone."

Conward called early in the evening. Irene met him at the door. He greeted her even more cordially than usual, dropping into that soft, confidential note which he had found so potent in capturing such affections as his heart, in a somewhat varied experience, had desired.

But there was no time for conversation. Mrs. Hardy had heard the bell, and bustled into the room. She had not yet recovered from her agitation, and made no effort to conceal it.

"Come into my sitting-room, Mr. Conward. I am so glad you have come.

Really, I am so upset. It is such a comfort to have some one you can depend on--some one whose advice one can seek, on occasions like this.

I never thought--"

Mrs. Hardy had been fingering her handkerchief, which she now pressed to her eyes. Conward laid a soothing hand on her shoulder. "There, there," he said. "You must control yourself. Tell me. It will relieve you, and perhaps I can help."

"Oh, I'm sure you can," she returned. "It's all over Irene and that--that--I _will_ say it--that cow _puncher_. To think it would have come to this! Mr. Conward, you are not a mother, so you can't understand. Ungrateful girl! But I blame _him_. And the Doctor. I never wanted him to come west. It was that fool trip, in that fool motor--"

Conward smiled to himself over her unaccustomed violence. Mrs. Hardy must be deeply moved when she forgot to be correct. He had readily surmised the occasion of her distress. It needed no words from Mrs.

Hardy to tell him that Irene and Dave were engaged. He had expected it for some time, and the information was not altogether distasteful to him. He had come somewhat under the spell of Irene's attractiveness, but he had no deep attachment for her. He was not aware that he had ever had an abiding attachment for any woman. Attachments were things which he put on and off as readily as a change of clothes. He planned to hit Dave through Irene, but he planned that when he struck it should be a death blow. Their engagement would lend a sharper edge to his shaft.

It may as well be set down that for Mrs. Hardy Conward had no regard whatever. Even while he shaped soft words for her ear he held her in contempt. To him she was merely a silly old woman. From the day he had first seen Mrs. Hardy his att.i.tude toward her had been one of subtle flattery; partly because it pleased his whim, and partly because on that same day he had seen Irene, and he was shrewd enough to know that his approach to the girl's affections must be made by way of the acquaintanceship which he would establish under the guise of friendship for her mother. Since his trouble with Dave, Conward had a double purpose in developing that acquaintanceship. He had no compunctions as to his method of attack. While Dave was manfully laying siege to the front gate, Conward proposed to burglarize the home through the back door of family intimacy. And now that Dave seemed to have won the prize, Conward realized that his own position was more secure than ever. Had he not been called in consultation by the girl's mother?

Were not the inner affairs of the family now laid open before him? Did not his position as her mother's advisor permit him to a.s.sume toward Irene an att.i.tude which, in a sense, was more intimate than even Dave's could be? He turned these matters over quickly in his mind, and congratulated himself upon the wisdom of his tactics.

"It's very dreadful," Mrs. Hardy was saying, between dabbings of her perfumed handkerchief on eyes that bore witness to the genuineness of her distress. "Irene is not an ordinary girl. She has in her qualities that justified me in hoping that--that she would do--very differently from this. You have been a good friend, Mr. Conward. Need I conceal from you, Mr. Conward, from you, of all men, what have been my hopes for Irene?"

Conward's heart leapt at the confession. He had secretly entertained some doubt as to Mrs. Hardy's purpose in opening her home to him as she had done; absurd as the hypothesis seemed, still there was the hypothesis that Mrs. Hardy saw in Conward a possible comfort to her declining days. He had no doubt that her vanity was equal to that supposition, but he had done her less than justice in supposing that she had had any directly personal ambitions. Her ambitions were for Irene. From her point of view it seemed to Mrs. Hardy that almost anything would be better than that Irene should marry a man who had sprung from the low estate which Elden not only confessed, but boasted.

She had hoped that by bringing Conward into the house, by bringing Irene under the influence of a close family acquaintanceship with him, that that young lady might be led to see the folly of the road she was choosing. But now her clever purpose had come to nought, and in her vexation she did not hesitate to humble herself before Conward by confessing, in words that he could not misunderstand, that she had hoped that he would be the successful suitor for Irene. And Conward's heart leapt at the confession. He was sufficiently schooled in the affairs of life to appreciate the advantage of open alliance with Mrs.

Hardy in the short, sharp battle that lay before him.

"And I suppose I need not conceal from you," he answered, "what my hopes have been. Those hopes have grown as my acquaintance with you has grown. It is reasonably safe to judge a daughter by her mother, and by that standard Irene is one of the most adorable of young women."

"I _have_ been called attractive in my day," confessed Mrs. Hardy, warming at once to his flattery.

"Have been?" said Conward. "Say rather you are. If I had not been rendered, perhaps, a little partial by my admiration of Irene, I--well, one can scarcely give his heart in two places, you know. And my deep regard for you, Mrs. Hardy--my desire that you shall be spared this--ah--threatened humiliation, will justify me in using heroic measures to bring this unfortunate affair to a close. You may trust me, Mrs. Hardy."

"I was sure of that," she returned, already much comforted. "I was sure of your sympathy, and that you would find a way."

"I shall need your co-operation," he warned her. "Irene is--you will forgive me, Mrs. Hardy, but Irene is, if I may say it, somewhat headstrong. She is--"

"She is her father over again," Mrs. Hardy interrupted. "I told him he should not attempt that crazy trip of his without me along, but he would go. And this is what he has brought upon me, and he not here to share it." Mrs. Hardy's tone conveyed very plainly her grievance over the doctor's behaviour in evading the consequences of the situation which his headstrong folly had created.

"She is set in her own mind," Conward continued. "We must not openly oppose her. You must appear to be resigned, even to the extent of treating Elden with such consideration as you can. To argue with Irene, to attempt to persuade her, or to order Elden off the place, would only deepen their attachment. Lovers are that way, Mrs. Hardy.

We must adopt other tactics."

"You are very clever," said Mrs. Hardy. "You have been a student of human nature."

Conward smiled pleasurably. Little as he valued Mrs. Hardy's opinion, her words of praise fell very gratefully upon him. Flatterers are seldom proof against their own poison. "Yes, I have studied human nature," he admitted. "The most interesting--and the most profitable--of all studies. And I know that young couples in love are not governed by the ordinary laws of reason. That is why it is useless to argue with Irene--sensible girl though she is--on a subject like this. We must reach her some other way.

"The way that occurs to me is to create distrust. Love is either absurdly trustful or absurdly suspicious. There is no middle course, no balanced judgment. Everything is in extremes. Everything is seen through a magnifying lens, or missed altogether. In the trustfulness of love little virtues are magnified to angelic qualities, and vices are quite unseen. But change that trust to suspicion, and a hidden, sinister meaning is found behind the simplest word or act."

Conward had risen and was walking about the room. He was conscious of being regarded as a man of very deep insight, and the consciousness pleased him.

"We must cause Irene to distrust Elden--to see him in his true light,"

he continued. "That may be possible. But if it should fail we must take another course, which I hesitate to mention to you, but which may be necessary if we are to save her from this fatal infatuation. If our efforts to cause Irene to see Elden in his true light were to fail, and she were to discover those efforts, she would be more set in his favour than ever. So we must plan two campaigns; one, which I have already suggested, and one, if that should fail, to cause Elden to distrust Irene. No, no," he said, raising his hand toward Mrs. Hardy, who had started from her seat,--"there must be no vestige of reason, except that the end justifies the means. It is a case of saving Irene, even if we must pain her--and you--in the saving."

"It's very dreadful," Mrs. Hardy repeated. "But you are very thorough; you leave nothing to chance. I suppose that is the way with all big business men."

"You can trust me," Conward a.s.sured her. "There is no time to be lost, and I must plan my campaigns at once."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Conward paused to speak to Irene before leaving the house.

"I owe you my good wishes," he said. "And I give them most frankly, although, perhaps, with more difficulty than you suppose."

"You are very good, Mr. Conward," she acknowledged.

"I could not wish you anything but happiness," he returned. "And had I been so fortunate as Elden, in making your acquaintance first, I might have hoped to contribute to your happiness more directly than I can under the present circ.u.mstances." He was speaking in his low, sedulous notes, and his words sent the girl's blood rushing in a strange mixture of gratification and anger. The tribute he implied--that he himself would have been glad to have been her suitor--was skilfully planned to appeal to her vanity, and her anger was due to its success. She told herself she should not listen to such words; she should hate to hear such words. And yet she listened to them, and was not sure that she hated them. She could only say, "You are very good, Mr. Conward."

He pressed her hand at the door, and again that strange mixture of emotions surged through her.

Conward proceeded to the business section of the town, well pleased with the evening's events. He found his way impeded by crowds in front of the newspaper offices. He had paid little attention to the progress of the war scare, attributing it to the skilful publicity of interests connected with the manufacture of armaments. To the last he had not believed that war was possible. "n.o.body wants to fight," he had a.s.sured his business acquaintances. "Even the armament people don't want to fight. All they want is to frighten more money out of the taxpayers of Europe." To Conward this explanation seemed very complete. It covered the whole ground and left nothing to be said.

But to-night he was aware of a keener tension in the crowd atmosphere.

They were good natured crowds, to be sure; laughing, and cheering, and making sallies of heavy wit; but they were in some way more intense than he had ever seen before. There was no fear of war; there was, rather, an adventurous spirit which seemed to fear that the affair would blow over, as had so many affairs in the past, and all the excitement go for nothing. That war, if it came to war, could last, no one dreamed; it would be a matter of a few weeks, a few months, at the most, until a thoroughly whipped Germany would retire behind the Rhine to plan ways of raising the indemnity which outraged civilization would demand. Conward elbowed his way through the crowds, smiling, in his superior knowledge, over their excitement. Newspapers must have headlines.

At his office he used a telephone. Then he walked to a restaurant, where, after a few minutes, he was joined by a young woman. They took a table in a box. Supper was disposed of, and the young woman began to grow impatient.

"Well, you brought me here," she said at last. "You've fed me, and you don't feed anybody, Conward, without a purpose. What's the consideration?"

"Yes, I have a purpose," he admitted. "I'm pulling off a little joke, and I want you to help me."

"You're some joker," she returned. "Who have you got it in for?"

"You know Elden--Dave Elden?"

"Sure. I've known him ever since that jolt put him out of business up in your rooms, ever so many years ago. He was too rural for that mixture. Still, Elden has lots of friends--decent friends, I mean."

"I'm rather sorry you know him," said Conward. "But--what's more to the point--does he know you?"

"Not he. I guess he had no memory the next morning, and would have made a point of forgetting me, even if he had."

"That's all right, then. Now I want you to get him down to your place some night to be agreed upon--I'll fix the date later--and keep him there until I call for him, with his _fiancee_."

"Some joke," she said, and there was disgust in her voice. "Who is it on: Elden, me, or the girl?"

"Never mind who it's on," Conward returned. "I'm paying for it.

Here's something on account, and if you make a good job of it, I won't be stingy."

He handed her a bill, which she kissed and put in her purse. "I need the money, Conward, or I wouldn't take it. Say, don't you know you're wasting your time in this one-horse town? You ought to get into the big league. Your jokes would sure make a hit."