The Silver b.u.t.terfly.

by Mrs. Wilson Woodrow.

CHAPTER I

Hayden was back in New York again after several years spent in the uttermost parts of the earth. He had been building railroads in South America, Africa, and China, and had maintained so many lodges in this or that wilderness that he really feared he might be curiously awkward in adapting himself to the conventional requirements of civilization. In his long roundabout journey home he had stopped for a few weeks in both London and Paris; but to his mental discomfort, they had but served to accentuate his loneliness and whet his longings for the dear, unforgotten life of his native city, that intimate, easy existence, wherein relatives, not too near, congenial friends and familiar haunts played so important a part.

On the journey from London he had felt like a boy going home for the most delightful holidays after a long period in school, and to calm and render more normal his elation, he told himself frequently as he drew nearer his native sh.o.r.es that he was letting himself in for a terrible disappointment; that all this happy antic.i.p.ation, this belief, an intuition almost, that some delightful surprise awaited him, was the result of many lonely musings under the cold remote stars in virgin forests and wide deserts, a fleeting mirage born of homesickness.

But all these cautions and warnings and efforts to stifle this irrepressible and joyous expectation were quite unavailing and, as he decided after he had been home a week, equally unnecessary, for the unaccustomed, piquant sense of antic.i.p.ation remained with him and gave a flavor to his days which in themselves were not lacking in flavor; for merely to look, to loiter, to play at an exquisite and to him exotic leisure was infinitely agreeable. The more delightful, indeed, because it was merely temporary. Hayden had come to New York with a definite purpose in view and his recreations were purely incidental.

His cousin, Kitty Hampton, was expressing her envy of him one winter morning as they were strolling down the Avenue together. Now it should be explained that Mrs. Warren Hampton, even if she was small to insignificance and blond to towness, thus increasing her resemblance to a naughty little boy, was nevertheless a very important person socially.

"I wish I could get up some of your nice, fresh enthusiasm, Robert,"

she said discontentedly. "Everything seems awfully stupid to me."

"That's because you've no imagination, Kitty. Fancy this seeming stupid!" He drew in the cold air of the sparkling morning with a long breath of satisfaction. "If your eyes had been traveling over the glare of deserts or plunging into the gloom of tangled forests for several years, you would think people and all this glitter and life and motion a very delightful change. Why, everywhere I look I see wonders. I expect anything to happen. Really, it would not surprise me in the least to turn a corner and meet a fairy princess any minute."

Kitty fell in with what she supposed was his mood. "We will turn the very next corner and see," she said. "But how will you know her even if we should meet her."

"I shall know her, never fear," he affirmed triumphantly, "whether she wear a shabby little gown, or gauzes and diamonds. I shall look into her eyes and know her at once."

He was laughing and yet there was something in his voice, a sort of ring of hope or conviction, that caused Kitty to lift her pretty sulky little face and look at him with a new interest. And Hayden was not at all bad to look at. He was well set-up, with a brown, square face, brown hair, gray eyes full of expression and good humor and an unusually delightful smile, a smile that had won friends for him, of every race and in every clime, and had more than once been effective in extricating him from some difficulty into which his impulsive and non-calculating nature had plunged him.

"The fairy princess," she repeated slowly and quite seriously. "Sure enough, there should be one." She gazed at him appraisingly: "Young--moderately young and good-looking enough. You haven't got fat, And all that tan is becoming, and--how are you off anyway, Bobby?"

He looked down at her amusedly. "The fairy princess would never ask that question."

"Oh, yes, she would. Do not dream that she wouldn't--to-day."

"Very well, then. To be perfectly truthful, I have 'opes. I believe I have found my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yes, I do. Oh, it's nothing very definite yet, but I believe, I truly believe I've struck it."

"How?" she asked curiously.

"Ah, my dear, I'm not quite ready to tell. It's a romance, as you will agree when you hear it. What's the matter?"

For Kitty instead of showing any proper, cousinly enthusiasm was looking at him with a frown of petulant vexation.

"Then why couldn't you have come home six months, even three months earlier? Young, good-looking, and, as I now discover, rich, or about to be. Oh, it is too bad!"

He gazed at her in amazement. "My dear Kitty," in playful humility, "even if your flattering estimate of me is true, I don't see why you should be so disgruntled about it."

Her April face broke into smiles, and yet she sighed. "Oh, Bobby, because, because I'm afraid the fairy princess is bespoke. Yes,"

nodding at his astonishment, "I have a fairy princess in mind, one in whose welfare I am deeply interested."

"Oh," comprehendingly, "one of your protegees, whom you are trying to marry off. I a.s.sure you once and for all, Kitty, that such will not do for me. I want the real thing in fairy princesses; under an enchantment, detained in the home of a wicked ogre; all that, you know, and lovely and forlorn."

She looked at him oddly. "If you only knew how you confirm my impression."

"Of what?"

She paid no attention to him. "I wish I knew certainly. She won't tell until she gets ready, but it looks very much as if she were engaged to Wilfred Ames. You remember him, do you not?"

Hayden thought deeply a moment. "A big fellow? Very light hair, blue eyes?"

"Yes, yes," she nodded, "'the flanneled fool at the wicket, muddied oaf at the goal' type, you know. One of those lumbering, good-looking babies of men that women like Marcia always attract. Every one thinks it's an awfully good thing, and I dare say I'd agree with them, if you hadn't happened along. But his mother! My patience, his mother!

And she's behaving like a cat about the whole affair. Just as if Marcia's mother were not enough! Oh," in a burst of impatience, "why do not things ever arrange themselves properly?"

He laughed, Kitty always made him laugh; but his curiosity was aroused sufficiently to ask: "Have I ever in my remote past met this paragon of a fairy princess?"

"No-o, no, I don't believe you have. Her mother took her to Europe when she was quite young and she has lived over there most of her life."

"What is her name?" he asked idly.

"Marcia, Marcia Oldham."

"But Oldham," with more show of interest. "Oldham! I seem to remember that. Isn't her father an old curmudgeon of a millionaire?"

"He was before he went to smash and died," she returned briefly. "He left a wife and one daughter."

"And the daughter is the fairy princess," he was evidently amused at Kitty's match-making proclivities. "But, Kitten, unless I am a.s.sured that she is under an enchantment, she will not do."

Again his cousin looked at him with that untranslatable expression in her eyes, a little, half-bitter smile on her lips. "I'm only too afraid we shall be able to satisfy you in that regard," she stared before her with somber eyes. "Marcia is very lovely and very gifted.

She paints wonderfully well. I have some of her water colors. You must see them." She spoke with a complete change of tone, evidently not caring to discuss her friends' distresses whatever they might be.

"By the way, Bobby, don't you want to dine with me this evening? I'll be all alone. Warren is still in the West, you know. Dine with me, and we will go on to Bea Habersham's afterward."

"Thank you, Kitty dear, but I'm going to see Mary Garden in _Thas_, this evening, so I'll be dining early. But why won't you take tea with me somewhere this afternoon, or else give me a cup or so?"

"No. Can not." She shook her head decisively.

"Bridge?" he asked whimsically.

"For a wonder, no. Something far more interesting. I'm taking two women to a wonderful fortune-teller. Quite the most remarkable creature you ever heard of. Why, Bea Habersham lost a big sapphire ring last week and this woman told her exactly where to find it, and Bea went right home and laid her hands on it."

"What's her name? Where is she?" Hayden asked, with mock eagerness.

"Perhaps she will find the fairy princess for me."

They had reached Mrs. Hampton's home by this time, and she took occasion to look at him scornfully before entering. "Doubtless she will if you pay her enough," she said. "And her name is----Oh,"

wrinkling her forehead in perplexity, "I've got it down somewhere, but for the moment, it's gone out of my head.

Mademoiselle--Mademoiselle----Oh, an odd name. I'll remember it sooner or later. Good-by."

"Mademoiselle--Mademoiselle--" he teased her, imitating her voice.

"Oh, an odd name," And he laughed. "But, Kitty, do beg her to find me the fairy princess."