They say that if I do so on my own account I shall have to wait weeks and weeks, there are so many ahead of me; but you've been such an awfully efficient press-agent that she will do anything for you."

"But her prices! Her dreadful prices!" sighed a plaintive feminine voice from the other side of the table. "Have you seen her, Mr. Hayden?"

"Indeed I have not," returned Hayden, "and I haven't the faintest intention of seeing her. I can't understand why you waste your money on those people. They have absolutely nothing to tell you, and they are fakers and worse, in every instance. You know it, each one of you, and yet you continue to patronize them."

"Hear him preach!" scoffed his cousin.

"Kitty, you are the source of all our information this evening," broke in a woman on her left. "Do tell us if it is true that Marcia Oldham's engagement to Wilfred Ames is really announced."

Hayden, his eyes on Kitty's face, could positively see it stiffen. "I really know nothing about it," she answered coldly.

"But they are together so much."

"There are always a lot of men about Marcia." Kitty's tone was ominously curt.

"Oh, it is perfectly useless to try to get either Kitty or Bea Habersham to talk about Marcia," murmured Edith Symmes in Hayden's ear. "They simply will not do it, and it is sheer waste of breath to ask them any questions. Now, I happen to know that the engagement is not definitely announced." Hayden drew a long breath. It was as if some weight had been lifted from him. "Marcia is odd, you know, awfully odd; but just the same, in that slow, unyielding way of his, Wilfred is determined to marry her, and"--she lifted her eyes--"his mother is crazy, simply crazy about it. For a while she contented herself with merely clawing the air whenever Marcia's name was mentioned; but after her nice, quiet, stupid worm of a Wilfred turned and definitely announced to her his intentions, she hustled herself into her black bombazine and has literally made a house-to-house canvas, telling everywhere her tale of woe. Poor old dame, it is rather hard on her!"

"Why?" asked Hayden, ice in his voice. "I should think that she would consider her son an especially fortunate man."

His companion gave a short laugh of irrepressible amus.e.m.e.nt. "I wish she could hear you say that, and might I be there to see the fun, from a safe corner, mind you! 'The shouting and the tumult' would be worth while, I can a.s.sure you. Oh-h," with one of her affected little shivers, "I wish you could hear some of the things she says about Marcia! Of course, one can not exactly blame the poor old soul, for to say the least, Marcia, dear as she is, certainly lays herself open to conjecture."

Hayden did not reply. He was rudely and unmistakably giving the impression of not having heard a word she said; but this attempt on his part, instead of offending his thin and voluble companion, only seemed to amuse her inordinately.

"Do you know, Kitty," announced the plaintive-voiced lady across the table, "that your b.u.t.terflies are really the prettiest ones I've seen, prettier than Mrs. ----," mentioning the English actress, "for I got a good look at them at a reception the other day, and yours are quite as lovely as Bea's. Dear me!" in almost weeping envy. "I wish I could afford a chain of them."

Edith Symmes had a positive explosion of her noiseless, faintly malicious laughter. "Did you hear that?" she whispered to Hayden. "Whine-y Minnie over there is as rich as cream; and yet, she can't afford those dreamy b.u.t.terflies, while Marcia Oldham, who hasn't a cent in the whole world, wears a set which, as usual, surpa.s.ses every other woman's. It is a most amazing and amusing social riddle. Even you, who are evidently one of her admirers, must admit that."

"I can't really afford anything worth while this year," sighed the dolorous lady characterized as whine-y Minnie, "but I must try and get an appointment with that fortune-teller, even if it is hideously expensive.

What did you say her name is, Kitty?"

"An odd name," mimicked Hayden, catching his cousin's eye and unable to resist a school-boy temptation to tease her. "An odd name." He reproduced Kitty's high lisping tones perfectly.

"Bobby, if you mock me, I'll give you something that will make you laugh on the other side of your mouth," she said rapidly under her breath, and reverting to the phraseology of childhood. "Did you ask her name, Minnie?

It _is_ an odd name. Mademoiselle Mariposa. Sometimes called 'The Veiled Mariposa.'"

Hayden's laughing face stiffened as if he had received a shock from an electric battery. Mariposa! Mariposa!--the b.u.t.terfly. Horace Penfield's words recurred to him; "I am willing to bet now that you will hear of The Veiled Mariposa in a very short time, and that, too, from a most unexpected source."

CHAPTER VI

Hayden had elected to spend one evening at home, a most unusual decision for him, but one which the night fully justified, for a February gale was in full progress and was forcing every citizen whether comfortably housed or uncomfortably out in it, to stand at attention and listen to its shrieking iterations of "a mad night, my masters."

But to be quite accurate, the state of the weather had nothing whatever to do with the state of Hayden's mind. Let it be said, by way of explanation, that since his return to New York, he had been going out so steadily, accepting so many invitations, meeting so many people, pursuing the social game so ardently, that the thought of a quiet evening at home, recommended itself very alluringly to his imagination, and by sheer virtue of contrast, a.s.sumed almost the proportions of an exciting diversion.

Tatsu had, as usual, deftly, silently and with incredible rapidity arranged everything for his comfort; and his leisurely dinner completed, Robert settled himself for a long solitary evening undisturbed by any men dropping in to interrupt his meditations, or by any vagrant desires to wander out. The gale precluded both possibilities. It had risen to its height now, and filled the air with the steady roar of artillery. Great dashes of rain spattered sharply against the window panes, and Hayden would lift his head to listen and then sink back more luxuriously than ever into the depths of his easy chair. It was the sort of night to throw, occasionally, another log on the fire and watch the flames dance higher--illuminate with their glowing radiance the dim corridors and the vast and stately apartments of a _Chateau en Espagne_. What an addition those new pictures are to the n.o.ble gallery! And the vast library with the windows opening on the Moorish court! But some of the tapestries need renovating, those priceless tapestries!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Then, surfeited with gazing on so much beauty and splendor, one turns to more homely comforts, and while the logs sink to a bed of glowing ashes, dreams over one's favorite essays, or skims the cream of the last new novel.

It was such an evening as this that Hayden had planned; but plans, as immemorial experience has taught us, but never quite convinced us, "gang aft a-gley," and Robert's were no exception to the rule. Between him and the open page before him, he saw continually the face of Marcia Oldham.

The sweet, wistful, violet eyes gazed earnestly at him, the delicately cut mouth with the dimple in one corner smiled at him and his book presently dropped from his fingers and lay unheeded on the rug while he dreamed dreams and saw visions. Gradually, his thoughts wandered from the future and its hopes to the past, and for the first time since his return the old wanderl.u.s.t stole over him, the wanderl.u.s.t temporarily lulled and quiescent, but always there, that pa.s.sion for change which was so integral a part of his nature. But he no longer wished for new scenes with no companionship but that of a man friend or so, he dreamed instead of a season of wandering with Marcia, with her to travel the uncharted, with her to "follow October around the earth." He wondered if the lovely lady of the silver b.u.t.terfly cared only to breathe the air of cities, or if she, like himself, delighted in gazing upon the strange and unaccustomed, in getting,

"Out in the world's wide s.p.a.ces, Where the sky and the desert meet, Where we shake from our feet all traces Of the dust of the city street?"

He believed she did. He could not be so strongly conscious of some secret and indefinable sympathy existing between them if their tastes were not similar. Ah well, whatever her tastes might be he could gratify them,--providing, of course, that she chose to look kindly upon him, and if things only came his way, a little, just a little, and surely he had reason to be gratified by the turn events had taken since he had come to New York.

He had, of course, taken a chance in telling Horace Penfield as much as he had about The Veiled Mariposa, the lost mine on which he had founded his hopes. Hayden drew his shoulders up to his ears and pulled down the corners of his mouth, the picture of a school-boy convicted of stealing jam. He had had reason on many occasions to convict himself of such indiscretions. He reflected a little dolefully, that he would probably be a very poor business man, that is, if business depended on caution and a lack of confidence in his fellow-beings. But, bent on cheering himself, even if Horace should break faith with him and prattle to the limit--and Horace's limit was a long one, the blue canopy of heaven, when it came to gossip--what possible harm could it do? In fact, it might serve Hayden immeasurably, for the talk might reach the ears of those who held some interest in the property and thus get him into immediate communication with them. In any event, let Horace gossip as he would, it could do no possible injury, for Robert held the key of the situation with his carefully drawn maps and his many photographs. Blessings on his camera!

There was a wild dash of hail against the window, a shriek of the wind, and Hayden looked up surprised at the interruption and then fell again into his reverie. What an odd thing that had been for Penfield to say, that about hearing of the Veiled Mariposa, and how remarkably it had been confirmed. From a source, too, that he would least have expected it. That prophecy had certainly been literally fulfilled. Little Kitty Hampton was the last person he should have expected to mention The Veiled Mariposa.

A Fortune-teller! The Veiled Mariposa! There was, there could be no question of coincidence here. It was design, beyond all peradventure, and design he meant very speedily to fathom. Hayden set his nice, square jaw firmly, and when Hayden set his jaw that way, you might look for things to happen. He might be over-impulsive and lacking in caution, but he had plenty of initiative, pluck and determination. Then, his face relaxed and softened. He threw his cigarette into the bed of ashes on the hearth and stretched his arms above his head. Ah-h-h! He felt like Monte Cristo.

Surely, surely, the world was his. Had he not, all in the s.p.a.ce of a few weeks, found his heart's love, and a clue to his fortune?

Again, he started, but this time not at the storm which seemed to be dying down a bit, but at a sharp ring from the telephone on a desk at the other side of the room.

"The deuce!" exclaimed Hayden getting on his feet. "Who on earth is calling me such a night as this?" He walked over and lifted the receiver with the usual curt, "h.e.l.lo!"

"Is this Mr. Hayden's apartment?" asked a voice which made him start. It was low, full, deliciously musical and with an unmistakable Spanish accent.

"Yes, and this is Mr. Hayden speaking," was Robert's response, with a lightning change of tone. A quick, excited thrill of interest ran over him. He strove to place that voice, ransacked his memory in the effort to do so, but quite in vain. He was, however, in spite of such swift, momentary precautions, absolutely convinced that he was listening to those enchanting tones for the first time. "Who is this speaking?" he asked. But only a burst of low, rippling laughter with a faint hint of mockery in it reached him.

"I'm afraid I'm rude enough to insist upon maintaining my incognito to-night," was the demure answer.

"But that puts me at once at a disadvantage," protested Hayden.

"Naturally," the laughter in her voice was irresistible now. "That is where a man ought to be."

"That is where he usually is anyway," he remarked. "But you must admit that there is something awfully uncanny about a situation like this. On so wild a night one would be justified in expecting almost any kind of a ghostly visitant."

"Bar them out," she advised. "Remember Poe's Raven who still is sitting, never flitting, on the pallid bust of Pallas, just above the chamber door."

Hayden glanced up involuntarily. "There isn't any pallid bust of Pallas,"

he announced. "But that jolly old raven's method of paying a visit was crude and commonplace compared to yours. He came tapping and rapping in the most old-fashioned way; but you reach me with a wonderful disembodied voice through the ever mysterious avenue of the telephone. It really makes me creepy. Won't you locate it? Give it a name?"

"Scientists," she reminded him in her delicious, broken English, "can reconstruct all kinds of extinct animals and birds from one small bone, or a tooth, or a beak, or hoof."

"So might I," Hayden valorously a.s.serted, "if I had as much to go on; but a voice is different."

"Quite beyond your powers," she taunted.

"Not at all. I hadn't finished," Hayden was something of a Gascon at heart, "I will go the scientists one better and reconstruct you from a voice." He put back his hand and drew up a chair. He was enjoying himself immensely. "Now," impressively, "you are dark, dark and lovely and young, and you are sweet as chocolate and stimulating as coffee. And you wear a rose in your hair and silken skirts like poppy-petals, and the tiniest of black slippers over white silk stockings; and you flutter an enormous fan that sends the fragrance of the jasmine on your breast all through the air, and you have a beautiful name--oh a name as enchanting as your voice, have you not, Anita, Rosita, Chiquita, Pepita, Carmencita, and all the rest of it?"

"You are impertinent, much too bold," she admonished. "I will not talk to you any more if you are not quite respectful; but the first part of your description was pretty. Let me, if I can, do even half so well. You, senor, are rather tall and quite slender, no superfluous flesh, all muscle, and your eyes are a dark gray and your hair is brown, so is your face, by the way; and you have a cool, leisurely sort of manner, although your speech is quite rapid, and you have a charming, oh, a most unusually charming smile."

"But you know me!" cried Hayden naively. "Of course, of course," as her laughter swelled, "I know you've flattered me to death," the red rising in his tanned cheek, "with all that rot about my grin. But," speaking louder in the effort to drown those trills and ripples of melodious laughter, more elfishly mocking and elusive than ever, "your portrait of me, no matter how grossly exaggerated, is in the main, correct."