Flaming Youth

CHAPTER VIII

The front door-button was out of commission. Since Constance had come to live at Holiday Knoll, bringing her husband with her and taking over the management of the place, the bell had developed a habit of being out of order. So had many other fixtures, schedules, and household appurtenances. Constance always meant to put them aright, and sometimes did. But they never seemed to stay put. As a housekeeper, Ralph Fentriss used to remark with humorous resignation, Connie was a grand little society beauty.

Of the beauty there could be no question. As she sat now, on this winter's night, the glow of the reading lamp showing warm and soft upon her loose, rose-coloured lounging robe and her dreamy face, she was a picture which, unfortunately, lacked any observer. Fred Browning was out. Fred was often out in the evenings now, though they had been married less than two years. Not that it mattered greatly to the young wife. Fred had ceased to stimulate her senses; he had never stimulated her imagination. She got along well enough with him, and equally well without him. Substitutes were not wanting. But just at the moment she rather wished he were there, because she thought she heard someone at the front door, though it might be only the beating of the blizzard, and it was so much trouble to rouse herself from the easy chair and the flimsy novel. That so many things were so much trouble was the bane of Constance's life. Her[Pg 82] soul had begun to take on fat. Presently her lissome body would follow suit.

Yes; there certainly was someone at the door. She could discern now an impatient stamping. Probably Bobs, although he had said that he could not come before nine to see the baby, who was constantly fretting. Another superfluous trouble in a world of annoyances! We-ell; on the whole it was less bother to go to the door than to look up a maid. Tossing her book aside she walked into the hall. As she passed, she pressed an electric light button. Only one globe out of the cluster responded, and that weakly.

"Damn!" said Constance. "I forgot to phone the company."

She threw open the front door. In the storm centre stood a man. He wore a long coat lined with seal, a coat which the luxurious Constance at once appraised and approved, and an astrakhan cap which he lifted, showing fair, close waves of hair. He peered into the dim entry.

"Is this——" he began, and then, in an eager exclamation, "Mona!"

Constance drew a quick breath of shock and amazement. "What!"

"A thousand pardons," said the stranger. "A stupid error." He spoke with the accent of a cultivated American, but there was about him the vague, indefinable atmosphere of an older, riper, calmer civilisation. "Am I mistaken in supposing this to be Mrs. Fentriss's home?" he asked courteously.

"No. Yes. It is," answered Constance, still shaken.

"I would have telephoned before presenting myself, but the wires are down. What a furious storm! My taxi," he added cheerily, "is stalled in your very largest and finest local snowdrift. Is Mrs. Fentriss in?"

[Pg 83]
"My mother?" faltered Constance.

He gazed on her keenly, incredulously. "Your mother? That's hardly possible. Yet—yes. You are wonderfully like her." There was a caressing intonation in his voice as he said the words. "Permit me; I am Cary Scott."

"Oh!" gasped Constance in dismay. Cary Scott, the old romance about which she had heard her father joke her mother more than once, concerning which all the children had felt a lively curiosity because it was supposed to be "different" from Mona's other little adventures; Cary Scott here in the flesh and in tragic ignorance of her mother's death! Commanding herself, she drew aside with a slight, gracious gesture which bade him enter. Bowing, he passed into the hallway and shook the snow from his coat. Not until he had reached the door of the library did she gather her forces to tell him.