Into Nina's flat in Mayfair, one rare August morning, entered Lord Kneedrock, unannounced. He found her in her little drawing-room arranging flowers in a vase – flowers not a whit more lovely than herself.

"Whose?" he asked, nodding toward them. It was his first and only word, and she had not seen him for two months.

She went him one better – one letter better.

"Mine."

"Who sent them?"

"The florist."

"Who paid for them?"

"Nobody as yet. His bill won't be in until the first of the month."

"Who ordered them?"

"I did. Anything more?" She seemed delighted.

He strode over to an open, awninged window and dropped into an invitingly cushioned chair. He was still bearded, still rather leonine, but he was better groomed than in those days in India.

He employed a tailor that was an artist in his craft, and a hair-dresser that was no less so. After a fashion he was almost attractive.

"I am to infer then that there is no present adoring cavalier."

"No," she answered. "Not since last Friday. He has sailed, I believe, to offer his services to the Mexican revolutionists."

"Ah!" he leaned back and gazed pensively over his interlocked fingers. His eyes rested on a bronze in the opposite corner.

"You've never thanked me for that," he said casually.

Nina followed his gaze. "Thanked you?" she asked.

"Who else?"

"For the cobra?" For it was the cobra with the history that he continued to regard.

"For the cobra."

"You mean you were the one that sent it to me? There was no card with it – no name."

"I picked it up in Calcutta and fancied it might please you. Eve and the serpent, you know. Rather delicately significant – What?"

She was staring at him, astounded. After all these five years he had unsealed his lips. She noticed his scarred left hand, recalled the part that the bronze had played in that, too – and wondered the more.

"Some day," he said in an undertone that had become habitual, "I'll send you a bronze tigress. That will make the symbolism complete."

"Do – do you so much mind, then?" she asked yieldingly. "I mean about my amusements."

"Your one amusement?" The sneer, the cynicism was in his tone again. "Good God, no! Why should I?"

"You seemed to resent it. I – I'll be very good, if you wish."

"I don't wish anything about it. To be candid, it interests me, when I happen to think of it. You're a type. And I always did like types. The men you first charm and then devour are types, too – types of the weakling. They could never win my sympathy."

"No one has ever encouraged me to be different," she said, turning back to her flowers.

He waited a long moment, his lips parted. Then he said: "No? I dare say not."

She came to him, a white carnation in her hand, and, bending over, caught his coat-lapel between thumb and finger. But, noting her intention, he drew it away.

"No, no," he cried sharply. "Not for me. I am no petit maître."

She was about to retreat abashed, but he gripped her wrist and held it, and her cheeks flushed crimson. Then he let it go.

"I was looking at the ring," he said. "I see you still wear it."

"I'm still bearing my cross," she returned, "but I've given up hope of the crown."

"I told you to give it to poor Darling," he reminded her. "It should have been buried with him."

She made no rejoinder, but stuck the carnation among the gold of her hair. Almost at the same moment one of the doors was pushed ajar and an enormous staghound, black to a hair, slipped in and began nuzzling Nina's hand.

"Another present?" inquired Nibbetts, looking the beast over.

"Yes. A loan rather – my Irish soldier of fortune left Tara with me to keep his memory green, I fancy."

She patted his head, and into her eyes he looked unutterable things.

"You've bewitched the creature, that's clear," said her caller. He laid a hand on the hound's back and was answered by a low growl. "Surly brute!" he added.

"He senses in you his master's rival," she suggested roguishly.

"God forbid!" snarled Kneedrock.

"Tell me about the marmalade maid," Nina begged, sitting down and taking Tara's head in her lap. "The maid of Dundee."

"I was visiting a man I knew in Tahiti," Nibbetts answered frankly. "And it happens he has a niece. I ran away from her."

"Why?" Nina asked simply.

"For the best reason in the world," he told her. "I was getting to like her too well. That's why I'm here this morning. You're a perfectly incomparable antidote for that sort of thing."

"She's like her marmalade, perhaps – too cloyingly sweet," said Nina, indifferently.

"Her marmalade?" questioned Nibbetts, his brow knitting.

"Doesn't she make it, then? I can't think of Dundee in any other connection. Don't all the women there peel oranges?"

"She doesn't." He could be very literal at times.

"What does she do? How in the world does she spend her time?"

"She spends most of it, I fancy, talking to her parrot."

"Her parrot! How odd! Hasn't she any one else to talk to?"

"Only one other – her uncle. And he doesn't understand."

"But the parrot does, I infer?"

"Thoroughly. The Tahitian parrots are very wise little birds."

Nina's laugh rippled. "It talks back, of course."

"Most certainly. One must talk back to her – even if it is only a parrot."

"And what does she talk about? What do they talk about, I mean?"

The viscount took his time answering. The pause lent emphasis to his words.

"Of me, mostly, I fancy."

"How dull it must be for them!" Nina observed, and Kneedrock's eyes, twinkled. He was really amused.

"Mustn't it?" he chuckled. "Damnably! Still, you can see the picture. Ideal subject for a genre canvas. What?"

"Oh, perfect," agreed Nina, but she didn't smile. She patted the hound's head and answered the pathetic look in his appealing eyes.

"I'm afraid you've been unkind to her, Hal," she said presently.

"I'm afraid I have," he admitted. "I – " But he thought again and held his peace.

"Why?" she asked.

"Perforce. As a peer I'm bound to respect the laws of the realm. You didn't, but I must."

"I thought – But you know what I thought."

"Poor Darling," he said cryptically. Still there was nothing cryptic about it to Nina. She quite understood.

"I'm very good now," she asserted. "It's hard, but I do try. You must know how I do try."

"Why don't you keep out of temptation?" he asked, standing up. "Why don't you run as I do?"

"I've already told you. There's that in me which is too strong for my will. And the one man that could help me – won't."

He tossed his great tawny head in signal of annoyance. "Tommyrot! You like it. You've got a cruel streak. That's the whole explanation."

"I haven't," she denied, with rising indignation. "I'm too tender-hearted. That's half my trouble. When I meet a nice man who is hungry for my kisses I can't deny him."

"And after you've given you cut his throat or blow his brains out. You are a national menace. You should be either locked up or banished."

She rose, and the hound beside her pressed against her legs.

"Are you going to Bellingdown?" she inquired, ignoring his outbreak. "Kitty tells me she has asked you."

"I'm not sure. Are you?"

"Yes – on Thursday."

"Then I'll not," he said decisively. "No house is big enough for both of us at the same time."

"I'll promise not to eat you," she smiled.

"I'm not afraid of that. You're too devilish careful of your digestion to undertake it. But you'll be eating some other poor chap; and I don't enjoy the spectacle."

"But if I promise to fast?"

"I don't believe in your promises. You've broken every one you ever made me. No, I sha'n't go down. You'll have an open field."

But when Nina traveled down on the appointed day, accompanied by her maid, the black staghound, and innumerable bags and boxes, Nibbetts was the first man she met.

"One of the chauffeurs is ill and the other drunk," he explained, "so I volunteered to fetch you. They'll send a groom down for your luggage later."

"But I must have a dinner-gown," she complained, "and suppose – "

"We can strap one box on behind, I fancy – if we must."

"We certainly must. I can't pin all my hopes of a presentable first appearance to a stupid groom's ideas of expediency and expedition."

He offered no explanation of his change of plan, and Nina forbore to ask him. It developed later, however, that he had already been at Bellingdown for two days.

The Duke and Duchess of Pemberwell were there, too – as were also Sir George and Lady Charlotte. Lord Bellingdown was at home for the shooting, but Waltheof was expected that evening.

"And that's all?" asked Nina, to whom Nibbetts had conveyed this inclusive personnel of the house-party.

"All at present," he answered. "There may be one or two more to-morrow for the week-end."

"You don't know who?"

"I don't know who. I'm sorry we can't offer you better sport. The prospective prey so far is neither numerous nor promising. In decency, you know, you must keep your paws off Wally."

He was a distant cousin of Kitty Bellingdown and understood the situation thoroughly.

"I hate that man," said Nina. "Long, black, sardonic creature!"

"That reminds me," said Nibbetts. "What's become of the hound?"

Mrs. Darling glanced back. "He's following. Would you mind driving a little slower. Tara's out of training."

"You'll be late for tea."

"Bother the tea!" she exclaimed. "I can't have the beast winded. My soldier of fortune would never forgive me."

Then Kneedrock did something to the gear and the car shot ahead faster than ever. So they reached the house in ample time, with Tara nowhere in sight.

"And I'll never be able to replace him," Nina mourned. "The breed's dying out."

"Like that of good women," growled Nibbetts.

Lady Bellingdown, coming forward in the hall to meet them, overheard: "Is he ballyragging you again, dear?" she asked, while Nina lifted her veil for the impending greeting. "He's quite impossible."

"He's ballyragging the sex. We shall have to combine to crush him."

"Women will never combine on anything," was his gruff comment. "They're too jealous of one another. The fight for suffrage is foredoomed."

Nina and Kitty kissed and said sweet things to each other, and the viscount turned away with a sneer and a scowl.

"There's always plenty of seed-cake here," whispered the duke, finding a place beside Nina at tea. "Very good seed-cake, too. Much better than at Puddlewood. Let me help you to some."

He put a piece on her plate and she leaned over to get something quite confidential from the duchess, who sat on the end of the lounge nearest the fire. "Even if I am English I want to be warm," was a bon mot of her youth, still quoted, and still being lived up to.

"I've the very latest word in the Carleigh affair," she whispered behind her hand, with a stolen glance toward Lady Bellingdown, who was busy over the teacups. "Come to my room before dinner and I'll tell you."

Nina nodded, and then the two chattered commonplace for a moment to throw off suspicion. When Nina sat up again her seed-cake was gone and the duke was chuckling.

"But where is it?" she asked, perplexity in her violet eyes.

His grace pointed to the floor at her farther side. Tara was lying there. "He's yours, I suppose. He took the seed-cake at a gulp. Fine staghound that. I had a pair like him once. I say, Doody, didn't I have a fine pair of black staghounds once?"

"Yes, Pucketts." That was the duke's nickname from the cradle.

"Everything's foxhounds nowadays. But when I was younger," he went on – and on – and on.

Nina, delighted to see the animal once more, was caressing his long ears and mumbling baby-talk to him.

In the privacy of the guest-suite she occupied the duchess smoked one cigarette after another and told Nina Darling that it was Sir Caryll himself who had broken the engagement at the last minute, and not the prospective mother-in-law, as the world had it.

"But why? I thought he was madly in love with the girl."

"Oh, he was. But you see he learned something in a most accidental way, and when he asked Rosamond about it, she confirmed it with perfect candor. It seems her own father – Mrs. Veynol's first husband – is a convict. He is still in prison somewhere in the States.

"The whole story – without names, of course, but going just as far as they dared go – appeared last week in British Society. I don't take the scurrilous sheet, of course; but my maid does, and she gave it to me to read. I've been wondering if Kitty saw it."

"Perhaps it isn't true," Nina suggested.

"It must be. That's one thing about those wicked society papers – they're almost always right. Otherwise they wouldn't dare, don't you know. It's that that makes them so objectionable."

Nina left her great-aunt and flew to her own room with barely time to dress. There she found her hostess, already in full dinner regalia, awaiting her.

"I felt I must see you at once, dear," began Lady Bellingdown. "I've such a favor to ask you. You can do something for me now that I shall never forget as long as I live. And I don't know a solitary other woman that could do it."

Nina's suspicions ran at once to Lord Waltheof.

"If it's – " she began – but was checked instantly.

"You could never possibly fancy. It isn't anything you'd think. It's about Caryll Carleigh."

"About Caryll Carleigh?"

"Yes. He's been in Scotland, you know, practically buried, and growing worse – more morose, more heart-sick every day. He's had a fearful knocking down, and I've been worried about him – no end."

"Well?" pressed Nina, groping. She couldn't in the least see what she had – or could have – to do with it all.

"I want you to take him in hand – to make him forget."

"I! But how?"

"Here. He's coming. I've just had a wire. He has already started. He will be here to-morrow for tea."

Nina hesitated for just a second. "I – I'll do my best," she said at length.

CHAPTER X
A Prayer and a Prophecy

"Poor darling!" sighed the duchess.

The hall was forty feet wide, eighty feet long, and fifty feet high. It was banked with palms and chrysanthemums and with Michaelmas daisies in silver pots. Yet the words echoed.

"You mean – " questioned Kneedrock, frowning.

The electricity behind a million prisms up aloft was well shaded, and the six dozen candles amid the pictures and bric-à-brac were half-smothered in pink frills. Moreover, Kneedrock had just come in and was still some distance off. Yet the frown was clearly seen.

"Oh, I didn't mean Darling. I didn't mean Darling at all," the duchess corrected quickly.

"We – we were speaking of Caryll," explained Lady Bellingdown, her hand upon the teapot's handle. "We're all thinking of him, you know. He'll be here now – any minute."

"I don't see why you asked him," growled Kneedrock roughly, as was a cousin's privilege. "He'll get no comfort here."

"Nina, remember," reminded the duchess, very interested in her bread and butter.

Then the noble viscount growled at her grace. "He'll get no comfort out of Nina. She'll chew him up alive and throw back the bones, as a snake does."

"Oh dear!" put in Lady Kitty deprecatingly. "You're always so hard upon her."

"It's Nibbetts's way," soothed the duchess, looking very kindly at him. In spite of a lingering unkemptness, he was indeed a fine object to view – massive and leonine. "He always puts things a bit boldly."

"Boldly?" he echoed. "Ugh! Why, the fellow, you know, is all knocked up. Can't go anywhere. Has been off spearing fish for a month, quite alone. And then you ask him here and throw him to Nina's teeth and claws. Ha!"

A minute before the comparison was ophidian, now it was feline. He was nearly as bad as Dinghal.

The duke, who was sitting in a corner of the huge lounge, very much hunched up and nibbling seed-cake as fast as his little, lean jaws would work, spoke defensively between nibbles.

"Maybe she'll amuse him," he said thickly, his mouth full. "Nina's very amusing when she likes. She's often made me laugh. I like Nina."

"I think she's a very delightful young woman," joined in the duchess, in order that her allegiance to her great-niece might not be open to question. "We shall have her at Puddlewood this autumn. We always have her at Puddlewood."

"And she makes life very interesting. Yes, she does," added the duke before taking a fresh nibble. "I always like her to come. Don't I, Doody?"

The duchess hastened with the required confirmation.

"Yes, Pucketts always has liked – " But there her grace stopped short.

There was a slight noise at the end of the hall, and the attention of every one was at once directed toward the door. It was a fact that the entire party was on the tiptoe of expectancy. Every soul there was speculating on how Carleigh would look and how he would act.

"No," said Lady Bellingdown, speaking in the assured tone of one who knows – and yet she had paused to listen, too – "that will not be he. I heard carriage wheels a minute ago. But we've sent a car for him."

She glanced nervously about. "Really, you know," she added, "you mustn't all stare so when he does come in. You must treat him absolutely as if nothing had happened. He is so frightfully sensitive, you know."

"I should think he would be," observed Nibbetts, lounging suddenly down on a settee and speaking in his usual resonant tone that was distinctly audible far and near. "I should think he would be."

"It was really her mother," said Charlotte Gray, who hadn't read British Society and was not in the duchess's confidence. "It was all her mother. It's a very shocking story. It's Borgian. It's Medicean. It's not a bit our present Georgian. Not in the least."

She was looking at Kneedrock, but she was talking for her own amusement, since every one knew all this, and she must have been aware of it.

"It's better not to talk of it," cautioned Lady Bellingdown, by way of gentle rebuke. "Donty feels that it will be wisest not to speak of it while the poor boy is in the house."

Whereupon Lord Waltheof, from his customary place behind her chair, voicing his somewhat superior knowledge of affairs at Bellingdown, said: "He's going early Monday. It won't be a very long strain."

"Going early Monday, is he?" queried the duke, nibbling faster than ever. "That won't help much. We're all going early Monday, too."

The door at the far end of the hall opened just then to admit Sir George Grey – a handsome, slight boyish fellow, with curling chestnut hair.

"Oh, it's Shucks!" cried Charlotte, setting down her teacup and running forward to meet her husband, of whom, being still a bride, she was extremely fond.

"Those were the carriage wheels," discerned the duke, cutting into another seed-cake while his hostess was over behind the palms for a word with the newcomer. "They were Grey's wheels, Doody," he elucidated to the duchess, who was back toward him at the moment. "They were Grey's wheels."

"I hear," said the duchess.

The footman was bringing fresh tea.

"I'm late," said Sir George, coming around to the fire. "Hello, Nibbetts!"

Then he nodded generally to the others. "I got shot in the back," he went on jovially, "and they had to undress me. And then I had to dress again, of course."

"Who shot you?" asked Lady Bellingdown, with the well-bred interest of a well-bred hostess. "Were you badly shot?"

When gentlemen go shooting, to be shot is so common that no one very much minds. Even Sir George's wife, loving him as she did, managed to preserve a stoical silence. To have appeared upset would have been very bad form.

"I don't know," answered the victim. "I don't know who shot me. I was ahead with Donty Down, and I heard Donty yell, and then – there I was peppered. He vows he saw the shot coming."

"How amusing!" cried the duke, delighted. "It is amusing. Donty's always funny."

"Was he shot, too?" asked Donty's wife.

"No, he – "

The door creaked beyond and the butler came tumbling forward to whisper: "Sir Caryll Carleigh."

Then he was really there before them – the hero of the biggest harvest of talk in recent years.

There had been nothing like it since the memorable day when Nina came back from India under the protection of her cousin, the viscount, and every one had a different version of everything.

He was very pale, a slender, brown-eyed youth with his underlip twitching nervously. To all appearances he was quite scared. Still, he certainly was really there.

Naturally there was a flutter – a perfectly visible flutter – for had it not been repeatedly and authoritatively stated that this love-wreck would never be repaired and float in his own especial "swim" again?

Grenfell and the icy coast of Labrador perhaps, or a government berth in Manchuria – but never home society again. Never, never!

And now he was here. His aunt, Lady Bellingdown, hurried forward, her hands extended.

"My dear Caryll! So glad to see you again. You know every one here, I'm sure. We're all so glad to see you. So glad, you know."

He bent and kissed her hand very prettily. Then he bravely cast his big, dark eyes over the rest of the group, taking them all in, individually as well as collectively.

He knew them, every one. Yes, they were all kinsfolk or friends, whose wedding presents he had returned a month before.

It was a trying pair of seconds, through which the duke's seed-cake cheeped like a canary.

"Did you come straight from town?" Waltheof asked in a carefully careless tone. Then he remembered. Very stupid of him; but now too late to mend.

He was standing back to the fire, and the violent agitation of his coat-tails, beneath which his hands were locked, was to the observant ones sign and symbol of his embarrassment.

"I've been in Scotland for a month," returned Carleigh, coloring deeply and seeking a seat.

Every one felt that it was unpardonable in Waltheof to have said "town" to the man who was the center of its talk.

"Oh, Scotland!" exclaimed the duke, as if the fact that the boy had been there was the very remotest thing from his knowledge. "Very amusing place, Scotland. Lovely place, too, Scotland. We went there on our honeymoon. I say, Doody, that was where we went, wasn't it?"

The duchess looked daggers at her duke. Fancy having a husband so lost to the fitness of things as to mention honeymoons in the presence of one who might have been on his at the moment – but wasn't!

"One goes there for the shooting now," she said, to ease the blow. "You always go there for the shooting."

"Not the last time," denied his grace; "it was the closed season – the last time." Then he took another piece of cake.

The duchess didn't quite know whether mention of the closed season was or was not painfully pertinent. "Scotland's so gray," she said in a confidential aside to Waltheof.

Lady Bellingdown was looking beseechingly here and there, praying for some one to say something. It was Kneedrock who responded.

"I hate Scotland," he growled. "I know a girl up there that – " He broke off, leaving them to think anything, and concluded: "I wish I could keep away from the bally place."

Then Lady Bellingdown wished that he hadn't. It was positively awful! Everybody looked at everybody in furtive consternation. Her hand trembled and she spilled Carleigh's tea all over.

He had risen in expectation of nourishment and was standing beside her. With a frozen smile, as she changed saucers, she gasped:

"Nina is here. You remember her, don't you? She's a widow now, you know. Very sweet, very bright. Extremely good company."

"Was she happily married?" Caryll asked, trying to look unconcerned.

"Why – er-r – I don't know. They went out to India, and he was killed in an accident. Cleaning a gun, you know. It was never very clear how it happened. Nobody ever knew. She's in half-mourning still."

"They were not happy," contributed Kneedrock in his resounding undertone. Then he lounged close. "I know," he added sharply. "She's a tiger come human, and Darling was her prey – some of her prey."

Lady Bellingdown was trying to laugh, though not very successfully. "What awful things you say, Nibbetts!" she sighed.

Carleigh stared in silence.

"It's true," the viscount pursued. "She's a reincarnated man-eater. She likes to take chaps and tear them and maul them and drive the souls out of them with pats that they're too far gone to feel!"

Every one was listening. Carleigh's pallor had gone white as paper. But it was the whiteness of intense interest rather than of alarm.

"Oh, I say!" exclaimed the duke, swallowing hurriedly. "I say, Kneedrock! What you mean is that she's uncommonly amusing. That's so, and that's all you mean. Only you put it a bit strongly. But that's what you mean."

Nibbetts shrugged his broad, heavy shoulders.

"Have it your own way," he grumbled. "I know what I mean, and I know what I know. You just watch her eyes get narrow, and then you wait a month. They narrow when a new man appears; and in a month she's licking his blood from her paws!"

"Oh, how very rude you are!" Lady Bellingdown chided. "Really, you know, I won't have it. You sha'n't say another word. No, I won't have it!"

Carleigh looked down at his tea. A queer flush had succeeded the pallor – a flush of still livelier interest to which Kneedrock's remarks had stung him.

He wondered what a reincarnated tigress would be like. A pleasant thrill charged through him for the first time in quite five weeks.

And just then the door at the end of the hall opened and Nina Darling trod lightly in. She had been walking and still had on her hat – a hat of yellow felt with cocks' plumes sifting backward.

In her hand she carried a man's walking-stick, and by her side stalked a great black staghound.

Sir Caryll took her all in instantly. And remembering the reference to half-mourning, wondered whether it was expressed in the hound. Certainly there was no other sign, for her frock was a pale tan frieze and her boots were but a shade darker.

"I am very late," she cried, and her clear voice rang across them like a bell. "But I am forgivable. I found the quaintest little church, and I have been praying. Yes, only fancy! I've been down on my knees begging not to do wrong, because – " she looked at them all and laughed – "because I feel just like doing wrong and I don't want to."

"You'll do it," snarled Kneedrock, sotto-voce.

"You know Caryll Carleigh, don't you, dear?" asked Lady Bellingdown.

She turned her big violet eyes his way, and he, watching eagerly, saw them fold to slits, just as Kneedrock had said. And Kneedrock saw them, too.

"And you prayed to be kept from mischief, eh?" he mused. "But of course you didn't mean it."

She crossed to Carleigh's side and sat down there. "And I prayed for others, too," she told him. "For you." With a laugh. "You need it; don't you?"

"I need it," he answered shortly. "Yes, surely."

She pulled off her heavy gloves and gave them, with the stick, to the staghound, which walked gravely away at once.

"Did you walk far?" Lady Bellingdown asked.

"Rather. To the Pine Needles."

"Why, that's twelve miles," said Lord Waltheof.

"Perhaps."

Carleigh stared more frankly at her – at her head of gold, her brow of fairest ivory, set with gems of living amethyst beneath; at her long, sinuous figure, which suggested Lilith and the medieval conception of an angel as well.

When she lifted her eyes to him and smiled, he realized that it was the first really natural smile that he had encountered in a month.

Something cold within him warmed once more. The feminine then still held that which could affect him. His heart, after all, was not utterly dead.

He returned the smile, and the slits grew yet more narrow. And as they had seemed to young Andrews, on a night at Simla, and to Heaven only knows how many other men at Heaven only knows how many other places, so they seemed to him – cleft opals, with the devil splitting the hairs of the lashes that kept them from scorching a mere masculine mortal.

"I remember you as a little girl," he murmured.

"First blood," said Kneedrock, who had been listening, in a half-whisper to the duke.

"Yes, but you know she'll brace him up," returned his grace. "She really will. My word, but she's very bracing, is Nina. I like her. I always have."

"He'll be very glad to creep back, scratched and minus one ear, and marry his fiancée in six months," rejoined the honorable viscount with bitter cynicism.

"Do you really think so?" asked the duke.

"Think so! I know it," yawned Kneedrock. "She doesn't care who rattles the bones, once she's had the meat."