For a week or more Beverly had been behaving toward Baldos in the most
cavalier fashion. Her friends had been teasing her; and, to her own
intense amazement, she resented it. The fact that she felt the sting of
their sly taunts was sufficient to arouse in her the distressing
conviction that he had become important enough to prove
embarrassing. While confessing to herself that it was a bit treacherous
and weak, she proceeded to ignore Baldos with astonishing
persistency. Apart from the teasing, it seemed to her of late that he
was growing a shade too confident.
He occasionally forgot his differential air, and relaxed into a very
pleasing but highly reprehensible state of friendliness. A touch of the
old jauntiness cropped out here and there, a tinge of the old irony
marred his otherwise perfect mien as a soldier. His laugh was freer, his
eyes less under subjugation, his entire personality more arrogant. It
was time, thought she resentfully, that his temerity should meet some
sort of check.
And, moreover, she had dreamed of him two nights in succession.
How well her plan succeeded may best be illustrated by saying that she
now was in a most uncomfortable frame of mind. Baldos refused to be
properly depressed by his misfortune. He retired to the oblivion she
provided and seemed disagreeably content. Apparently, it made very
little difference to him whether he was in or out of favor. Beverly was
in high dudgeon and low spirits.
The party rode forth at an early hour in the morning. It was hot in the
city, but it looked cold and bleak on the heights. Comfortable wraps
were taken along, and provision was made for luncheon at an inn half way
up the slope. Quinnox regaled Beverly with stories in which Grenfall
Lorry was the hero and Yetive the heroine. He told her of the days when
Lorry, a fugitive with a price upon his head, charged with the
assassination of Prince Lorenz, then betrothed to the princess, lay
hidden in the monastery while Yetive's own soldiers hunted high and low
for him. The narrator dwelt glowingly upon the trip from the monastery
to the city walls one dark night when Lorry came down to surrender
himself in order to shield the woman he loved, and Quinnox himself
piloted him through the underground passage into the very heart of the
castle. Then came the exciting scene in which Lorry presented himself as
a prisoner, with the denouement that saved the princess and won for the
gallant American the desire of his heart.
"What a brave fellow he was!" cried Beverly, who never tired of hearing
the romantic story.
"Ah, he was wonderful, Miss Calhoun. I fought him to keep him from
surrendering. He beat me, and I was virtually his prisoner when we
appeared before the tribunal."