The Disagreeable Woman

"She says she had no thought of marrying again."

"Mr. Blake, you are a young man. You don't understand women, and particularly widows. Probably there is not a gentleman at the table whom Mrs. Wyman has not thought of as a matrimonial subject, yourself not excepted."

Mr. Blake was a very young man, and he blushed.

"She would not have married me," growled the Professor.

Most of us smiled.

"Are you pledged to celibacy, Professor?" asked the landlady.

"No, madam. If a certain young lady would marry me I would marry to-morrow."

Ruth Canby blushed furiously, and was indignant with herself for doing so, especially as it drew all glances to her.

"Let us hope you may be successful in your suit, Professor," said Mrs. Gray.

"Thank you, my dear lady; time will show."

Miss Blagden turned her searching glance upon the flaming cheeks of Ruth and smiled kindly. If there was any one at the table whom she liked it was the young woman from Macy's.

"I suppose there is no doubt about his being a Count," suggested Mr. Blake.

"I should say there was a good deal of doubt," answered the Disagreeable Woman.

"Do you really think so?"

"It is my conjecture."

"Oh, I think there is no doubt about it," said the landlady, who prided herself on having had so aristocratic a boarder.

"I am a loser by this marriage," said Mrs. Gray. "I have two rooms suddenly vacated."

"A friend of mine will take one of them," said Mr. Blake, the reporter. "He has been wishing to get in here for a month."

"I shall be glad to receive him," said Mrs. Gray, graciously.

The other room was also taken within a week.

CHAPTER XX.

A STARTLING DISCOVERY

Usually I secured a morning paper, and ran over the contents at my office while waiting for patients.

It was perhaps a week later that I selected the Herald—I did not confine myself exclusively to one paper—and casually my eye fell upon the arrivals at the hotels.

I started in surprise as I read among the guests at the Brevoort House the name of Count di Penelli.

"What!" I exclaimed, "are our friends back again? Why is not the Countess mentioned? Perhaps, however, the Count has left his wife in Philadelphia, and come on here on business."

It chanced that I had occasion to pass the Brevoort an hour later.

I was prompted to call and inquire for the Count.

"Yes, he is in. Will you send up your card?"

I hastily inscribed my name on a card and sent it up to his room.

The bell-boy soon returned.

"The Count will be glad to see you, sir," he said. "Will you follow me?"

"He is getting ceremonious," I reflected. "I thought he would come down to see me."

I followed the bell-boy to a room on the second floor.

"Dr. Fenwick?" he said, as the door was opened.

I saw facing me a tall, slender, dark-complexioned man of about forty-five, a perfect stranger to me.

"I wished to see Count di Penelli," I stammered, in some confusion.

"I am the Count," he answered, courteously.

"But the Count I know is a young man."

"There is no other Count di Penelli."

"Pardon me!" I said, "but a young man calling himself by that name was for two months a fellow boarder of mine."

"Describe him, if you please," said the Count, eagerly.

I did so.

"Ah," said the Count, when I concluded, "it is doubtless my valet, who has been masquerading under my title. He ran away from me at the West, nearly three months since, carrying with him three hundred dollars. I set detectives upon his track, but they could find no clue. Is the fellow still at your boarding-house?"

"No, Count, he eloped a week since with a widow, another of our boarders. I believe they are in Philadelphia."

"Then he has deceived the poor woman. Has she got money?"

"A little. I don't think she has much."

"That is what he married her for. Doubtless he supposed her wealthy. He had probably spent all the money he took from me."

"I hope, Count, for the sake of his wife, you will not have him arrested."

Count di Penelli shrugged his shoulders.