"How do you do, Louisa," was Miss Wentstile's greeting. "I wish you'd let me know when you are at home. I wouldn't have called yesterday if I'd supposed you didn't know enough to stay in to be congratulated."
"I had to go out," Mrs. Neligage responded. "I was sorry not to see you."
"There was a horrid dog in the hall that barked at me," Miss Wentstile continued. "You ought not to let your visitors be annoyed so."
"It isn't my dog," the widow replied with unusual conciliation in her manner. "It belongs to those Stearnses who have the apartment opposite."
"I can't bear other people's dogs," Miss Wentstile declared with superb frankness. "Fido was the only dog I ever loved."
"Where is Fido?" asked the widow. "I haven't heard his voice yet."
Miss Wentstile drew herself up stiffly.
"I have met with a misfortune. I had to send dear Fido away. He would bark at the Count."
Whatever the intentions of Mrs. Neligage to conciliate, Providence had not made her capable of resisting a temptation like this.
"How interesting the instinct of animals is," she observed with an air of the most perfect ingenuousness. "They seem to know doubtful characters by intuition."
"Doubtful characters?" echoed Miss Wentstile sharply. "Didn't Fido always bark at you, Louisa?"
"Yes," returned the caller as innocently as ever. "That is an illustration of what I was saying."
"Oh, Madame Neleegaze ees so continuously to be drôle!" commented the Count, with a display of his excellent teeth. "So she have to marry, ees eet not?"
"Do you mean those two sentences to go together, Count?" Alice asked, with a twinkle of fun.
He stood apparently trying to recall what he had said, in order to get the full meaning of the question, when the servant announced Mrs. Croydon, who came forward with a clashing of bead fringes and a rustling of stiff silk. She was ornamented, hung, spangled, covered, cased in jet until she might not inappropriately have been set bodily into a relief map to represent Whitby. She advanced halfway across the space to where Miss Wentstile sat near the hearth, and then stopped with a dramatic air. She fixed her eyes on the Count, who, with his feet well apart, stood near Miss Wentstile, stirring his tea, and diffusing abroad a patronizing manner of ownership.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Wentstile," Mrs. Croydon said in a voice a little higher than common, "I will come to see you again when you haven't an assassin in your house."
There was an instant of utter silence. The remark was one well calculated to produce a sensation, and had Mrs. Croydon been an actress she might at that instant have congratulated herself that she held her audience spellbound. It was but for a flash, however, that Miss Wentstile was paralyzed.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed the spinster, recovering the use of her tongue.
"I mean," retorted Mrs. Croydon, extending her bugle-dripping arm theatrically, and pointing to the Count, "that man there."
"Me!" cried the Count.
"The Count?" cried Miss Wentstile an octave higher.
"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Neligage very softly, settling herself more comfortably in her chair.
"He tried to murder my husband," went on Mrs. Croydon, every moment with more of the air of a stage-struck amateur. "He challenged him!"
"Your husband?" the Count returned. "Eet ees to me thees teeme first know what you have one husband, madame."
"I thought your husband was dead, Mrs. Croydon," Miss Wentstile observed, in a voice which was like the opening of an outside door with the mercury below zero.
Mrs. Croydon was visibly confused. Her full cheeks reddened; even the tip of her nose showed signs of a tendency to blush. Her trimmings rattled and scratched on the silk of her gown.
"I should have said Mr. Barnstable," she corrected. "He was my husband once when I lived in Chicago."
The Count, perfectly self-possessed, smiled and stirred his tea.
"Ees eet dat de amiable Mrs. Croydon she do have a deeferent husband leek a sailor mans een all de harbors?" he asked with much deference.
Mrs. Neligage laughed softly, leaning back as if at a comedy. Alice looked a little frightened. Miss Wentstile became each moment more stern.
"Mr. Barnstable and I are to be remarried immediately," Mrs. Croydon observed with dignity. "It was for protecting me from the abuse of an anonymous novel that he offended you. You would have killed him for defending me."
The Count waved his teaspoon airily.
"He have eensult me," he remarked, as if disposing of the whole subject. "Then he was one great cowherd. He have epilogued me most abject."
Mrs. Neligage elevated her eyebrows, and turned her glance to Mrs. Croydon, who stood, a much overdressed goddess of discord, still in the middle of the floor.
"That is nonsense, Mrs. Croydon," she observed honeyedly. "Mr. Barnstable behaved with plenty of pluck. The apology was Jack's doing, and wasn't at all to your – your fiancé's discredit."
Miss Wentstile turned with sudden severity to Mrs. Neligage.
"Louisa," she demanded, "do you know anything about this affair?"
"Of course," was the easy answer. "Everybody in Boston knew it but you."
The Count put his teacup on the mantelpiece. He had lost the jauntiness of his air, but he was still dignified.
"Eet was one affaire d'honneur," he said.
"But why was I not told of this?" Miss Wentstile asked sharply.
"You?" Mrs. Croydon retorted with excitement. "Everybody supposed – "
Mrs. Neligage rose quickly.
"Really," she said, interrupting the speaker, "I must have another cup of tea."
The interruption stopped Mrs. Croydon's remark, and Miss Wentstile did not press for its conclusion.
"Count," the spinster asked, turning to that gentleman, who towered above her tall and lowering, "have you ever fought a duel?"
The Count shrugged his shoulders.
"All Shimbowski ees hommes d'honneur."
She made him a frigid bow.
"I have the honor to bid you good day," she said, with a manner so perfect that the absurdity of the situation vanished.