CHAPTER XXXVI

A DUEL FOR A BRACELET

All this while Marjorie and Mallory had sat watching, as kingfishers shadow a pool, the door wherethrough the girl with the bracelet must pass on her way to breakfast.

"She's taking forever with her toilet," sniffed Marjorie. "Probably trying to make a special impression on you."

"She's wasting her time," said Mallory. "But what if she brings her mother along? No, I guess her mother is too fat to get there and back."

"If her mother comes," Marjorie decided, "I'll hold her while you take the bracelet away from the--the--from that creature. Quick, here she comes now! Be brave!"

Mallory wore an aspect of arrant cowardice: "Er--ah--I--I----"

"You just grab her!" Marjorie explained. Then they relapsed into attitudes of impatient attention. Kathleen floated in and, seeing Mallory, she greeted him with radiant warmth: "Good morning!" and then, catching sight of Marjorie, gave her a "Good morning!" coated with ice. She flounced past and Mallory sat inert, till Marjorie gave him a ferocious pinch, whereupon he leaped to his feet:

"Oh, Miss--er--Miss Kathleen." Kathleen whirled round with a most hospitable smile. "May I have a word with you?"

"Of course you can, you dear boy." Marjorie winced at this and writhed at what followed: "Shan't we take breakfast together?"

Mallory stuttered: "I--I--no, thank you--I've had breakfast."

Kathleen froze up again as she snapped: "With that--train-acquaintance, I suppose."

"Oh, no," Mallory amended, "I mean I haven't had breakfast."

But Kathleen scowled with a jealousy of her own: "You seem to be getting along famously for mere train-acquaintances."

"Oh, that's all we are, and hardly that," Mallory hastened to say with too much truth. "Sit down here a moment, won't you?"

"No, no, I haven't time," she said, and sat down. "Mamma will be waiting for me. You haven't been in to see her yet?"

"No. You see----"

"She cried all night."

"For me?"

"No, for papa. He's such a good traveler--and he had such a good start. She really kept the whole car awake."

"Too bad," Mallory condoled, perfunctorily, then with sudden eagerness, and a trial at indifference: "I see you have that bracelet still."

"Of course, you dear fellow. I wouldn't be parted from it for worlds."

Marjorie gnashed her teeth, but Kathleen could not hear that. She gushed on: "And now we have met again! It looks like Fate, doesn't it?"

"It certainly does," Mallory assented, bitterly; then again, with zest: "Let me see that old bracelet, will you?"

He tried to lay hold of it, but Kathleen giggled coyly: "It's just an excuse to hold my hand." She swung her arm over the back of the seat coquettishly, and Marjorie made a desperate lunge at it, but missed, since Kathleen, finding that Mallory did not pursue the fugitive hand, brought it back at once and yielded it up:

"There--be careful, someone might look."

Mallory took her by the wrist in a gingerly manner, and said, "So that's the bracelet? Take it off, won't you?"

"Never!--it's wished on," Kathleen protested, sentimentally. "Don't you remember that evening in the moonlight?"

Mallory caught Marjorie's accusing eye and lost his head. He made a ferocious effort to snatch the bracelet off. When this onset failed, he had recourse to entreaty: "Just slip it off." Kathleen shook her head tantalizingly. Mallory urged more strenuously: "Please let me see it."

Kathleen shook her head with sophistication: "You'd never give it back. You'd pass it along to that--train-acquaintance."

"How can you think such a thing?" Mallory demurred, and once more made his appeal: "Please please, slip it off."

"What on earth makes you so anxious?" Kathleen demanded, with sudden suspicion. Mallory was stumped, till an inspiration came to him: "I'd like to--to get you a nicer one. That one isn't good enough for you."

Here was an argument that Kathleen could appreciate. "Oh, how sweet of you, Harry," she gurgled, and had the bracelet down to her knuckles, when a sudden instinct checked her: "When you bring the other, you can have this."

She pushed the circlet back, and Mallory's hopes sank at the gesture. He grew frantic at being eternally frustrated in his plans. He caught Kathleen's arm and, while his words pleaded, his hands tugged: "Please--please let me take it--for the measure--you know!"

Kathleen read the determination in his fierce eyes, and she struggled furiously: "Why, Richard--Chauncey!--er--Billy! I'm amazed at you! Let go or I'll scream!"

She rose and, twisting her arm from his grasp, confronted him with bewildered anger. Mallory cast toward Marjorie a look of surrender and despair. Marjorie laid her hand on her throat and in pantomime suggested that Mallory should throttle Kathleen, as he had promised.

But Mallory was incapable of further violence; and when Kathleen, with all her coquetry, bent down and murmured: "You are a very naughty boy, but come to breakfast and we'll talk it over," he was so addled that he answered: "Thanks, but I never eat breakfast."