The Innocent Adventuress Part 22

And then she saw that Barry Elder, having finished with her hair, was preparing to wash her face, for he brought a granite basin of hot water and began wetting and soaping the end of a voluminous towel with which he advanced upon her.

"I can well wash myself," she cried with promptness, and most thoroughly she washed and scrubbed, and then hung her head as he took away the things.

She felt as if a screening mask had fallen and her only thought now was to make an escape before discovery should add one more humiliation to this night of shames.

"You are very good," she said shyly. "I cannot tell you how I thank you.

And I feel so much better that if you will please let me go----"

"Go? To Wilderness Lodge? It's miles and miles, child--and it's pouring cats and dogs again. Don't you hear the drumsticks on the roof?"

She hesitated. "Then--have you a telephone?"

"No, thank the Lord!" The remembered laughter flashed in Barry Elder's tones. "I came here to get away from the devil of invention and all his works. There isn't a telephone nearer than Peter's place--four miles away. I'll go over for you as soon as it's light, for I expect your mother's worrying her head off about you. How did you ever happen to get lost over here?"

Helplessly Maria Angelina sought for words. Silence was ungrateful but there seemed nothing she could say.

"It was on a picnic--please do not ask me," she whispered foolishly.

In humorous perplexity the young man stood looking down upon the small figure that chance had deposited so unexpectedly upon his hearth, a most forlorn and drooping small figure, with downcast and averted head, then with that sudden smile that made his young face so brightly persuasive he dropped beside her and reached towards her.

"Here, little kiddie, you come and sit with me while I warm those feet of yours----"

Swiftly she withdrew from his kindly reaching hands.

"Signor, it is not fitting that you should hold me, that you should warm my feet," she gasped. "I am _not_ a child, Signor!"

Signor . . . The word waked some echo in his mind. . . . The child had used it before--but what connection was groping----?

He repeated the word aloud.

"You do not recall?" said Maria Angelina chokingly. "Though indeed, there is no reason why you should. It was but for a moment----"

She glanced up to see recognition leap amazedly into his face.

"The little Signorina! The Blairs' little Signorina!"

"Maria Angelina Santonini," she told him soberly. "Yes, that is I."

"Why of course I remember," he insisted. "A little girl in a white dress. A big hat which you took off. Your first night in America. We had a wonderful dance together----"

"And you said you would come to the mountains," she told him childishly.

He stared a moment. "Why, so I did. . . . And here I am. And here you are. To think I did not know you--I've been wondering whom you made me want to think of! But I took you for a youngster, you know, a regular ten-year-old runaway. Why, with your hair down like that---- Of course, it was absurd of me."

He paused with a smile for the absurdity of it.

Gallantly she tried to give him back that smile but there was something so wan and piteous in the curve of her soft lips, something so hurt and sick in the shadows of her dark eyes, that Barry Elder felt oddly silenced.

And then he tried to cover that silence with kind chatter as he moved about his room once more in hospitable preparation.

"It was Sandy, here, who really found you," he told her. "He whined at the door till I let him out and then he came back, barking, for me, so I had to go. I was really looking for a mink. Sandy's always excited about minks."

Maria Angelina put a hand to the dog's head and stroked it.

"I was so tired," she said. "I think I was asleep."

"I rather think you were," said Barry in an odd tone. He glanced at her white cheek with its scarlet scratch of a branch. "And I rather think you ought to be asleep now but first you must eat this and drink some more coffee."

Maria Angelina needed no urging. Like a starveling she fell upon that plate of crisp bacon and delicately fried eggs and cleaned it to the last morsel.

"I had but two bites of sweet chocolate for my dinner," she apologized.

"So you were lost before dinner--no wonder you were done in."

Barry filled a very worn-looking little brown pipe with care. "Where were you going, anyway, for your picnic?"

"It was to Old Baldy."

"Old Baldy, eh? Let me see--what trail did you take?"

"On the river path. Then--then we got separated----"

"I see. But it's a fairly clear trail. Did you try another?"

"We--we crossed the river the wrong time, I think, and so got on the wrong mountain. We----"

Maria Angelina's voice died away in sudden sick perception of that betraying p.r.o.noun.

Quite slowly, without looking at her, Barry completed the lighting of that pipe to his satisfaction and drew a few appreciative puffs. Then he turned to inquire casually, "And who is 'we'?"

He saw only the top of the girl's tousled head and the tense grip of her clasped hands in her lap.

"If you would not ask, Signor!" she said whisperingly.

"A dark secret!" He tried to laugh over that but his keen eyes rested on her with a troubled wonder.

"And then you got lost--even from your companion?" he prompted quietly.

"Yes, I--I came away alone for he--he refused to go on," faltered Maria Angelina painfully, "and then I seemed to go on forever--and I could do no more. But now I am quite well again," she insisted with a ghost of a brave smile. "If only--if only my Cousin Jane could know that I'm trying to get back," she finished in a tone that shook in spite of her.

"You weren't trying to get lost, were you?" questioned Barry lightly, groping for a cue. There was no mistaking the flash of Maria Angelina's repudiation and the candor of her suddenly upraised young face.

"Oh, no, Signor, no, no! It was only that I was so careless--that I believed he knew the way."

"And was he trying to get lost?"

"Oh, no, Signor, no, it was all a mistake."

"This is a very easy neck of the woods to get lost in," Barry told her rea.s.suringly. "Old residents here often miss their way--especially in a storm. Mrs. Blair will worry, of course, but she is very sensible and she knows you will come to light with the daylight. Just as soon as it is clear enough for me to find my way I'll strike over to Peter's place and phone her that you are safe and sound, and I'll get a horse for you to ride out on--you won't care for any more walking and the motor can only come as far as the road."