The Golden Fleece Part 3

"Is it no insult," said she, in a sibilant voice, "to talk to me as you are doing, when you have just told me that you love another woman, and are going to meet her?"

Freeman's brows gradually knitted themselves in a frown of apparent perplexity. "I must say I don't understand you," he observed, at length.

"I am quite sure I have said nothing of the sort. How could I?"

"If you wish to quibble about words, perhaps not. But was not that your meaning?"

"No, it wasn't. You are the only woman who has been in my thoughts to-day."

"Mr. Freeman!"

"Well?"

"You have intimated very clearly that you are engaged--married, for aught I know--to a woman whom you are now on your way to meet----"

At this point she stopped. Freeman had interrupted her with a shout of laughter.

She had been very pale. She now flushed all over her face, and jumped to her feet.

"Sit down," he said, laying a hand on her dress and (aided by a lurch of the vessel) pulling her into her seat again, "and listen to me. And then I shall insist upon an apology. This is too much!"

"I shall ask the captain----"

"You will not, I promise you. Look here! When I was in Panama, I met there a fellow I used to know in New York. He told me that he had recently crossed the continent with Professor Meschines, who used to teach geology and botany at Yale College, when he and I were students there. The professor had come over partly for the fun of the thing, and partly to look for specimens in the line of his profession. My friend parted from him at San Francisco: the professor was going farther south."

"What has all this to do with the woman who----"

"It has this to do with it,--that the professor is the woman! He is over sixty years old, and has always been a good friend of mine; but I am not going to marry him. I am not engaged to him, he is not beautiful, nor even fascinating, except in the way of an elderly man of science. And he is the only human being, besides yourself, that I know or have ever heard of on the Pacific coast. Now for your apology!"

Grace emitted a long breath, and sank back in her seat, with her hands clasped in her lap. She raised her hands and covered her face with them.

She removed them, sat erect, and bent an open-eyed, intent gaze upon her companion.

After this pantomime, she exclaimed, in the lowest and most musical of tones, "Oh! how hateful you are!" Then she cried out with animation, "I believe you did it on purpose!" Finally, she sank back again, with a soft laugh and sparkling eyes, at the same time stretching out her right arm towards him and placing her hand on his, with a whispered, "There, then!"

Freeman, accepting the hand for the apology, kissed it, and continued to hold it afterwards.

"Am I not a little goose?" she murmured.

"You certainly are," replied Freeman.

"You mustn't hold my hand any more."

"Do you mean to withdraw your apology?"

"N--no; but it doesn't follow that----"

"Oh, yes, it does. Besides, when a man receives such a delicate, refined, graceful, exquisite apology as this,"--here he lifted the hand, looked at it critically, and bestowed another kiss upon it,--"he would be a fool not to make the most of it."

"Ah, I'm afraid you're dangerous. You are well named--Freeman!"

"My name is Harvey: won't you call me by it?"

"Oh, I can't!"

"Try! Would it make it easier if I were to call you by yours?"

"Mine is Miss Parsloe."

"Pooh! How can that be your name which you are going to change so soon?

When I look at you, I see your name; when I think of you, I say it to myself,--Grace!"

"How do you know I am going to change my name soon--or ever?"

"Whom are you talking to?"

"To you,--Harvey! Oh!" She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away and pressed it over her lips.

"How do I know you are beautiful, Grace, and--irresistible?"

"But I'm not! You're making fun of me! Besides, I'm twenty."

"How many times have you been engaged?"

"Never. n.o.body wants to be engaged to a poor girl. Oh me!"

"Do you know what you are made of, Grace? Fire and flowers! Few men in the world are men enough to be a match for you. But what have you been doing with yourself all this time? Why do you come to a place like this?"

"Maybe I had a presentiment that... What nonsense we are talking! But what you said reminds me. It's the strangest coincidence!"

"What is it?"

"Your Professor Meschines----"

"On the contrary, he is a most matter-of-fact old gentleman."

"Do be quiet, and listen to me! When my mamma was a girl in school, there were two boys there,--it was a boy-and-girls' school,--and they were great friends. But they both fell in love with my mamma----"

"I can understand that," put in Freeman.

"How do you know I am like my mamma? Well, as I was saying, they both fell in love with her, and quarrelled with each other, and had a fight.

The boy that won the fight is the man to whose house I am going."

"Then he didn't marry your mamma?"

"Oh, no; that was only a childish affair, and she married another man."

"The one who got thrashed?"

"Of course not. But the one who got thrashed is your Professor Meschines."