CHAPTER VI.
JUGGLING WITH FIRE.
LADY MARGARET was a beautiful woman. The next time he met her, Adam realized that this was true. He stood looking down upon her, where she sat on a low divan which was made to throw two persons very close together, and into which he had avoided squeezing. The young woman looked up at him winningly, a slumberous passion in her garnet-brown eyes. Her creamy white bosom rose and fell in a calm voluptuousness, the twin beauties of which were more than suggested.
Rust could not recall that he had ever seen shoulders more superb, nor a throat more delightfully round and built upward in curves to the perfect chin at the top. In contrast with her lustrously dark eyes and her almost black eyebrows, spanning her forehead with their dainty arches, her old-gold hair was an amazing crown of loveliness.
She had led him away from the company, “to look for Ted,” with an art which had for once deceived the crafty rover completely. Now, as he looked upon her, assuming a coldness it was utterly impossible to feel, and be a man, he noted a beauty in her bare arms which made him think of the perfect lines of a tiger’s paw. He could have suggested nothing to make them more splendid.
Indeed she was well-nigh matchless as a creation of nature and polite society. Her shimmering satin gown clung to her form as if ardently. Her pretty gold-slippered feet and her slender ankles, in red silk, open-work stockings, defied a glance to ignore them.
“Adam,” she said, smiling up at him archly, “I wish you were a girl—just for a few moments, you know.”
“You would suffer by the contrast between us,” said Rust.
“You would know what a—what a bore he is,” she went on, regardless of his comment. “And it would serve you right.”
“You doubtless mean the King,” he replied. “Your expedients are cruel. Make anything out of me—a camel, if you like,—but not a girl.”
“I mean Ted,” she said, a little desperately. “You know I mean Ted. You know what a bore he is.”
“Then you have spoiled him since morning.”
“You have no right to be the only man who isn’t a bore,” she went on.
“You’ll be telling me I am the only man you ever loved, in a moment,” he answered. “I can feel it coming.”
“And if I did,” she said with a passionate glance, “what then?”
Adam was frightened, as he had never been before in his life. He took out his handkerchief and flecked a bit of dust from his boot, nonchalantly.
“I should advise you to be bled for fever,” he said. “And I should know the old affection you had for me once had departed forever. Couldn’t you break my heart in some simpler way, dear Lady Margaret?”
“It was all your fault for going away,” she told him. “You knew I liked you before you went away.”
“Oh yes,” he responded gaily, “but I saw that your passionate love for me was waning, so I went away to kindle it over again.”
“Do be serious for a moment,” she murmured, vexed with his calmness and his raillery. “You know Ted is a dreadful bore.”
“Then since you have given him the love that once was mine, my cue is to become a bore instanter.”
“You would never know it, if I loved you madly,” she said, looking up into his face with her declaration centered in her eyes.
“Yes, I would,” he corrected, placidly. “If you loved me madly you would tell me about it; you know you would.”
Her breath came fast. Her bosom rose and fell rapidly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did,” she said.
“If you told me you loved me madly,” said Adam, “I should know you didn’t. So please let me go on with my fond delusions.”
She was silent a moment. He could feel her burning gaze on his face. “Adam,” she said presently, “do sit down.” She moved to make half room enough for him on the divan.
“What, and make you stand?” he replied. “Never!”
She placed her hand on the arm of the seat, where she knew his fingers would return when he had finished scratching at a tiny white speck on his coat-lappel. He observed her motion and thrust his fist in his pocket.
“Oh, I am dying,” she presently whispered, after another silence.
“How interesting,” Adam cheerfully commented. “What are you dying for, a glass of water, or a new set of diamonds?”
“You know what I am dying for,” she said, tremulously, in a voice hardly above a whisper. “You said if I were dying, you—you would know what for.”
“Oh, did I?” Adam mused. He was pale behind his calm. His hands were perspiring, coldly. “Yes, of course. I said you would be dying to run away with me. And now you would try to prove that this was all wrong. My dear Lady Margaret, this is unkind.”
She arose from her seat. She was driven to her wits’ end for anything to say.
“Silly boy,” she answered, as she came toward him, and then she quickly added: “Oh, Adam, would you mind just clasping this strap?”
The strap was a narrow bit of finery which crossed her bare shoulder. She had artfully loosened the golden clasp and now came to present shoulder, strap, clasp and all for re-arrangement.
“There is nothing I can do with greater ease,” said Rust, “There you are,—done already.” He had performed his office with amazing dexterity and with a touch so fleeting that she would never have known when it alighted.
“Oh, you haven’t done it right, my dear foolish Adam,” she said, with a delicious little chuckle. “I’ll put my arm across your shoulder, so. Now, make it right, do, Adam, please.”
She dropped her exquisite arm on his shoulder as she spoke and edged closer. She turned so that her face was so near to his that he could feel how glowing warm she was. Her breath fanned against his cheek, hotly. The man felt a sense of intoxication stealing upon him. Yet he was fixing the clasp as briefly as before, when she made a movement with her slipper.
“Oh, I am falling,” she said in a little cry, and throwing both arms about him, to support herself, she was clasped close to his breast, for a moment, before he could seem to re-establish her balance. In that brief time a mad horde of thoughts ran riotously through his brain. She was beautiful; she loved him; she had fascinated something in him always. Could he not be happy, loving her and having her love in return? Why not run away with her—to the Continent—anywhere—and fill the aching void in his nature with love and caresses!
His heart was beating furiously. He trembled. A fever leaped into his brain. Through his arms shot a galvanic contraction, as they halted in the act of closing about the superb, slender figure he was holding. It seemed as if he must kiss her, on her lips, her throat—her shoulder!
“Adam, I am dying!” she whispered to him again, as he held her.
“Don’t die standing up,” he said, with a sudden recovery of the mastery over himself. “Sit down and do it calmly.”
He swayed her aside, and there was nothing she could do but to take the seat she had occupied before.
“How provoking of me to trip on my gown,” she said, looking up at him sullenly. “Do you think we shall have snow to-morrow?”
“I shall pray against a precipitation of icebergs,” said Adam. “There is nothing suggestive of love in ice.”