Indeed, the blonde lady, from the moment when Elmer began to put ice into the box, seemed to have regained her spirits.The little dog, which was an indicator of her moods, had likewise lost its nervousness.When Kuroki had tea ready, the dog lay down at his mistress' feet, beside the table.
"Dear little Teddy," said the lady, patting the animal upon the head."Teddy?" said Cleggett.
"I have named him," she said, "after a great American.To my mind, the greatest--Theodore Roosevelt.His championship of the cause of votes for women at a time when mere politicians were afraid to commit themselves is enough in itself to gain him a place in history."She spoke with a kindling eye, and Cleggett had no doubt that there was before him one of those remarkable women who make the early part of the twentieth century so different from any other historical period.And he was one with her in her admiration for Roosevelt--a man whose facility in finding adventures and whose behavior when he had found them had always made a strong appeal to Cleggett.If he could not have been Cleggett he would have liked to have been either the Chevalier d'Artagnan or Theodore Roosevelt.
"He is a great man," said Cleggett.
But the lady, with her second cup of tea in her hand, was evidently thinking of something else.Leaning back in her chair, she said to Cleggett: "It is no good for you to deny that you think I'm a horridlyunconventional sort of person!"
Cleggett made a polite, deprecatory gesture.
"Yes, yes, you do," she said, decidedly."And, really, I am! I am impulsive! I am TOO impulsive!" She raised the cup to her lips, drank, and looked off towards the western horizon, which the sun was beginning to paint ruddily; she mused, murmuring as if to herself: "Sir Archibaldalways thought I was too impulsive, dear man."After a meditative pause she said, leaning her elbows on the table and gazing searchingly into Cleggett's eyes:
"I am going to trust you.I am going to reward your kindness by telling you a portion of my strange story.I am going to depend upon you to understand it."Cleggett bowed and murmured his gratitude at the compliment.Then he said:
"You could trust me with--" But he stopped.He did not wish to be premature.
"With my life.I could trust you with my life," finished the lady, gravely."I know that.I believe that.I feel it, somehow.It is because I do feel it that I tell you--" She paused, as if, after all, she lacked the courage.Cleggett said nothing.He was too fine in grain to force a confidence.After a moment she continued: "I can tell you this," she said, with a catch in her voice that was almost a sob, "that I am practically friendless.When you call a taxicab for me in a few moments, and I leave you, with Elmer and my boxes, I shall have no place to go.""But, surely, madam--"
"Do not call me madam.Call me Lady Agatha.I am Lady Agatha Fairhaven.What is your name?"Cleggett told her.
"You have heard of me?" asked Lady Agatha.
Cleggett was obliged to confess that he had not.He thought that a shade of disappointment passed over the lady's face, but in a moment she smiled and remarked:
"How relative a thing is fame! You have never heard of me! And yet I can assure you that I am well enough known in England.I was one of the very first militant suffragettes to break a window--if not the very first.The point is, indeed, in dispute.
And were it not for my devotion to the cause I would not now be in my present terrible plight--doomed to wander from pillar to post with thatthing" (she pointed with a shudder to the box into which Elmer was still gloomily poking ice)-"chained to me like a--like a--" She hesitated for a word, and Cleggett, tactlessly enough, with some vague recollection of a classical tale in his mind, suggested:
"Like a corpse."
Lady Agatha turned pale.She gazed at Cleggett with terror-stricken eyes, her beautiful face became almost haggard in an instant; he thought she was about to faint again, but she did not.As he looked upon the change his words had wrought, filled with wonder and compunction, Cleggett suddenly divined that her occasional flashes of gayety had been, all along, merely the forced vivacity of a brave and clever woman who was making a gallant fight against total collapse.
"Mr.Cleggett," she said, in a voice that was scarcely louder than a whisper, "I am going to confide everything to you--the whole truth.I will spare myself nothing; I will throw myself upon your mercy.
"I firmly believe, Mr.Cleggett--I am practically certain--that the box there, upon which Elmer is sitting, contains the body of Reginald Maltravers, natural son of the tenth Earl of Claiborne, and the cousin of my late husband, Sir Archibald Fairhaven."
