“With you there? Do you expect me to believe that?”
“A miracle, I admit, but the man is uncanny. He seemed to sense exactly what was needed. I personally saw very little of him, but he managed to impress Aileen—so much so that she wants to have him dine with us.”
He looked solemnly at Berenice, and she in turn gazed congratulatingly upon him, adding after a moment. “I’m glad; I really am. She needs just such a change as this. She should have had it long ago.”
“I agree,” said Cowperwood. “Since I can’t be to her what she would like me to be, why not someone else? Anyway, I hope he keeps his head, and I’m rather inclined to think he will. Aileen is already planning to go to Paris to shop. So things are going well enough, I think.”
“Very well,” said Berenice, smiling. “It looks as though our plans might work out. So who is to blame?”
“Well, not you, and not me. It’s one of those things that have to be—like your coming to me last Christmas when I least expected you.”
He began caressing her again, but, interested in her own plans, she resisted him, saying: “Now, now, I want to hear about London, and then I have something to tell you.”
“London? Everything looks most promising so far. I told you in New York about those two men, Greaves and Henshaw, and how I turned them down. Well, just now at the hotel, before I left, there was a letter from them. They want to see me, and I have an appointment with them. As for the larger plan, there is a group here with whom I am planning to talk. As soon as there is anything definite, I’ll let you know. But meanwhile, I want to steal away with you somewhere. We should be able to take a vacation for a little while before I go into all this. Of course, there’s Aileen. And until she is out of the way . . .” he paused, “my plan, of course, is to urge her to go to Paris, and then we might sail up toward the North Cape or down to the Mediterranean. One of my agents tells me of a yacht he knows of that can be leased for the summer.”
“Yacht! Yacht!” exclaimed Berenice, excitedly, and at the same time laying a finger on his lips. “Oh, no, no! Now you’re treading on my plans. Fixing things I want to fix. You see——”
But before she could finish he seized her and silenced her with a kiss.
“You are impatient!” she said, softly, “but wait . . .” and she led him to a table set by an open window in the adjoining room. “You see, my lord, a feast is laid for two. It is your slave who invites you. If you will be seated, and have a drink with me, and behave yourself, I shall tell you about myself. Believe it or not, I have solved everything!”
“Everything!” commented Cowperwood, banteringly. “And so soon? If only I knew how to do that!”
“Well, nearly everything,” she went on, picking up a decanter containing his favorite wine and pouring a drink for each of them. “You see, strange as it may seem, I have been thinking. And when I think . . .” she stopped and looked upward at the ceiling. He seized the glass she was holding, and kissed her, as she knew he would.
“Back, Caesar!” she teased. “We are not to drink yet. You are to sit down there; I will sit here. And then I will tell you all. I’ll confess.”
“Imp! Be serious, Bevy.”
“Never more so,” she said. “Now listen, Frank! It was this way. On board our steamer were a half-dozen Englishmen, old and young, and all of them handsome; at least, those with whom I flirted were handsome.”
“I’m sure of that,” said Cowperwood, tolerantly, and still a little dubiously. “And so?”
“Well, if you’re going to be as generous as all that, I’ll have to tell you that it was all flirtation in your behalf, and innocent, too, although you needn’t believe that. For instance, I found out about a little suburban place called Boveney on the Thames, not more than thirty miles from London. The most attractive young bachelor, Arthur Tavistock, told me about it. He lives there with his mother, Lady Tavistock. He’s sure I’d like her. And my mother likes him very much. So you see . . .”
“Well, I see we live at Boveney, Mother and I,” said Cowperwood, almost sarcastically.
“Precisely!” mocked Berenice. “And that’s another important point—you and Mother, I mean. From now on you’re going to have to pay a good deal of attention to her. And very little to me. Except as my guardian, of course,” and she tweaked his ear.
“In other words, Cowperwood, the guardian and family friend.” He smiled dryly.
“Exactly!” persisted Berenice. “And what’s more, I’m to go punting with Arthur very soon. And, better still,” and here she chuckled, “he knows of a lovely houseboat which will be ideal for Mother and me. And so, moonlight nights, or sunny afternoons around teatime, while my mother and his mother sit and crochet or walk in the garden, and you smoke and read, Arthur and I . . .”
“Yes, I know, a charming life together: houseboat, lover, spring, guardian, mother. Quite an ideal summer, in fact.”
“It couldn’t be better,” insisted Berenice vehemently. “He even described the awnings, red and green. And all of his friends.”
“Red and green, too, I suppose,” commented Cowperwood.
“Well, practically; flannels and blazers, you know. And all perfectly proper. He told Mother so. A host of friends to whom Mother and I are to be introduced.”
“And the wedding invitations?”
“By June, at the latest, I promise you.”
“May I give the bride away?”
“You could, of course,” replied Berenice, without a smile.
“By George!” and Cowperwood laughed loudly. “Quite a successful voyage, I must say!”
“You haven’t heard a fraction of it,” she went on blatantly, and almost contentiously. “Not a fraction! There’s Maidenhead—I blush to mention it——”
“You do? I’ll make a note of that.”
“I haven’t told you yet about Colonel Hawkesberry, of the Royal something-or-other,” she said, mock-foolishly. “One of those regiment things; knows a fellow officer who has a cousin who has a cottage in some park or other on the Thames.”
“Two cottages and two houseboats! Or are you seeing double?”
“At any rate, this one is rarely let. Vacant for almost the first time, this spring. And a perfect dream. Usually loaned to friends. But as for Mother and myself . . .”
“We now become the daughter of the regiment!”
“Well, so much for the colonel. Then there’s Wilton Braithwaite Wriothesley, pronounced Rotisly, with the most perfect little mustache, and six feet tall, and . . .”
“Now, Bevy! These intimacies! I’m getting suspicious!”
“Not of Wilton! Never, I swear! The colonel, maybe, but not Wilton!” She giggled. “Anyway, to make a long story five times as long, I already know of not only four houseboats along the Thames, but four perfectly appointed houses in or near the most exclusive residential squares of London, and all of them to be had for the season, or the year, or forever, if we should decide to stay here forever.”
“If you say so, darling,” interpolated Cowperwood. “But what a little actress you are!”
“And all of them,” continued Berenice, ignoring his admiring comment, “if I should trouble to give my London address—which I haven’t as yet—will be shown to me by one or all of my admirers.”
“Bravo! My word!” exclaimed Cowperwood.
“But no commitments as yet, and no entanglements, either,” she added. “But Mother and I have agreed to look at one in Grosvenor Square and one in Berkeley Square, after which, well, we shall see what we shall see.”
“But don’t you think you’d better consult your aged guardian as to the contract and all that sort of thing?”