“That’s what I said! Don’t compel me to be impertinent. He had very nice blue eyes; and when he took off his hat his head was very good. I quite liked the way he parted his hair. He was really stunning and I’d have liked to be introduced. But what is his name?”
Merriam was looking straight over his horse’s head and pretended that he did not hear.
“I don’t know the fellow,” said the old gentleman, shortly.
“He addressed you respectfully by your proper name. You were very impolite to him. He had all the marks of a gentleman.”
“I don’t know all the people that call me by name;” and Rodney Merriam ended the conversation by bringing his horse to a gallop.
When they parted presently at Zelda’s door, Rodney Merriam had forgotten the incident of the meeting on the river road, or he pretended that he had, when Zelda said with a fine air of inadvertence:
“Of course, I’ll meet him sometime, somewhere, as the song says.”
He had turned his horse to leave, and she stood on the sidewalk stroking Zan’s pretty nose.
“I said that I’d probably meet the chevalier sooner or later.”
“You shall do nothing of the kind,” declared the old gentleman, testily, and he rode off with considerable haste toward his own stable.
Frank Pollock was a good deal puzzled by Rodney Merriam’s action on the river road. He did not question that the old gentleman had recognized him; even if he had not, strangers passing on the highway in this part of the world usually saluted one another. Pollock was a fellow whose amiability had always made friends for him; he had been petted to the spoiling point by men and women in different parts of the republic, and as he watched Rodney Merriam and Zelda Dameron gallop away from him his face grew crimson. Pollock had not seen Zelda Dameron before, but he assumed that she was a relative of Rodney Merriam’s,--a fact which he deplored as the dust from their horses was driven back upon him.
It was, however, ordained by the powers that the meeting in the highway between Pollock and Zelda should not be their last. Mrs. Michael Carr had already discovered the young officer. She always discovered new people in town and was not happy until she had summoned them to her board. Her round table seated eight people comfortably, and she much preferred this small number to the twenty that were possible. Wishing to see Zelda at closer range, she made a small dinner--quite _en famille_--and bade Zelda and Pollock, the Copelands, Mrs. Forrest and Morris Leighton to her board. Michael Carr was fond of talk; to say that he was himself a conversationalist was not making too much of it. He even enjoyed the surprise of coming down to his drawing-room and finding utter strangers there,--often persons whom Mrs. Carr had met in the many clubs and societies of which she was a member.