He rammed one of the colonel's perfectos (which he had been saving for the morrow) between his teeth, and stalked into the garden.
"He hasn't talked like that to me in years!" Mrs. Harrigan did not know what to do,--follow him or weep. She took the middle course, and went to bed.
Nora turned out the lights and sat out on the little balcony. The moonshine was glorious. So dense was the earth-blackness that the few lights twinkling here and there were more like fallen stars. Presently she heard a sound. It was her father, returning as silently as he could. She heard him fumble among the knickknacks on the mantel, and then go away again. By and by she saw a spot of white light move hither and thither among the grape arbors. For five or six minutes she watched it dance. Suddenly all became dark again. She laid her head upon the railing and conned over the day's events. These were not at all satisfactory to her. Then her thoughts traveled many miles away. Six months of happiness, of romance, of play, and then misery and blackness.
"Yes. Over here on the balcony. What were you doing down there?"
"Oh, Nora, I'm sorry I lost my temper. But Molly's begun to nag me lately, and I can't stand it. I went after that book. Did you throw some flowers out of the window?"
"All the same to me. I picked up the bunch, and look at what I found inside."
He extended his palm, flooding it with the light of his pocket-lamp. Nora's heart tightened. What she saw was a beautiful uncut emerald.
The Harrigans occupied the suite in the east wing of the villa. This consisted of a large drawing-room and two ample bedchambers, with window-balconies and a private veranda in the rear, looking off toward the green of the pines and the metal-like luster of the copper beeches. Always the suite was referred to by the management as having once been tenanted by the empress of Germany. Indeed, tourists were generally and respectively and impressively shown the suite (provided it was not at the moment inhabited), and were permitted to peer eagerly about for some sign of the vanished august presence. But royalty in passing, as with the most humble of us, leaves nothing behind save the memory of a tip, generous or otherwise.