The Brightener

								


THE BRIGHTENER

BOOK I
THE YACHT

CHAPTER I
DOWN AND OUT

"I wonder who will tell her," I heard somebody say, just outside the
arbour.
The somebody was a woman; and the somebody else who answered was a man.
"Glad it won't be me!" he replied, ungrammatically.
I didn't know who these somebodies were, and I didn't much care. For the
first instant the one thing I did care about was, that they should
remain outside my arbour, instead of finding their way in. Then, the
next words waked my interest. They sounded mysterious, and I loved
mysteries--then.
"It's an awful thing to happen--a double blow, in the same moment!"
exclaimed the woman.
They had come to a standstill, close to the arbour; but there was hope
that they mightn't discover it, because it wasn't an ordinary arbour. It
was really a deep, sweet-scented hollow scooped out of an immense arbor
vitæ tree, camouflaged to look like its sister trees in a group beside
the path. The hollow contained an old marble seat, on which I was
sitting, but the low entrance could only be reached by one who knew of
its existence, passing between those other trees.
I felt suddenly rather curious about the person struck by a "double
blow," for a "fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind"; and at that
moment I was a sort of modern, female Damocles myself. In fact, I had
got the Marchese d'Ardini to bring me away from the ball-room to hide in
this secret arbour of his old Roman garden, because my mood was out of
tune for dancing. I hadn't wished to come to the ball, but Grandmother
had insisted. Now I had made an excuse of wanting an ice, to get rid of
my dear old friend the Marchese for a few minutes.
"She couldn't have cared about the poor chap," said the man in a hard
voice, with a slight American accent, "or she wouldn't be here
to-night."
My heart missed a beat.
"They say," explained the woman, "that her grandmother practically
forced her to marry the prince, and arranged it at a time when he'd have
to go back to the Front an hour after the wedding, so they shouldn't be
really married, if anything happened to him. I don't know whether
that's true or not!"
But I knew! I knew that it was true, because they were talking about me.
In an instant--before I'd decided whether to rush out or sit still--I
knew something more.
"You ought to be well informed, though," the woman's voice continued.
"You're a distant cousin, aren't you?"
"'Distant' is the word! About forty-fourth cousin, four times removed,"
the man laughed with frank bitterness. (No wonder, as he'd
unsuccessfully claimed the right to our family estate, to hitch on to
his silly old, dug-up title!) Not only did I know, now, of whom they
were talking, but I knew one of those who talked: a red-headed giant of
a man I'd seen to-night for the first time, though he had annoyed
Grandmother and me from a distance, for years. In fact, we'd left home