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Updated: June 18, 2025
"You are too late," evenly. She was becoming used to the sight of him, much to her amazement. "I am sorry." "Why, Nora, I didn't know that your card was filled!" said Mrs. Harrigan. She had the maternal eye upon Courtlandt. "Nevertheless," said Nora sweetly, "it is a fact." "I am disconsolate," replied Courtlandt, who had approached for form's sake only, being fully prepared for a refusal.
Courtlandt finished the article, folded the paper and returned it, and began digging in the path with his cane. "But what I want to know is, who the devil is this mysterious blond stranger?" Abbott flourished the paper again. "I tell you, it's no advertising dodge. She's been abducted. The hound!" Courtlandt ceased boring into the earth.
Over the entrances to the shops the proprietors were dropping the white and brown awnings for the day. Very few people shopped after luncheon. There were pleasanter pastimes, even for the women, contradictory as this may seem. By eleven o'clock Courtlandt had finished the reading of his mail, and was now ready to hunt for the little lady of the Taverne Royale. It was necessary to find her.
After a few minutes of restless to-and-froing, he proceeded down to the landing, helped himself to the colonel's motor-boat, and returned to Bellaggio. At the hotel he asked for the duke, only to be told that the duke and madame had left that morning for Paris. Courtlandt saw that he had permitted one great opportunity to slip past. He gave up the battle.
She obeyed, however, and retreated to the stage entrance. A man, quite as tall as Courtlandt, his face shaded carefully, intentionally perhaps, by one of those soft Bavarian hats that are worn successfully only by Germans, stepped out of the gathering to proffer his assistance. Courtlandt pushed him aside calmly, lifted his hat, and smiling ironically, closed the door behind the singer.
Courtlandt sat perfectly straight; his ample shoulders did not touch the back of his chair; and his arms were folded tightly across his chest. The characteristic of his attitude was tenseness. The nostrils were well defined, as in one who sets the upper jaw hard upon the nether.
He paused at the window; he picked up a sketch and studied it at various angles; he kicked the footstool across the floor, not with any sign of anger but with a seriousness that would have caused Abbott to laugh, had he been looking at his friend. He continued, however, to pluck at the plaster. He had always hated and loved Courtlandt, alternately.
From the expression of his face he might have been a spectator rather than the person most vitally concerned in this little scene. And what a pair they made! "Monsieur Courtlandt, you will give me your word of honor not to annoy Mademoiselle again?" "I promise never to annoy her again." For the briefest moment the blazing blue eyes clashed with the calm brown ones.
To Courtlandt it resembled, as no other sound, the note of a muffled Burmese gong, struck in the dim incensed cavern of a temple. A Burmese gong: briefly and magically the stage, the audience, the amazing gleam and scintillation of the Opera, faded.
"Leave this room, or I will shoot." Courtlandt advanced toward her slowly. "Do so," he said. "I should much prefer a bullet to that look." "I am in earnest." She was very white, but her hand was steady. He continued to advance. There followed a crash. The smell of burning powder filled the room. The Burmese gong clanged shrilly and whirled wildly. Courtlandt felt his hair stir in terror.
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