Part 30

I could see the Scotch-granite look that came into the thick-lashed tourmaline eyes. And they'd be lovely eyes, I had to admit, if they were only a little softer.

"That's unfortunate," was her ladyship's curt retort.

"It's more than unfortunate," I agreed, "it's extremely awkward."

"Why?" she snapped, plainly annoyed at my lightness of tone.

"Because he can't possibly have both of us, you know--unless he's willing to migrate over to that Mormon colony at Red-Deer. And even there, I understand, they're not doing it now."

"I'm afraid this is something much too serious to joke about," Lady Alicia informed me.

"But it strikes me as essentially humorous," I told her.

"I'm afraid," she countered, "that it's apt to prove essentially tragic."

"But he happens to be my husband," I observed.

"Only in form, I fancy, if he cares for some one else," was her ladyship's deliberate reply.

"Then he has acknowledged that--that you've captured him?" I inquired, slowly but surely awakening to the sheer audacity of the lady in the buckskin gauntlets.

"Isn't that rather--er--primitive?" inquired Lady Allie, paler than ever.

"If you mean coming and squabbling over another woman's husband, I'd call it distinctly prehistoric," I said with a dangerous little red light dancing before my eyes. "It's so original that it's aboriginal. But I'm still at a loss to know just what your motive is, or what you want."

"I want an end to this intolerable situation," my visitor averred.

"Intolerable to whom?" I inquired.

"To me, to Duncan, and to you, if you are the right sort of woman," was Lady Alicia's retort. And still again I was impressed by the colossal egoism of the woman confronting me, the woman ready to ride rough-shod over the world, for all her sparkling veneer of civilization, as long, as she might reach her own selfish ends.

"Since you mention Duncan, I'd like to ask if you're speaking now as his cousin, or as his mistress?"

Lady Alicia's stare locked with mine. She was making a sacrificial effort, I could see, to remain calm.

"I'm speaking as some one who is slightly interested in his happiness, and his future," was her coldly intoned reply.

"And has my husband acknowledged that his happiness and his future remain in your hands?" I asked.

"I should hate to see him waste his life in a hole like this," said Lady Alicia, not quite answering my question.

"Have you brought any great improvement to it?" I parried. Yet even as I spoke I stood impressed by the thought that it was, after all, more than primitive. It was paleolithic, two prehistoric she-things in combat for their cave-man.

"That is not what I came here to discuss," she replied, with a tug at one of her gauntlets.

"I suppose it would be nearer the mark to say, since you began by being so plain-spoken, that you came here to ask me to give you my husband," I retorted as quietly as I could, not because I preferred the soft pedal, but because I nursed a strong suspicion that Struthers' attentive ear was just below the nearest window-sill.

Lady Alicia smiled forbearingly, almost pityingly.

"Any such donation, I'm afraid, is no longer your prerogative," she languidly remarked, once more mistress of herself. "What I'm more interested in is your giving your husband his liberty."

I felt like saying that this was precisely what I had been giving him. But it left too wide an opening. So I ventured, instead: "I've never heard my husband express a desire for his liberty."

"He's too honorable for that," remarked my enemy.