A Private Chivalry by Francis Lynde

IN her own way -- which was the quietest and least obtrusive of ways -- Dorothy was quite as intolerant of mysteries as was her father, and after the evening when Brant had gone forth to seek and to save that which was lost, small mysteries seemed to lie in wait for her at every turn.

They began the following day with Brant's brief visit and abrupt departure. She had heard his voice in the hall, and, a little later, the rustle of skirts as some one -- her mother, she thought it was at the time -- had gone in to meet him. Of what took place in the drawing-room she knew nothing, but a few minutes afterward, when she was going down to join them, he had stumbled out into the hall, snatched his coat and hat from the rack, and left the house without once looking behind him. So much Dorothy saw from the stair, and she also saw that he was excited and preoccupied, and that his face was the face of one upon whom trouble sharp and serious has come suddenly.

When she heard the gate clang behind him she went to the drawing-room and found it empty; whereupon that which had been merely singular became unaccountable. Was it possible that he had taken offense because he had been kept waiting? Dorothy thought she knew him better than that. He was a grown man, and not a foolish boy with a brand new dignity to battle for.

Failing to account for the unaccountable, Dorothy waited. He would doubtless come again, and with his coming the apparent mystery would vanish. But when the days passed and he came no more, she grew curious and asked guarded questions of her mother -- and received ambiguous answers, since Mrs. Langford, with maternal self-sufficiency, had deemed it unnecessary to take either of her daughters into her confidence in Brant's affair.

So Dorothy wondered, and laid innocent little snares to entrap her father, who had also grown singularly reticent. And when these traps sprung harmless, she tried Antrim, with no better results. No, Brant was still in town, and the chief clerk was not aware of any impending change in his plans. Thus Henry Antrim, vaguely; but Dorothy's attempt fell upon an inauspicious moment, since it was made on the evening of Antrim's off day, and her questions were put while he was waiting for Isabel to make ready for the jaunt _à l'opéra_.

After this failure Dorothy tried Will, and it was a measure of her concern that she should appeal to him. She had no news of him; had nothing save that which an affectionate sister usually gets in an attempt to fathom the unplumbed depths of a younger brother's churlishness. Knowing Will's weakness, she ventured carefully, but she was quite unprepared for his sudden outburst of petulant brutality.

"You wonder where Mr. Brant is, do you? " he sneered, mimicking her. "Well, you've no business to wonder; that's all there is about that."

"Why, Will -- -- "

"You needn't try to wheedle me. I don't know where he is, and, what's more, I don't care, as long as he keeps away from here."

"But, Will, you must have some reason -- -- "

"Reason enough," he interrupted rudely; "and that's all you'll get out of me in a thousand years. " And he lighted a cigarette and put distance between himself and the chance of further questioning.

Knowing nothing of Harding or his story, Dorothy set her brother's anger down to the account of a natural feeling of resentment toward a comparative stranger who had interfered in Will's private affair. None the less, the incident added another shrouding to the mystery involving the draughtsman, and Dorothy's curiosity and concern went one step farther on the road toward anxiety.

It was about this time that she began to notice a rather remarkable change in Isabel. From being the most outspoken member of the family, the younger sister had developed a degree of reticence which was second only to Will's churlishness, though Dorothy fancied it was sorrowful rather than sullen. From day to day she spent less time at her easel, and twice Dorothy had come upon her when her eyes were red with weeping. To inquiry, jesting or solicitous, she was stonily impervious, and when the thing became unbearable Dorothy went to her mother again, meaning to be at the heart of things if persistence could find the way. She chose her time cunningly, attacking after her mother had gone to bed, so there would be no chance of retreat.

"How should I know, dear? " was the mother's reply to her first question about Isabel. "I haven't noticed anything wrong with her."

"But there _is_ something wrong," Dorothy insisted. "She hasn't been like herself for days. She mopes, and she doesn't paint; and twice I have caught her crying, though she denied it spitefully."

Mrs. Langford's answer to that was conventionally sympathetic.

"It is another of the unthinkable pictures, I suppose. I do wish the child wouldn't torment herself so over her work. It is all well enough as an accomplishment, but she needn't make a martyr of herself. Harry is quite right about that."

Having a very considerable reverence for art, Dorothy was not so sure of this, but she left the point uncontested and asked a question suggested by the mention of Harry Antrim.

"You don't suppose she has quarrelled with Harry, do you?"

"It is quite possible. It's a way they have had ever since they were children together."