basket on the porch. She showed the kitten to Eric, handling its tiny
paws gently, hushing its plaintive mews with ridiculous pet names.

"Perhaps I'm a bigger fool than I know. Perhaps it never happened,
except in a dream," Eric told himself, unhappily. "And yet----"

He looked at the red marks on his hand, marks made by a furious
Suzanne in that hour before the dawn. Too, he remembered the cut on
John's wrist, the cut so near the vein.

Eric declined John's invitation to go through the museum with him that
afternoon, but he said with a queer sense of diffidence, "While
you're there, John, you'd better get rid of the Medici boots. Creepy
things to have around, I think."

"They'll be destroyed, all right. But Suzanne is just bound to try
them on. I'll get them, though, and do as Uncle said."

Eric remained on the terrace, speculating somewhat on just what John
and Suzanne would do, now that the huge fortune of Silas Dickerson was
theirs. Eric was not envious of his brother's good luck, and he was
thankful for his share in old Silas' generosity.

At five o'clock he entered the hall, just as Suzanne hurried in from
the kitchen. She spread out her hands, laughingly.

"With my own fair hands I've made individual almond tortonis for
dessert. Cook thinks I'm a wonder! Each masterpiece in a fluted silver
dish, silver candies sprinkled on the pink whipped cream! O-oh!"

She made big eyes in mock gluttony. Eric forgot, for a moment, that
there ever had been another Suzanne.

"You're nothing but a little girl, Suzie. You with your rhapsodies
over pink whipped cream! But it's sweet of you to go to such trouble
on a warm afternoon. See you and the whatever-you-call-'ems at
dinner!"

"They're tortonis, Eric, tortonis."

 Prev. P 9/15 next