"So long as you do not choose to be my husband——"
"It is husband or brother," he said, threateningly.
"Of course. I become your sister by rejecting you, do I not?"
"Don't trifle. You understand what I mean. I will let the world know that your mother is mine."
They stood looking at each other in silent defiance. At last Clorinda spoke:
"A compromise! let the world know that my mother is yours."
"I see. Pose as your brother!"
"Yes. That will help you up a good many rungs. I shall not deny I am your sister. My mother will certainly not deny that you are her son."
"Done! So long as my theories are not disproved. Conjugate the verb 'to be,' and you shall be successful. Let me see. How does it run? I am—your brother, thou art—my sister, she is—my mother—we are—her children, you are—my womankind, they are—all spoofed."
So the man in the Ironed Mask turned out to be the brother of the great and good actress, Clorinda Bell. And several people had known it all along, for what but fraternal interest had taken him so often to the Lymarket? And when his identity leaked out, Society ran after him, and he gave the interviewers interesting details of his sister's early years. And everyone spoke of his mother, and of his solicitous attendance upon her. And in due course the tale of his virtues reached a romantic young heiress who wooed and won him. And so he continued being, till he was—no more. By his own request they buried him in an Ironed Mask, and put upon his tomb the profound inscription
"Here Lies the Man Who Was."
And this was why Clorinda, disgusted with men and lovers, and unable to marry her brother, caught at the notion of the Old Maids' Club and called upon Lillie.
It was almost as good a cover as a mother, and it was well to have something ready in case she lost her, as you cannot obtain a second mother even on the hire system. But Lord Silverdale's report consisted of one word, "Dangerous!"—and he rejoiced at the whim which enabled him thus to protect the impulsive little girl he loved.
Clorinda divined from Lillie's embarrassment next day that she was to be blackballed.
"I am afraid," she hastened to say, "that on second thoughts I must withdraw my candidature, as I could not make a practice of coming here without my mother."
Lillie referred to the rules. "Married women are admitted," she said simply. "I presume, therefore, your mother——"
"It's just like your presumption," interrupted Clorinda, and flouncing angrily out of the Club, she invited a journalist to tea.
Next day the Moon said she was going to join the Old Maids' Club.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CLUB GETS ADVERTISED.
"I see you have disregarded my ruling, Miss Dulcimer!" said Lord Silverdale, pointing to the paragraph in the Moon. "What is the use of my trying the candidates if you're going to admit the plucked?"
"I am surprised at you, Lord Silverdale. I thought you had more wisdom than to base a reproach on a Moon paragraph. You might have known it was not true."
"That is not my experience, Miss Dulcimer. I do not think a statement is necessarily false because it appears in the newspapers. There is hardly a paper in which I have not, at some time or other, come across a true piece of news. Even the Moon is not all made of green cheese."
"But you surely do not think I would accept Clorinda Bell after your warning. Not but that I am astonished. She assured me she was ice."
"Precisely. And so I marked her 'Dangerous.' Are there any more candidates to-day?"
"Heaps and heaps! From all parts of the kingdom letters have come from ladies anxious to become Old Maids. There is even one application from Paris. Ought I to entertain that?"
"Certainly. Candidates may hail from anywhere—excepting naturally the United States.
"But what, I wonder, has caused this tide of applications?"
"The Moon, of course. The fiction that Clorinda Bell intended to take the secular veil has attracted all these imitators. She has given the Club a good advertisement in endeavoring merely to give herself one."
"You suspect her, then, of being herself responsible for the statement that she was going to join the Club?"
"No. I am sure of it. Who but herself knew that she was not?"
"I can hardly imagine that she would employ such base arts."
"Higher arts are out of employment nowadays."
"Is there any way of finding out?"
"I am afraid not. She has no bosom friends. Stay—there is her mother!"
"Mothers do not tell their daughters' secrets. They do not know them."
"Well, there's her brother. I was introduced to him the other day at Mrs. Leo Hunter's. But he seems such a reticent chap. Only opens his mouth twice an hour, and then merely to show his teeth. Oh, I know! I'll get at the Moon man. My aunt, the philanthropist, who is quite a journalist (sends so many paragraphs round about herself, you know), will tell me who invents that sort of news, and I'll interview the beggar."
"Yes, won't it be fun to run her to earth?" said Lillie gleefully.
Silverdale took advantage of her good-humor.
"I hope the discovery of the baseness of your sex will turn you again to mine." There was a pleading tenderness in his eyes.
"What! to your baseness? I thought you were so good."
"I am no good without you," he said boldly.
"Oh, that is too rich! Suppose I had never been born?"
"I should have wished I hadn't."
"But you wouldn't have known I hadn't."
"You're getting too metaphysical for my limited understanding."
"Nonsense, you understand metaphysics as well as I do."
"Do not disparage yourself. You know I cannot endure metaphysics."
"Why not?"
"Because they are mostly made in Germany. And all Germans write as if their aim was to be misunderstood. Listen to my simple English lay."
"Another love-song to Chloe?"
"No, a really great poem, suggested by the number of papers and poems I have already seen this Moon paragraph in."
He took down the banjo, thrummed it, and sang:
THE GRAND PARAGRAPHIC TOUR.
I composed a little story
About a cockatoo,
With no desire of glory,
To see what would ensue.
It took the public liking
From China to Peru.
The point of it was striking,
Though perfectly untrue.
It began in a morning journal
When gooseberries were due,
The subject seemed eternal,
So many scribes it drew.
And in every