CHAPTER I THE NE’ER-DO-WELL
 “I’ve never had any luck,” said Hugh Sinclair, lifting a stein of beer and emptying it in one steady draught.
The fashionably dressed man, with graying hair on his temples who sat opposite him at the table, left his own foaming mug untouched as he watched the handsome, rough-looking boy of twenty-four with a half smile.
“Nor my father before me,” added Hugh, as he set down the empty stein. “No silver spoons in the mouths of our family when they are born.”
“Your father was a pretty fine man,” remarked the other.
“Oh, yes, I suppose so,” said the boy carelessly. “I remember, Mr. Ogden, that you and he were a sort of pals. I suppose it was on his account that you looked me up to-day. I’m sorry I haven’t any better hospitality to show[4] you than a near-beer joint. These hot dogs aren’t so bad, though. Try ’em.”
The young fellow drove his fork into the food on his plate and his companion followed his example, while a brazen automatic piano in the corner crashed out “The Virginia Blues.”
John Ogden began to eat. “I love that clever human who cursed the man that put the din into dinner, and took the rest out of restaurant,” he said.
“M’h’m,” agreed Hugh with his mouth full.
“Who are left in your family?” asked Ogden. “The last time I saw you was twelve years ago, and do you know why I remember the date?”
Hugh looked up. “Can’t imagine. Something about father, I suppose.”
“No, about your sister Carol.”
“Good old Carol?” said the boy with surprise.
“Yes. How much more time have you before you must go back to the store?”
Hugh looked at his wrist watch. Its dilapidated leather bracelet matched the carelessness of its owner’s general appearance. “Half an hour.”
“Then let us eat quickly and get to some quiet spot.”
They found it in a hotel lobby on the way to[5] Hugh’s place of business, and in transit John Ogden took further mental note of his companion’s shabbiness. Not only were his clothes in need of brushing, but he had not shaved to-day; his shoes were dusty and by industry the boy finished several cigarettes before, in the hotel lobby, they found a couple of neighboring chairs, and he lighted another.
“Hard luck to tote you around this way, Mr. Ogden, but all I’ve got is a hall bedroom in a hash house.”
“You talk a lot about luck, don’t you?” remarked the older man. “You don’t look as if you had ever gone after it very hard.”
“Oh, yes,” responded Hugh; “I’ve batted around considerable after jobs.”
“You don’t keep them very long, eh?”
“No, and the devil can take them for all me. I’ve never had anything worth keeping since I got back from France. I care for nobody and nobody cares for me. That’s about the size of it, and most of the other fellows are the same way. My friends are all Bolshevists.”
“Oh, come now,” said the older man, regarding the frank young ne’er-do-well with some disgust, “that isn’t worthy of your father’s son.”
“Perhaps not; but what do you care?” turning[6] upon his well-dressed, well-groomed companion; nettled by the shade of contempt in his tone. “My father’s dead and that’s the end of him.”
“I was going to tell you why I care,” said Ogden, meeting the inimical look in the exceedingly handsome blue eyes bent upon him. He paused a minute, then added, “I am glad I stopped over and hunted you up. You remind me of her.”
“Oh, yes,” said Hugh listlessly, “Carol. You said something about Carol.”
“I did,” returned the other quietly. “Twelve years ago to-day I asked her to be my wife.”
“You—Carol?” The boy’s voice was so incredulous that Ogden smiled.
“Yes; I wasn’t always forty-two, you know. I was thirty then, and she was eighteen.”
“That was the reason you hung around father, then?”
“One of the reasons, yes,” said Ogden slowly. “She was a sober little head for eighteen, and it was largely because for years she had had to be a mother to her little brother.”
The tone and manner in which this was said caused Hugh to remove his cigarette for a thoughtful moment. “Good old Carol,” he said; then, restoring the cigarette, he added,[7] “I wish to thunder she had married you. That guy Morrison carried her off to Colorado. She hated to leave me like the devil. She wrote me every day while I was over there.”
“Don’t light another cigarette, Hugh,” exclaimed the other in irrepressible impatience. “Don’t you know you never will hold a position if you’re one of these coffin-tack slaves?”
Hugh flared up. The flare showed in his beautiful eyes and darkened them to violet. Who was this glass of fashion to dictate to a decent Bolshevist like himself!
“And don’t I tell you I don’t give a damn how many dinky positions I lose?” he retorted.
Ogden put a soothing hand on the boy’s big arm and was nervously shaken off. “I’m sorry, old man. Don’t take it that way. Of course you’re free, white, and twenty-one; but I can’t help taking an interest in you.”
“Better cut it. I thank you, of course, for looking me up”—Hugh rose—“but I’ve got to trot along now. Good luck to you.”
John Ogden rose, too. “It won’t be good luck for me unless I see you again. I’m staying at this hotel. Come to dinner with me to-night.”
“Oh, no. Thank you just the same, but I’ve no togs decent to dine in a place like this.”[8] The boy was somewhat touched by the older man’s invitation and manner, and he smiled grudgingly, revealing perfect teeth and more than ever causing Ogden a twinge of memory. “I can dress for a dinner of Reds in some cellar. That’s my size.”
“Wait a minute, Hugh. Listen. This is my anniversary. I never could love another girl after Carol. I’ve gone lonely for twelve years for her sake. If she could have felt differently I should have been your big brother all this time. Won’t you dine with me to-night? This is always a hard day for me.”
Hugh looked down on his immaculate companion curiously. How could a man, with hair graying around the temples and growing thin on the crown, nurse memories of love? It seemed absurd. But the face regarding him so steadily was a strong one. An idea suddenly occurred to the boy.
“Were you in the big shindy?”
“Yes.”
“What were you?”
“Major of infantry.”
“Get any bumps?”
“Yes, I achieved a little limp. Didn’t you notice it?”
“I hated the officers,” remarked Hugh.
[9]
“Will you come to-night?”
There was only a trifle more of hesitation before the boy answered: “Well—I’ll come.”
Ogden slapped him on the back and he moved off with long, deliberate strides. The older man looked after him. The boy’s splendid build and the grace with which his head was set on those firm shoulders attracted many a glance wherever he appeared.
The man sighed. He was familiar with the type of disillusioned returned members of the A.E.F., who went out surrounded by the incense of hero-worship, and came back to the shock of finding themselves negligible.
CHAPTER II FOR CAROL
 At the appointed hour Hugh came. He had made the concession of blacking his shoes, and shaving, and the unkempt hair of the noon hour, though obviously still in need of the barber, had been brushed until its dark auburn waves lay thickly in place.
John Ogden had secured a table for two in a retired corner and ordered a dinner, the first couple of courses of which seemed to cheer the gloom of his guest.
“I suppose I ought to call you Major,” said the boy.
“Not if it does violence to your feelings. I am plain John Ogden again, you know. I would like to forget the war.”
“Same here,” returned Hugh, swallowing a mighty mouthful of red snapper.
When the meat course was well under way, Ogden began his investigation again.
“You haven’t told me much about yourself,” he said. “It seems as if you must have relatives in town. Why should you be living in a boarding-house? It’s too bad. I thought I remembered connections of your father’s.”
[11]
“There were some odd cousins of his about when I was a kid,” said Hugh, “but they have disappeared. I wouldn’t live with ’em on a bet, anyway.”
“Then there was some one else,” persisted the host. “Your father had a very wealthy aunt, I remember.”
The filet was so extremely good that under its influence Hugh smiled at this reminiscence. “Oh, that old dame,” he remarked. “Yes, she’s still in the ring. You couldn’t kill her with an axe. She must be a hundred and fifty by this time; but she doesn’t live here, you know.”
“I thought she did.”
“No, old Sukey lives in Farrandale”—naming a rural city some hundred miles distant from the metropolis.
John Ogden admired beauty in man, woman, or child, and the light of contemptuous amusement which now played over the face of his guest so relieved its habitual sullenness that the host allowed himself the pleasure of staring for a silent space. He was very conscious of the glances bent upon Hugh from other tables, but the boy himself was entirely engrossed in the best dinner he had enjoyed for many a moon.
“There was some quarrel, I remember,” said[12] Ogden; “some trouble between her and your father.”
“Well, slightly,” returned Hugh. “She didn’t have any children, so my father, being her nephew, she set out to run him. Dad had a pretty stiff upper lip, and she claimed he ruined her life by disobeying her in his marriage, and in his business, and in the place he chose to live, and so on ad infinitum.”
“So she let him die without forgiving him.”
“Let him die! She’d have made him die if she could.”
“And she ignores the existence of you and Carol.”
“Well, rather.”
“It is all very vague in my remembrance because I didn’t notice anything much but Carol in those days. So”—the speaker paused again—“you are very much alone in the world, Hugh.”
“Yes,” said the boy carelessly. “What’s the difference? I don’t want any relatives bothering.”
When the meat course was finished, he took out a package of cigarettes. “Have a tack on me?” he said, and his host accepted one, but offered his guest a cigar which the boy refused with a curt shake of the head.
[13]
“Of course, if I could have Carol, I’d like it,” he went on. “Carol’s never a nuisance. It would be good for me, too. I know that. If the Volstead Act hadn’t been sneaked in on us, I know perfectly well I wouldn’t last long. I haven’t any way of making hootch and no money to buy it, so I still cumber the ground.”
“I don’t like to hear a young fellow talk like that,” said John Ogden, and he was not so unconscious of the servant class as to feel easy under the waiter’s entertainment.
“A young fellow doesn’t like to talk that way either,” retorted Hugh, “but what is there in it? What’s the use of anything? Of course, I’ve thought of the movies.”
“What?”
“Thought of going into the movies.” Hugh did not lower his voice, and the waiter was indefatigable in his attentions.
“I’m a looker,” went on the boy impersonally, as he attacked the salad. “Wallie Reid and Valentino—any of those guys wouldn’t have anything on me if I chose to go in for it.”
“Why don’t you, then?” John Ogden thought he might as well share the waiter’s entertainment.
“Oh, it’s too much bother, and the director yells at you, and they put that yellow stuff all[14] over you when you know you’re yellow enough already.”
The boy laughed, and sending out a cloud of smoke from his Grecian nose again attacked his crab-meat.
After they had finished the ices and while they were drinking their coffee, Ogden succeeded in driving off the reluctant waiter.
“I’m interested in that inexorable grand-aunt of yours,” he said. “What is her name?”
“Susanna Frink,” returned Hugh, “affectionately known in the bosom of the family as ‘Old Sukey the Freak.’”
His host sat up and leaned forward. “Not possible! Susanna Frink your aunt?”
“’Tisn’t my fault,” said Hugh, raising the smooth dark eyebrows his host had been admiring.
“But I know her,” said Ogden. “There’s a masterful old lady for you!”
“You bet your life,” agreed Hugh. “I’ve always believed she must be a descendant of that old galoot—I mean Canute, that commanded the proud wave—thus far and no farther!”
“Well, I never knew that Susanna Frink was Mr. Sinclair’s aunt. He never said much about her to me, but Carol used to laugh about a[15] family fortune that was so near and yet so far. Miss Frink is a personage, Hugh. I’ve had business dealings with her, and she prides herself on being a lady of the old school. She told me so herself. All alone in the world, and feels it, I know, for all her proud front.”
“False front probably,” put in Hugh.
“Perhaps.” Ogden smiled. “Anyway, it is dark—”
“What did I tell you!”
“And faultlessly waved, and she is straight as an arrow and slender, and she drives about in her victoria with the bay horses in the fashion of fifty years ago, scorning automobiles with her whole soul. Her bonnet ties under her chin, and her eyeglasses are attached to a black ribbon. She has personality plus. You ought to meet her.”
“Meet her!” Hugh leaned forward with a scowl of incredulous disgust. “Wrinkled old harridan in a black wig! What should I want to meet her for?”
Ogden studied him thoughtfully—“You don’t resemble your father. Neither did Carol. You must have had a beautiful mother.”
“We did.” Hugh felt in an inside pocket and took out a small rubbed morocco photograph case. Opening it, he handed it to his friend.
[16]
Color came into the latter’s face as he looked at it. “Carol!” he exclaimed.
“No. Mother. What do you think of old Sukey for trying to lay father off that peach?”
“I’d give a thousand dollars for this picture,” said Ogden, upon which Hugh took it from him without ceremony and returned it to his inside pocket.
“It was Carol’s,” he said. “She gave it to me to take over there. I guess it was a mascot, for I pulled through some tight places.”
John Ogden continued to gaze at him for sheer pleasure in the way his lips curved over the faultless teeth in an occasional smile, bringing back his romance with the gentle girl, who liked him, but not well enough—
“Well,” said Hugh, rising, “I mustn’t take any more of your time, Mr. Ogden. I had forgotten there were dinners like that in the world, and I thank you, I’m sure, for bothering yourself.” He held out his hand, but his host took him by the sleeve.
“Don’t be in a hurry, old man,” he said. “The party isn’t over yet. Have you any best girl you want to go to see?”
“Divil a girl. I called up one that I’d met one evening, and asked if I could drop in, and she said, ‘Certainly,’ and went on to ask what[17] we were going to do—what were we going to see? ‘Good-night,’ said I, and hung up with a click. My first and last offense.”
John Ogden laughed. “Sit down, then, if there is no meeting of the Reds to-night.”
Hugh laughed and dropped back into his chair.
“I’ve had an idea,” said his friend. “You liked the dinner. How would you like to have one like that every night?”
“Foolish question number 13,” responded Hugh.
“I know a way you can get it.”
“Well”—the boy regarded his dignified companion curiously—“so do I; but Bolshevism and safe-cracking aren’t the same thing.”
“A sufficient number of good dinners cure Bolshevism, I’ve noticed,” said Ogden. “I have hopes of you if you will do what I say.”
“Shoot,” remarked Hugh, still gazing at him imperturbably.
“You have had some thought of being an actor. I’m offering you a part.”
“I didn’t know what business you were in, Mr. Ogden. Are you a producer?”
“No; I’m in the wool business, and I’ll give you some to pull over your Aunt Susanna’s eyes.”
[18]
He smiled, and Hugh shook his head.
“I suppose you know what you are talking about.”
“The question is how much stamina have you, Hugh? Could you, for instance, stop your cigarettes? I believe that is the eighth you’re on now.”
“I can do anything I want to, of course,” said the young fellow coolly, “but I don’t believe you can make me want to do that.”
“Are you so in love with your present way of living?” asked Ogden dryly. “Your hall bedroom wouldn’t seem to indicate a very valuable business position.”
“I haven’t any position. I’ve got a job, packing boxes in the basement of a department store.”
“She owns the biggest department store in Farrandale.”
“Who?”
“Your Aunt Susanna.”
“What in thunder do I care what she owns?”
“Because, if you have any sporting blood, you can own it some day.”
Hugh leaned back in his chair. “Well, you know how to get around Volstead all right. I’d like a shot myself.”
“I won’t hint any longer. I’m willing to bet[19] a thousand dollars that you can make Susanna Frink change her will in your favor.”
Hugh gave a bored smile and did not change his easy position. “Sorry circumstances prevent my taking you up.”
“You can pay me when you get the money.” Ogden was leaning forward in his chair and smiling, and Hugh turned his head to face him.
“Well, I’ll say Carol made an escape,” he remarked with such unction that his companion’s smile became a laugh.
“Here’s the idea,” he said. “Your six feet of good looks nearly sent you into the movies. Now there’s a stage in Farrandale where you can vault right into a star part without having to go through the drudgery of atmosphere work.”
He paused and Hugh stared at him, no enthusiasm in his pensive eyes.
“You get yourself some good clothes—Miss Frink’s leery of the needy; she’s had a diet of them for fifty years—”
“I haven’t any money,” growled Hugh.
“I have. Don’t interrupt me. You must be very scrupulous about your personal appearance. You shave every day. Your shoes are always blacked.” Hugh looked down. “You[20] go every Sunday to the same church Miss Frink does, and you apply for a position in the Ross Graham department store. Miss Frink is Ross; likewise she is Graham. I supply them with blankets and I am on sufficiently good terms with the old lady.”
“Supposing I don’t get the position—and then again supposing I do,” contemptuously. “What of it?”
“Here, here, boy, brace up. Did you leave all your fighting blood in France? You will get the position, for I shall make it plain that be it ever so humble, there’s no job so good for your purposes as one in Ross Graham’s.”
“You’ll make it plain. Say, do you think you’re writing a play?”
“Why, my dear boy, you’re going to carry a letter of introduction from me that will explain to Miss Frink that you are a young man whose connections have large dry-goods interests, and, as you wish to learn the workings of an up-to-date, perfectly equipped department store, I have advised you to examine the Ross Graham establishment as an example of thoroughly good management and success. Your desire is to begin at the bottom and learn the business from A to Z.”
“Oh, still pack boxes in a basement,” remarked[21] Hugh, but a light of curiosity began to shine in his eyes.
“I know Miss Frink; I know what she likes. She hates dawdlers; she hates failures. She herself is an example of a successful business woman. She didn’t inherit money. I have heard that a tea-room and a peculiarly delicious candy started her fortune fifty years ago. She is in the early seventies now, not a hundred and fifty as you estimated;—and what are the seventies in these days? Just the youth of old age.”
“Are you kidding?” returned Hugh.
“I never was more in earnest.”
The boy grunted. “Why, the very name of Sinclair would give Sukey hydrophobia.”
“That is why you can’t use it,” returned his mentor promptly. “What was your mother’s maiden name?”
“Draper, and I suppose that would be anathema, too.”
“Perhaps. She has a wonderful memory.”
“My middle name is Stanwood.”
“That would do. Then the initial on your clothing would be all right.”
Hugh’s attention was caught. John Ogden noted that his guest was letting his cigarette go out.
[22]
He waited a moment to allow cerebration to go on.
The boy finally met his eyes again. “You seem to mean all this business,” he said.
“Money talks,” returned Ogden sententiously.
“You really want to put up money on this fool idea?”
“It will only be a fool idea if you’re a fool.”
“Well, probably I am.” The boy’s broad shoulders relapsed against the back of his chair.
His companion frowned and sat forward more tensely in his own.
“You are Miss Frink’s legitimate heir,” he said, in a low voice, “but, believe me, there is no hope of her dying intestate. Are you going to continue tamely taking one cheap job after another, being a disgrace to the finest sister a boy ever had, listening to the disgruntled talk of a lot of grouchy fellows until you become as spineless as they are”—
“Say, now,” Hugh sat up, crimsoning.
“Keep still. Are you going on living in a cloud of cheap tobacco smoke, in a hall bedroom on a back street, with no ambition for anything better—”
“Look here—”
“No one stands still,” declared John Ogden[23] curtly. “You’re going down if you’re not going up. You, with your splendid physique, allowing your backbone to slump like boiled macaroni. Aren’t you man enough to take a brace and go to Farrandale and shove that pussy-footing secretary of your aunt’s out of the place that should be yours?”
Hugh regarded the suddenly fiery speaker with open lips.
“He expects to be her heir; everybody knows he does. He has Miss Frink under his influence so that the whole household are afraid of him. There she lives in this great house, with her servants and this secretary—Grimshaw, his name is. He has wormed himself into her confidence until she scarcely makes a move without him, though she doesn’t realize it herself. Will you stay here and let him have it all his own way?”
The speaker scowled into the dark eyes with the deep, pensive corners that were giving him their full attention.
“As soon as you told me you were Miss Frink’s nephew, I saw what you could do; and for the very same reason that you felt you could succeed in the movies. Isn’t it Shakespeare who said: ‘She is a woman, and therefore to be won’? They’re not a bit different at[24] seventy from what they are at seventeen when they get hold of a man like you.”
Hugh still gaped, and was silent.
“Of course, there must be something inside your head as well as out. You’ll have to make self-denials and sacrifices; but who doesn’t who gets anywhere?”
“You want me to go to Farrandale under an assumed name,” said Hugh slowly. “I know what Carol would say. She would say I was living a lie.”
“Then I should remind your sweet sister that Stanwood is your own name, and that you are going on an honorable mission—a rescue party of one: rescuing yourself from hookworm, and your aunt from the influence of a smooth-tongued hypocrite.”
“Hookworm, is it?” said Hugh, frowning, those curving lips taking a set line.
“Describes it to a T,” returned Ogden promptly. “Now to-morrow morning, give up your job. I’ll stay over another day, and we’ll fit you out and plan details.”
Hugh put out his hand impulsively, and the older man grasped it.
“Mr. Ogden, why do you take all this trouble?”
John Ogden smiled. “I’m a sport,” he returned.[25] “I’m enough of a gambler for this.”
“I do thank you,” said the boy. “I’ve never made good in my life—”
His companion could see that the strong teeth set together to hold the lips firm.
“Let’s do this, then,” Ogden returned in a low voice. “Let’s do it—for Carol.”
CHAPTER III AN INTRODUCTION
 The town of Farrandale was en gala. It was the annual day of rejoicing in its own success and prosperity. Everybody was happy except Miss Frink’s horses. The new coachman had drawn the check reins too tight. They didn’t like the streamers of bunting; they had objected to the band; and just as Miss Frink, always the queen of the occasion, rose in her carriage to say a few words to her fellow townsmen, a corner of a temporary platform near them gave way, and the celebrated bays, Rex and Regina, did what for some minutes they had been nervously contemplating: they bolted. The coachman’s efforts irritated them still more. Miss Frink was thrown violently against the side of her chariot, and in the mad, crashing gallop that ensued she saw her end in the sharp curve of the railroad they were heading for, and the advance of an oncoming express train. Some one else saw it, too, and, springing from the side of the road, caught the bridle and was dragged until one of the horses fell down entangled in the reins the coachman had dropped when he[27] jumped. The shouting crowd leaping after the runaway found a very much-shaken queen of the fête, and an unconscious man lying in the road with a gash in his head, his hair matted with blood. The express train crashed by. It was a flyer that ignored even the thriving little city of Farrandale. Never was Miss Frink’s indomitable spirit more regnant than in the present catastrophe. Somebody picked up the dazed coachman, who proved to be intact and able to help disentangle the fallen Rex and get him to his feet; while others lifted the unconscious hero. Motors came flying to the scene. In one was Miss Frink’s secretary, Leonard Grimshaw, and a pretty young woman with pure white hair. The latter fell upon Miss Frink with horrified exclamations; while the secretary also rushed to the victoria and stood beside it.
“Oh, had you only allowed me to drive with you, dear lady!” he mourned.
“Yes, probably the horses wouldn’t have run away,” returned Miss Frink irritably. She readjusted her fallen eyeglasses. “Adèle, kindly leave my bonnet alone.”
“But it is on the side, dear Aunt Susanna.”
Miss Frink looked past them to the unconscious burden being lifted from the ground.
[28]
“Has any one sent for the ambulance?” exclaimed the secretary nervously. “Oh, how shocking, dear Miss Frink! What might have happened! It makes my blood run cold.”
“It must run cold if you think I’m going to send that man off in an ambulance,” announced Miss Frink. “Here, lift him into your car, Grim, and Adèle, you go for Dr. Morton and bring him to the house.”
“The house, Miss Frink?” asked the secretary. “Don’t you mean the hospital, dear lady?”
“No, I do not,” snapped the “dear lady.”
One of the gathering crowd came up with a dusty suitcase. “This must be his,” he said, and the secretary accepted it, gloomily.
Adèle Lumbard gave one look at the unconscious face of the rescuer as he was lifted into the waiting car and Miss Frink took the place beside him, then she jumped into an eagerly offered motor and sped away.
Miss Frink leaned out and addressed the shaken coachman.
“Get the horses home somehow, Foley.” Then to the increasing crowd: “It is my wish that you go on with the programme. I am not hurt in the least, and later Mr. Grimshaw or Mrs. Lumbard will represent me.”
[29]
She steadied the form of the injured man beside her while her secretary drove toward the house on the outskirts of the town. His brow was exceedingly dark. He was afraid the cut on the stranger’s head would stain the upholstery of the car. Once he turned toward his employer and made a last effort.
“You know they give them the very best care at the hospital,” he suggested.
“Leonard Grimshaw, I am a lady of the old school,” returned Miss Frink. “Everybody was not rushed off to a hospital in my young days. I probably wouldn’t be here if it was not for this young man, and I am going to supervise personally every bone in his body. Drive carefully. We’ll get there as soon as Dr. Morton does.”
Her secretary resigned himself, and gave his attention to avoiding the bumps as a matter of self-preservation.
Miss Frink was attired in her best in honor of the state occasion. Her bonnet of black maline was decorated with white roses, and the maline lace-edged strings were tied under her chin. Her handsome dress and wrap were of black satin. Her hair, though streaked with silver, still gave the impression of being dark, and it was crimped in the even waves which had[30] framed her face for forty years. The face itself, though lined, was still firm in texture, and her dark, alert eyes were bright. If she ever wore spectacles, it must have been in the privacy of her own room. The eyeglasses on their slender black ribbon were as inseparable from her appearance as a feature of her face.
She looked through them now at the unconscious form beside her, and her spontaneous thought was: “He is too handsome! I hope I haven’t killed him!”
The stranger’s long legs were stretched out in the spacious car, and, as his shoulders slid, Miss Frink put her arm around them the better to steady him, and looked anxiously at the matted hair, relieved to see that it seemed to have stanched the wound.
“Grim,” she called, “it seems to have stopped bleeding.”
“I hope so,” was the reply, fears for that upholstery soothed. He turned about enough to behold the amazing sight of his employer holding in her embrace the stalwart and fallen figure.
“Did you ever see such a beauty, Grim?” Miss Frink’s eyes were fixed on the face on her breast. “What a mercy he wasn’t disfigured!”
[31]
The secretary’s nostrils dilated. “It won’t matter much, if it’s concussion of the brain,” he remarked curtly.
“Grim! Don’t!” exclaimed the lady; and at the same moment the stranger’s eyelids flickered and the lashes she had been admiring lifted. The hero blinked and looked up, dazed, into the face bending over him. About her lips flickered a small smile of intense relief.
In a weak voice Hugh spoke: “Have you got a cigarette?”
“Grim, he wants a cigarette,” said Miss Frink, her voice wavering. “Have you got one?”
“Miss Frink,” exclaimed the secretary, justly shocked. “You ought to know—”
“Yes, I suppose so, but you see when the cat’s away, how do I know what you play? It would be convenient if you happened to—”
“Oh, the devil,” said Hugh, as he tried to move.
“What is it? What hurts?” asked Miss Frink anxiously.
“I don’t know, my shoulder, I guess. What’s doing, anyway?” inquired the sufferer feebly, beginning to realize his satin environment.
“You caught the horses and were dragged. Don’t you remember? You saved my life.”
[32]
Slowly Hugh cerebrated while his pensive eyes gazed up into the dark ones.
“And I’m so thankful to hear you speak, I could weep if I ever did, but I don’t indulge.”
John Ogden came floating back into the dazed, aching head, and all that had preceded his coming here.
“What did he call you just now?” asked Hugh with feeble incredulity.
“Miss Frink. I’m Miss Frink,”—with energy, “and I don’t want to die, and you saved my life.”
At this Hugh moved his head a little in the encircling satin, and he made an inarticulate sound. It was feeble, but it was trying to be a laugh, and Miss Frink appreciated the beauty of it.
“Yes, it is sort of funny saving an old woman, isn’t it, instead of a lovely young girl as it would be in the story-books?”
“I was thinking—” said Hugh. “Are you—Susanna?”
“Why, yes. How did you know it?”
“Because I have a letter of introduction to you—that’s why I laughed.”
“I should think you might,” dryly. “You are certainly introduced.—Grim,” sharply, “what are you doing!” The secretary’s feelings[33] were such that he had increased his speed and jounced over a rough spot that made Hugh wince.
“Better not talk,” said Miss Frink. “We’re nearly there.”
Dr. Morton was waiting for them. Adèle Lumbard had told him that Aunt Susanna had a young Greek god in captivity, but that he needed some restoring.
It proved that the cut in Hugh’s head required a few stitches, and that his left arm was broken. Miss Frink still insisting that her home should be Hugh’s only hospital, he found himself finally installed in a handsome, spacious room with a competent and peremptory nurse.
On Miss Frink’s first visit to his bedside, where he lay with but one of the blue eyes peering out from his bandages, and his swathed arm resting on a pillow, he protested.
“Miss Frink, it’s all absurd,” he said. “I don’t need a nurse any more than a toad needs a tail. I can take care of myself perfectly. I have my right hand. If you’ll just send up some chow once in a while—”
“Chow,” interrupted Miss Frink thoughtfully. “You were in the war, of course.”
“Of course,” said Hugh, smiling at her tone,[34] but with teeth set owing to an assortment of twinges.
“You must have been wonderful!”
“Oh, I was. Ask Pershing. Say, Miss Frink, I don’t like to be all this unnecessary expense to you.”
Miss Frink continued to look down at him reflectively. As John Ogden had said, she liked prosperous folk and had little patience with derelicts. Had she seen Hugh a few days ago shuffling along on his way to his job, unshaven, shabby, and careless, she certainly would not have looked at him twice, or if she had done so would have dilated disgusted nostrils at the odor of his cigarette; but John Ogden had sent his protégé forth from the hands of a good tailor and barber; and, had he known the disaster which befell that fine new suit, would have rubbed his hands in triumph.
“Don’t fret about expense,” said Miss Frink. “If it were not for you, I shouldn’t sign any more checks; and, speaking of checks, where is yours for your trunk? We must send for it.”
“It’s there in my pocketbook with my letter of introduction.”
Miss Frink, taking this as permission, found the pocketbook. She looked at the marking thereon. “Hugh Stanwood,” she read aloud.[35] “That is odd,” she said. “Stanwood is one of our family names.” She looked toward the bed with a little twitch of her lips. “Perhaps we are related.”
“Who knows?” returned Hugh, who was longing for a cigarette.
“May I read this letter of introduction?”
“It is yours,” he answered.
Miss Frink read it attentively. “John Ogden,” she said aloud as she reached the signature. “I congratulate you on your friend. I respect John Ogden very much.”
“So he does you,” returned Hugh feebly, turning his bandaged head with a weary movement that his hostess was quick to notice.
He was wishing he had never seen John Ogden, and that he was back, a free Bolshevist without the headache, packing boxes with both hands in a basement, to pay for his hall bedroom and hot dogs.
Miss Frink, who had sent the nurse out of the room when she entered, went back to the bedside, and opened a package she had brought in with her. Hugh’s one violet eye rolled toward her listlessly. It suddenly brightened. Miss Frink had never looked so shame-faced in her life.
“You see, I went out and bought them myself,[36] and not having the least idea what you liked I told the man to give me a variety.” The handsome box she opened held a number of packages of cigarettes, all of a different brand, and the lover-like smile Hugh gave her as his eager right hand shot out made color come up in the guilty face.
“Perhaps the nurse won’t let you, I don’t know,” she said hurriedly—“here, let me strike the match for you, it is awful to have only one hand!”
The cigarette was lighted, Miss Frink called the nurse, and fled to the study where her secretary was busily sorting papers at his desk. He was a smooth-shaven man in his late thirties, immaculate in appearance, his retreating hair giving him a very high forehead, and his small mouth with its full lips seeming an appropriate gateway for his voice and speech which were unfortunately effeminate.
“Grim,” said Miss Frink upon her sudden entrance, “Mr. Stanwood has been put in the White Room and the nurse is with him—Hello, Adèle, I didn’t see you.”
Mrs. Lumbard rose from the floor where she had been sitting Turkish fashion near the book-shelves.
“I was looking for that ‘Life of Mozart,’[37] Aunt Susanna. I thought the ‘Lives of the Musicians’ were on this lowest shelf.”
“No, upper. Take the ladder. Grim, I want you to go up to Mr. Stanwood’s room and get his suit of clothes, and pack them in a box and send them to his tailor with an order to duplicate the suit at once. Explain that he has been in an accident, and that the clothes and bill are to be sent to me. Here’s his trunk check. Get that, too. Adèle, why are you here? You know I wanted you to go back to the festivities.”
“I did, Aunt Susanna,” said the young woman with conscious rectitude. “I listened to the speeches and applauded, and answered a thousand questions about you. Why, you’re perfectly wonderful, Aunt Susanna. Any other woman would be lying in bed in a darkened room with a bandage around her head.”
“One bandage in the family is sufficient,” said Miss Frink, with a little excited laugh. “That poor boy upstairs looks as if he had been through the wars. And he did”—she turned acutely toward her secretary—“he did go through the war.”
Grimshaw lifted his high forehead in an injured manner. “If that is aimed at me, Miss Frink, I will remind you once again of my helpless mother and sister.”
[38]
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Miss Frink impatiently, “I know. Scuttle along, Grim, and do the errand. I believe I’ll jump into your car and just show myself at the supper at the City Hall.”
“Oh, you’re wonderful, Aunt Susanna!” exclaimed Mrs. Lumbard, clasping her pretty hands. “If you want me to, I’ll—”
“I don’t. I know how it would bore you. I’ll see that coachman first. I must get rid of him. I knew the checks weren’t right.”
She swept out of the room as suddenly as she had entered it, and the two left standing there looked at each other, their expressions changing from the solicitude they had worn to gravity.
“If the gods hadn’t intervened,” said Adèle softly, “to-night we should have been—”
“Sh!” warned the secretary.
“Of course, there would be some charities,” she went on, her brown eyes shining, “but you and I, you and I—”
“Hush!” warned the secretary again. “We can’t be thankful enough that dear Miss Frink’s life was saved.”
Mrs. Lumbard laughed low. “You’ve said it, Leonard. I don’t think we can.”
“Adèle!”
“Yes, I know.” She still laughed softly.
CHAPTER IV A BOBBED HEAD
 As Leonard Grimshaw’s hair gradually deserted him, he brushed it up in a more and more aggressive tuft; and as he entered the White Room now he reminded Hugh of a cockatoo, with his crest and his slender, sharp nose and shell-rimmed spectacles.
“Excuse the intrusion,” he said in his most dignified and ladylike manner, and, as he gazed at the one-eyed warrior, his nostrils dilated. Cigarette smoke was curling above the immaculateness of the bed. “I come at Miss Frink’s behest to get your suit of clothes,” he added coldly.
Hugh removed his cigarette. “What you going to do with it?” he asked in a rather hollow voice. “Any needy scarecrows in Farrandale?”
The secretary did not like the stranger’s nonchalant manner and he declined to smile.
“I am to send it to your tailor to be duplicated. Miss Frink proposes to pay for it.”
“She’ll have to if anybody does,” remarked Hugh feebly. “I’m broke. Awfully good of you, Mr.—Mr.—”
[40]
“Grimshaw. I am Miss Frink’s private secretary and man of affairs.”
“Pompous little birdie,” thought Hugh, and he regarded his visitor closely with his one eye, remembering John Ogden’s reference to the pussy-footing secretary who was to be Miss Frink’s heir.
The nurse brought the suit to the bedside for Hugh to empty the pockets. There was the photograph in its worn leather case, a card, a handkerchief, some keys, a knife, but the suit being new had not accumulated the usual papers and old letters. There was a spotless pocketbook or billfold, and Hugh smiled ruefully at sight of it. He knew its contents.
“All right,” he said, and left the lot in the nurse’s hands.
The secretary continued to stare disapprovingly at the smoke-wreathed bed. As he accepted the dilapidated suit from the nurse, he spoke again:
“I feel I should tell you, Mr. Stanwood, that tobacco is very offensive to Miss Frink, especially in the form of cigarettes. Of course, you have put us under great obligation” (Hugh noted the “us”), “but I must warn you that we cannot allow the atmosphere of the house to be vitiated and made disagreeable for Miss Frink.”
[41]
Hugh smiled faintly toward the speaker. “Fine of you to look out for her,” he said. “Might shut the transom, nurse.”
The secretary’s full lips drew together and he glared at this self-possession. Insolence, he called it. Of course, the man was injured, but, in consideration of such hospitality as was being shown him, he might at least act promptly upon such information.
Leonard returned to Mrs. Lumbard flushed, and with the little crack in his voice that came with excitement.
“Lying there, smoking like a young nabob,” he reported. “I told him Miss Frink’s horror of tobacco, and he merely asked the nurse to close the transom. Such nerve!”
“Yes,” returned Adèle, interested, “we surely knew already that he had nerve: and isn’t he a beauty?”
“Oh, certainly,” returned the other, throwing down the clothes on a table with a vigor that suggested a wish that the owner was occupying them. “Head all bandaged but one eye, arm bundled up, a general wreck.”
“Let him smoke, then, poor thing, while Aunt Susanna is off showing Farrandale what she’s made of. It will be his last for one while.”
It was, indeed, Hugh’s last indulgence because[42] a high fever took possession of the young adventurer that night, and for a few days Miss Frink’s physician was a busy man. She paid scant attention to her other interests until the boy was sane again; and, although she kept to the usual hours in her study, the nurse was instructed to report to her at short intervals.
“It does seem, Miss Frink, as if we ought to send for his Aunt Sukey,” said this attractive young woman on one occasion. “He calls for her incessantly.”
Miss Frink drew her features together in the sudden grimace which sent her eyeglasses off her nose.
“How are we going to do that? You looked through that little trunk of his, I suppose, as I told you?”
“Yes. There wasn’t a scrap of paper in there, and this is all that was in his pockets.”
The nurse produced the photograph case and a business card.
Miss Frink examined them. “Yes, there’s John Ogden’s card. I could send for him, but I don’t care to have him see just what I managed to do to his protégé in a few hours. Unless the boy’s in danger, I won’t send, as yet.” Miss Frink looked long at the photograph.
“Might be his sister,” she said. “There’s a[43] resemblance. I hope it isn’t a best girl. He’s too young to be hampered.”
Leonard Grimshaw looked over her shoulder at the picture. His employer glanced at him with a humorous twist of her thin lips.
“You’ve kept free, eh, Grim?”
“I had interests which came first,” responded the secretary, with the reproving tone which he reserved for implications that he had time for any thought separate from Miss Frink’s affairs.
That lady returned the old morocco case and the card to the nurse.
“Keep careful watch,” she said, “and ask Dr. Morton to report to me at his next visit. I wish to send for Mr. Ogden if there is occasion for anxiety.”
The nurse left the room, and the secretary turned adoring eyes upon his employer.
“If you ever thought of yourself, Miss Frink, you would see Dr. Morton on your own account. After the shock you have endured, and the heroism with which you returned to the excitement of the banquet, it stands to reason that your nerves should have a tonic.”
“Fiddlesticks, Grim. I’m all right. All the tonic I need is to know that I haven’t killed that boy upstairs.”
“Don’t worry about him,” said the secretary,[44] looking severely through his dark-rimmed spectacles. “Other husky men have survived a broken arm and a bumped head, and I dare say he will. I feel that I ought to warn you that he is a person of no delicacy.”
Miss Frink regarded the speaker with narrowed eyes.
“I rather suspected that,” she said slowly, “by the way he grabbed my horses’ heads.”
The secretary flushed, but continued indomitably: “Physical bravery is often allied with a thick-skinned mentality. I think for your own protection you should know what I found when I went to the White Room to get his suit.” He paused dramatically.
Miss Frink winked off her glasses again and returned the spectacled gaze with deep interest. “He was kissing the nurse, perhaps,” she said. “She is a sweet thing.”
“Miss Frink!” The exclamation was scandalized as her secretary regarded his lady of the old school with real amazement. “No. He was not kissing the nurse, but he was doing what would affect your comfort far more. He was smoking cigarettes.”
Miss Frink surprised her companion still further by laughing.
“Didn’t you hear him ask me for one in the[45] motor? Now, I say he was clever, with only one arm and one eye, and laid low in bed, to manage to get cigarettes.”
Grimshaw stared. “It must have been Dr. Morton,” he said after a pause; “but the point is that, when I told him you detested them, he didn’t stop.”
“He smiled, perhaps?” Miss Frink did, herself.
“I don’t remember; but I wasn’t going to stand for that, you may be sure, and I told him we couldn’t have the atmosphere of this house—your house, vitiated.”
“Vitiated,” repeated Miss Frink musingly, “Fine word, Vitiated.”
“Growing childish, upon my soul,” thought the secretary. “The first break!”
“The point is,” he declared with dignity, “the significant point is, that he did not stop smoking. He asked the nurse to close the transom.”
“Poor boy, he needn’t have done that,” said Miss Frink; “and, by the way, Dr. Morton didn’t give him the cigarettes.”
“I suppose he got around the nurse, then.”
“No. She isn’t guilty either; and, Grim”—Miss Frink paused and put back her eyeglasses through which she regarded the faithful one[46] steadily—“I am entirely prepared to go around wearing a gas-mask if necessary. I might be needing one now for brimstone if it wasn’t for that boy, and he is going to have any plaything it occurs to him to want. Now, let’s get at these letters.”
Her secretary blinked, and put one hand to his temporarily whirling head, while with the other he automatically gathered up the mail.
When, toward the close of that eventful gala day at Farrandale, Miss Frink had courageously returned to the scene of the festivities, two girls witnessed the burst of applause which greeted her as she stepped from her secretary’s motor.
One of them, a typical flapper, her hair and her skirt equally bobbed, gazed balefully at the apparition of the lady of the old school as she bowed in response to the plaudits of her townspeople. The other, a gentle-looking, blonde girl, smiled unconsciously at the black satin figure, as she joined in the applause.
The eyes of the flapper snapped. “You shan’t do it, Millicent,” she said, pulling her friend’s clapping hands apart.
“I must,” laughed Millicent. “I’m a loyal Ross-Grahamite.”
[47]
They were sitting in that part of the grandstand which had not embarrassed Rex and Regina by falling.
“You can’t be loyal to her and to me, too. She fired me yesterday.”
“Oh, Damaris,” said the blonde girl sympathetically. “What happened?”
“This,” said Damaris indicating her dark short locks.
“Just because you had your hair bobbed? But you ought to have known. She won’t allow any clerk in the store with bobbed hair.”
“It’s a wonder she doesn’t insist that all the men let theirs grow in a braid,” said Damaris scornfully. “Powdered hair and a queue would just suit her, I’ll bet.”
“I’m very sorry you lost the position,” said Millicent. “You really liked reading to her.”
“Well, yes, in a way. I liked the salary; but it cramped my style awfully to go near the woman. I was always deadly afraid I’d say something that wasn’t in the book, and I used to repeat ‘prunes and prisms’ all the way from my house to her gate to get ready. I’ll never look at a prune again, nor go near a prism.”
“Wasn’t she agreeable to work for? I never spoke to her, but she comes through the store quite often to look things over, and I think[48] she’s wonderful. You can feel her power—something like Queen Elizabeth. Just think of her grit coming back here this afternoon. Everybody says she had a miraculous escape. It must have been an awful shock.”
“I take a little comfort out of that,” remarked Damaris coolly. “You may be sure it was the man that was nearly killed. She’s indestructible, all right.”
The girls glanced down at the seat of honor where Miss Frink was enthroned during the last speech of the afternoon, preluding adjournment of the leading citizens to the banquet.
“How did you get the position, Damaris?”
“Through my unbearable cousin, Leonard Grimshaw. He’s her secretary.”
“Well, you’re an ungrateful rascal!” laughed Millicent. “I’ve seen Mr. Grimshaw often in the store”—the speaker caught her breath and turned grave. “He calls for grandpa’s rent, too.”
“That nose of his,” said Damaris, “got its shape entirely from poking into other people’s affairs.”
“Who is the pretty lady with white hair who is with him so often?”
“Adèle Lumbard, a divorcée; no relation of Miss Frink’s, but calls her ‘Aunt.’ Think of[49] the lady of the old school having to house a divorcée! It seems that Mrs. Lumbard’s grandmother was Miss Frink’s best friend, the only person, I guess, she ever loved in her life. So, when this girl’s marriage turned out unhappily, I rather think Miss Frink guessed the fault wasn’t all on one side, and I’m just sure Miss Frink took Mrs. Lumbard in as an offering to her friend who died long ago. I’m just sure of it because it’s so plain the old woman doesn’t love her any more than she does anybody else; only I think she wants to know where Adèle is, evenings.”
“Why, Damaris! How imaginative you are. Why doesn’t Mrs. Lumbard read to her, then?”
“Yes, why doesn’t she? Just because Adèle’s reading is one of the 157 varieties of things Miss Frink doesn’t like.”
“And she liked yours,” said Millicent, her gentle voice sympathetic again.
“Yes; Leonard got her to try me, and though she didn’t throw me any bouquets she engaged me; but she informed me yesterday when we went to the mat, that my skirts had always distressed her by being so short, and now my hair settled it.” The speaker shook her fluffy mane. “I met Leonard when I went into the house, and he looked me over with his owl-eyes, and[50] said: ‘You little fool, you’ve done for yourself now.’ And I had, you see.”
“Is he always so affectionate?”
“Yes, as affectionate as a snapping turtle; but Mother looks up to him as a great man because he’s closest to Miss Frink of anybody, and everybody believes he’ll be her heir.”
“Will he help you again?”
Damaris shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose not. Why don’t you and I open a Beauty Parlor?”
“One reason is that we haven’t any money.”
“Would you if we had?”
Millicent shook her head. “I can’t take any chances, Damaris, you know that. My best plan is not to bob my hair and stick close to Ross-Graham. Grandfather’s pension is so small, and our house is old and we have to keep it in repair, and that costs. Mr. Grimshaw says our rent is so small he can’t do anything; but not a day passes that we don’t remember to be thankful for the ground being big enough for Grandpa’s garden. We’re very happy.”
Damaris looked curiously into the hazel eyes regarding her, so full of the warmth of sincerity.
“You’d be a wonderful partner, Millicent. Even at school I used to feel there was a sort of—well,[51] a sort of perfume around where you were.”
Millicent laughed. “Damaris, is that a compliment?”
“Well, sweetness, anyway. You’d get around the customers every time. You’d really like them. I would, too, if I could make ’em look pretty. I’d like to have Miss Frink come in! Wouldn’t I do her up! Gosh, what she’d look like when she got out of the chair. Leonard, too. Wouldn’t I like to give Leonard scalp massage!” The speaker made a threatening gesture.
“Damaris!”
“Don’t swear, dear. Say, you haven’t told me how snappy I look. ‘Chick’s’ the word, isn’t it?”
Millicent looked at the dark, sparkling face. “Yes, but I wish you hadn’t done it, dear.”
“Well,” Damaris sighed. “I can’t put it back. Mother wept, but I bet I’ll get something just as good. Mother felt it was so refined to go to that grand house every day and get Miss Frink to sleep.”
“To sleep?”
“Yes, I read to her after lunch every day, and I always left her asleep. That was my job.”
[52]
Applause for the speech sounded, and Miss Frink rose.
“There she goes,” said Millicent as they watched the tall black satin figure rise and take the arm of the Mayor. “Wonderful! She’s wonderful!”
“Yes,” said Damaris. “They say the man that stopped the runaway was awfully hurt. He may be dead by this time, but what cares she? She’s back on her job, Queen of Farrandale.”
“But she took him to her own home,” said Millicent.
“Yes,” Damaris smiled. “In Leonard’s car, they say. I’ll bet he writhed. Good enough for him. I hope—”
“No, you don’t. Now, stop, Damaris. Let us get your mother, and both of you come home with me to supper.”
“Well, that would be awfully nice, Millicent,” returned the girl more gently. “You smell sweeter than usual.” The bobbed head was somewhat lowered. “You can comfort Mother if anybody can.”
CHAPTER V MRS. LUMBARD
 Susanna Frink’s life had included little of the softer emotions. Of course, acquaintances and strangers had been voluble behind her back with suggestions as to what she ought to do. A woman, especially a rich woman, should have ties. Even the dignified, handsome, old-fashioned house she lived in had not been her family homestead, and it was declared an absurd purchase for a single woman when she moved into it nearly twenty years ago. The grounds, with their fine old trees, pleased her. The high iron fence, with the elaborate gates opening upon the driveway, pleased her. In the days of her restaurant—tea-house they would call it now—and candy-making, she had looked upon this house as fulfilling every idea she had ever had of elegance, and, when it fell to the possession of a globe-trotting bachelor who had no use for it, she bought it at a bargain as was her successful habit.
Those early business days had been shared by another girl, gay Alice Ray, and to this partner of her joys and sorrows Susanna gave her heart. It almost broke when Allen Morehouse married[54] Alice and carried her off to the Far West. The two corresponded for years, but gradually the epistolary bond dissolved. Miss Frink grew more and more absorbed in business, and the courageous, cheery chum of her girlhood came seldom to her mind until one day she received a letter signed “Adèle Lumbard.” It enclosed a picture of Alice Ray similar to one in Miss Frink’s possession, and the writer claimed to be Alice’s granddaughter. She stated that she was alone in the world having been divorced after an unhappy marriage, and, not knowing which way to turn, had thought of the friend her grandmother had loved so devotedly, and wondered if for the sake of auld lang syne Miss Frink would be willing to see her and give her advice as to what to do.
Divorced! Susanna Frink’s eyebrows drew together. The lady of the old school had no patience with divorce. But here was Alice Ray’s granddaughter. Susanna looked at the picture, a smiling picture that through all the ups and downs of her life had stood on her dresser: an enlargement of it hung on her wall. There was no other picture in the room. Memories stirred. She had no sense of outgoing warmth toward the writer of the letter; but a divorce was a scandalous thing. What had the[55] girl done? Worse still, what was she likely to do if left to herself?
Miss Frink had no private charities. She gave through her secretary to the worthy organizations whose business it was to look after such matters, and troubled herself no further about them. Her secretary took care that the frequent letters of appeal should never reach her, but when he read Mrs. Lumbard’s, and saw the photograph, he knew that this did not come under the usual head; and so Miss Frink was now looking into Alice Ray’s sweet eyes, and the smile which seemed to express confidence that her good pal Susanna would not fail her.
Miss Frink sent for Adèle Lumbard, and that young woman’s heart bounded with relief and hope. She knew all about Miss Frink—indeed, so closely had she kept apprised of her reputation for cold shrewdness that she had grave doubts as to the reception of her letter, and the curt lines of invitation rejoiced her. The old photograph was returned to her without comment.
When she reached the big house, it was no surprise to have a maid show her to her room and tell her that Miss Frink would see her in the drawing-room in an hour.
[56]
A sensitive soul would have been chilled by such a reception. Adèle Lumbard’s soul was not sensitive, but her body was, and she wholly approved of the linen in her bathroom and on her bed, fine in texture and all monogrammed. She liked the chaise longue and the luxurious chairs. Her windows looked out on heavy-leafed maples and graceful birches rising from a perfectly kept lawn. A pergola and a fountain were charmingly placed.
“If she’ll only take a fancy to me!” thought Adèle.
Those piercing eyes of Miss Frink’s studied the pretty woman who entered the room at the appointed time. Perhaps there had been stirrings of hope that the newcomer might bring reminders of the one being she had loved with all her heart. If so, the hope died. Adèle’s dark eyes and ivory skin surmounted by the fluffy, snowy hair were striking, but as unlike the cheery brown and rose of sweet Alice Ray as it was possible to imagine.
Miss Frink’s cold dry hand gave the plump smooth one a brief shake.
“Be seated, Mrs. Lumbard!”
“Oh, must you say that!” was the impulsive response. “Do call me Adèle for Grandmother’s sake.”
[57]
“I am sorry you got a divorce. I am a woman of the old school,” was the uncompromising reply.
“You wouldn’t wish me to live with a bad man?” The dark eyes opened with childlike appeal.
“No; but you needn’t have divorced him.”
“If I didn’t, he would always be pestering me.”
“You talk like a Southerner.”
“Yes. Didn’t Grandmother tell you her son went South and married there?”
“Perhaps. I don’t remember. How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight. You’re looking at my hair. In a single night, Aunt Susanna—Oh, excuse me,” with apparently sudden shyness, “Grandmother always spoke of you to us all as our Aunt Susanna. We were taught to love your picture.”
Miss Frink felt slightly pitiful toward that “single night” statement and she kept the thought of her Alice in mind.
“I don’t like harrowing details,” she said curtly, “so I won’t ask for them.”
“Thank you so much”—with a pretty gesture of outgoing hands—“I do so loathe going over it.”
[58]
“No wonder. I’m glad to see you don’t paint your face or dye your hair.”
The dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. “That’s the way I was raised, Aunt Susanna,” was the meek reply.
“Well, you’d better stay on here a while,” said Miss Frink at last, “and we’ll think what it will be best for you to do. Let us see. How long ago did Alice—did your grandmother die?”
The dark eyes looked off in thought. “I was a little girl. It must be about fifteen years now.”
Miss Frink nodded.
“What an old Tartar!” thought Adèle that night as she went to bed; but she had landed, as she expressed it to herself, and possession was nine points of the law. She hugged herself for her cleverness in eschewing rosy cheeks and having nothing on her hands but the slender wedding ring.
In the careful study she had made of Miss Frink and her surroundings before coming here, she had learned about Leonard Grimshaw. The rumor was that, although Miss Frink had not really adopted him, he was the closest factor in her life; and when Adèle met him at dinner that first evening, and found that he was not a[59] guest, but living in the house, she realized still further his importance. Realized also that he might resent her claims, and so she set herself to win his regard; while he, hearing her call Miss Frink “Aunt Susanna” unrebuked, understood that she was to be accepted.
They quickly formed a tacit alliance. Adèle’s efforts to get on intimate terms with the Queen of Farrandale were steadily repulsed, but her pride was not hurt as she observed that Miss Frink treated everybody with the same brusqueness. She discerned that the one sentiment of her hostess’s life was still a living memory. The two pictures Miss Susanna kept near her proved it, and one day, a week after Adèle’s arrival, when the lawyer came and was closeted alone with Miss Frink for an hour, Mrs. Lumbard felt jubilantly certain that the visit was for the purpose of inserting her own name in the old lady’s will.
Adèle longed to become necessary in some way to her hostess. It was absurd for Leonard’s young cousin to be coming every day to read to her. She made an excuse to read something aloud one day, but Miss Frink interrupted her.
“I am blunt, Adèle. I don’t have time for beating about the bush, and your reading makes me nervous. It’s all vowels.”
[60]
“I’m sorry, Aunt Susanna,” returned the young woman meekly. “I do so wish I could do something for you—the little while I’m here.” The guest was always referring to the brevity of her visit, but weeks were slipping by. “Do you care for music?”
“Yes, moderately,” said Miss Frink carelessly. “There’s a Steinway grand down in the drawing-room. I don’t know when it has been touched.”
“I noticed that and was so tempted, but I didn’t want to play without your permission.”
“Oh, go ahead any evening. I don’t want a racket in the daytime.”
So that very evening Adèle, in the simple black georgette gown which made her white throat and arms dazzling, sat down at the piano in the empty drawing-room and had the triumph of seeing Miss Frink come through the portières in evident surprise, and sit down with folded hands to listen to the finished runs that were purling across the neglected keys.
It was two weeks after Adèle’s arrival that Rex and Regina ran away; and, in the excitement of Hugh’s illness, Mrs. Lumbard had sufficient adroitness not to risk irritating Miss Frink’s rasped nerves. The piano was closed and she effaced herself as much as possible.
[61]
The secretary’s exasperation at the intrusion of the young hero beneath their roof amused her. He confided to her the paralyzing proof of Miss Frink’s indulgence in the matter of the cigarettes.
“Oh, if she would only go around the family!” sighed Adèle.
Grimshaw gave her one look of surprise, then shrugged his shoulders.
“That would certainly be the shortest way out of the house for you,” he said dryly.
Adèle colored. “You know very well you’d like it, too.”
“If I did, that would be a very different matter. I’m disgusted with the women of to-day.”
The secretary was sitting at his desk, and Mrs. Lumbard was in the usual pose of hunting for a book which she always adopted in her visits to the study lest the lady of the old school should come in upon their interview. Grimshaw had a sort of fascination for her inasmuch as his position was certainly the one nearest the throne, and he had a large and undisputed authority in Miss Frink’s affairs. Adèle’s closest watch had never been able to discern any evidence of personal attachment in Miss Frink for her secretary, and he certainly had no[62] cause of jealousy for Adèle on that score. This fact, more than her physical attractiveness, caused him to accept her friendly overtures and even to relieve himself occasionally in an exasperated burst of confidence.
For the first five years of his employment by Miss Frink he had been youthfully docile, attentive, and devoted to learning her business affairs. At the end of that period she invited him for convenience to reside in her house, and from that time on he had been playing for the large stake which everybody believed he would win.
He learned her likes and dislikes, never allowed his devotion to lapse into servility, and, with apparent unconsciousness of catering to her, kept early hours, read a great deal, and played with her endless games of double solitaire.
She sometimes suggested that he seek a wider social life, but to such hints he always replied, with a demure dignity in amusing contrast to her brusque strength, that his manner of life suited him excellently, but that if she wished to entertain he was at her service. Miss Frink at times thought remotely that she should like to entertain. She had taken much interest in perfecting the details of her home, inside and[63] out; but, when she came up against the question of setting a definite date and issuing invitations, she was stirred with the same apprehensions a fish might be supposed to undergo if asked to take a stroll around the garden. She spoke of the matter sometimes, and her secretary bowed gravely and assured her that he was quite ready to take her orders; but the fish always turned away from such considerations and dived a little deeper into the congenial discussion of her business matters.
Leonard Grimshaw thought very highly of himself in the present, and had many secret plans for an important and powerful future.
He looked now scornfully at Adèle standing by the bookcase with her self-convicted blush.
“I am disgusted with the women of to-day,” he said.
“Why shouldn’t we smoke as well as you?” asked Adèle.
“I don’t,” he returned finally, his eyes fixed on the papers on his desk. “You try it once here, and you’ll find it will be a few degrees worse than Damaris bobbing her hair.”
“Poor youngster,” said Adèle. “I must say, Aunt Susanna—”
“Well, what?” said Miss Frink, suddenly coming into the room, “Aunt Susanna what?”—she[64] went to the desk and threw down some papers. “File those, Grim. Speak, and let the worst be known, Adèle.”
The secretary certainly admired his colleague as he rose to his feet. Without altering her pose, Adèle’s voice melted into the meek and childlike tone of her habit.
“I was speaking of what a marvel it is that you have had no reaction from the excitement of that dreadful day. That is what it is to be a thoroughbred, Aunt Susanna.”
“Thorough-nothing,” snorted the lady. “What was the use of my lying down and rolling over because I wasn’t hurt?”
“And Rex is all right again, isn’t he?” said Adèle.
“Yes, he’s got over his scratch, and the new coachman does you credit, Grim. He has decent ideas about a check rein. Order the horses for me at three. Dr. Morton says it will not hurt Mr. Stanwood to go for a short drive.”
Miss Frink hurried out of the room, and the two she left in it stared at each other. Adèle smothered a laugh behind a pretty hand, but the secretary had forgotten her smooth diplomacy in his annoyance.
“I wonder if she is going with him. The[65] nurse is quite enough,” he said, as if to himself.
“I wish she’d ask me to go,” said Adèle. “I haven’t had a glimpse of him since I saw him lifted out of the road.”
“Nor she, much,” said Grimshaw. “She has had the nurse make frequent reports, but she hasn’t been in the sick-room at all. Why should she be bothered?”
“No reason, of course. She is not exactly a mush of love and sympathy. What I was really going to say, Leonard, was that I don’t see how a young attractive man like you entombs himself away from his kind the way you do, and must have done for years.”
Grimshaw raised his eyebrows as one accepting his due, and brushed back his thin crest of hair, with a careless hand.
“I work pretty hard,” he said.
Adèle looked apprehensively toward the door, then back at him.
“Is it always like this?” she breathed in a hushed voice.
“Like what?”
“Days all alike. Evenings all alike.” Adèle clenched her hands. “Nobody coming, nobody going. Why haven’t you dried up and blown away!”
Grimshaw regarded her. She had undoubtedly[66] become somewhat of a safety-valve for his feelings, since the day when Miss Frink brought a foreign body into the ordered régime of the big silent house, but he could do without her. He would rather do without everybody. His eyes behind the owl spectacles had a slight inimical gleam.
“Why do you stay if you don’t like it?” he returned.
The young woman straightened up resentfully.
“For the same reason you do,” she retorted.
“That is a very silly remark,” he said coldly. “A business man stays by his business interests.”
She regarded him in silence, and her stiff posture relaxed. He was powerful and she was powerless. She had put herself in his power many times. He could undo her with Miss Frink any hour.
“I’m alone in the world, Leonard,” she said, suddenly becoming self-pitying. “I’m so glad to have found a friend in you. Don’t desert me. I’d love Aunt Susanna if she would let me.”
“Better not try it on,” returned the secretary dryly, and again seated himself at his desk.
“But I’m human!” she exclaimed, suddenly appealing, “and I’m young. Can’t we ever[67] have any fun? Aren’t there any trusties in this prison?”
“Adèle!” He looked up suddenly and his voice cracked. “Keep these ideas to yourself, if you please. This is no prison. You can go free any day.”
She caught her breath. She longed to tell him he was a cautious prig; but for the first time she felt afraid of him. He had confided in her somewhat in his irritation at the stranger upstairs, but that idea was no longer a novelty, and now she felt that he was safely withdrawing into his shell.
CHAPTER VI VISITING THE SICK
 As her secretary had said, it was Miss Frink’s policy to keep away from the White Room. Experts, the doctor and the nurse, had charge of it. Why should she hover about like a fussy old hen, getting in the way and causing confusion? She had her business to attend to, and there was no reason why her life should not go on as systematically as before.
So she argued. Nevertheless, this was more easily said than done. She had been shocked out of her rut, and so long as that stalwart figure in bed in the White Room remained recumbent, she knew she could not really settle into her usual state of mind.
Miss Damon, the nurse, came to her three times a day with reports, and they were the interesting moments of the day to her. This noon she awaited the visit with unusual eagerness; and she hailed the young woman with a cheerful greeting.
“Dr. Morton says Mr. Stanwood may go for a drive this afternoon,” she said.
“Yes; he is sitting up by the window now,[69] Miss Frink. I thought perhaps you would like to come in and visit him. He is rather low-spirited, you see.”
“Is he? Is he?” responded Miss Frink tensely. “What do you think he wants?”
“Oh, just to get well, I suppose. Convalescence is the hardest part after such a fever as he has had.”
“Well, I’ll come,” said Miss Frink, straightening herself valiantly, and she followed to the White Room, where in an armchair by the window sat a young man with long, pensive eyes. He was wearing, besides a gloomy expression, a small mustache and short beard carefully trimmed. A soft blanket was folded about his shoulders and another spread over the feet that rested on a cushioned stool.
Miss Frink’s startled eyes drew from the nurse the explanation that Dr. Morton had not wished the patient to be shaved as yet, and there was no change of expression in the pale, handsome face as Hugh looked up at her approach.
“Are you willing to shake hands with the old thing that got you into this mess?” inquired the visitor, and Hugh took her offered hand.
“I see they let you look out of both eyes now.” She seated herself near him.
[70]
“Yes, that scratch is all right,” he responded.
“Miss Damon thought I would be a cheerful visitor; but I suppose I’ll never look cheerful to you. Now I just want to know if there is anything more we can do for you than is being done.” Miss Frink’s emphatic tone had its usual businesslike ring. “Don’t you want to smoke?”
At this Hugh’s mustache did curve upward a little, showing a line of gleaming teeth.
“You don’t like it,” he returned.
“Who said so? Anyway, you’ll teach me.”
Hugh’s smile widened. “She is a good old sport,” he reflected.
“I don’t want that now,” he said, grave again.
“Well, is there anything on your mind?” pursued Miss Frink. The nurse had left the room. Her taciturn patient had never said an unnecessary word to her. Perhaps his hostess would have more success.
“Now, your Aunt Sukey,” went on Miss Frink in a gentler tone than could have been expected from her. “Don’t be surprised that we know about your Aunt Sukey; for you called for her incessantly in your delirium, and I assure you if you would like to see her[71] it will give me all the pleasure in the world to send for her and have her stay as long as you like.”
The effect of this offer astonished the speaker. Color slowly flowed up all over the pale face, and Hugh grinned.
“Did I really call for her? Priceless! No, no, Miss Frink. You’re a trump, but I don’t want her sent for.”
“Not on good terms, then, I judge from the way you take it.”
“No, we’re not. You’ve hit the nail on the head. I imagine that’s your way.” Still coloring, he met the solicitous eyes bent upon him as Miss Frink grimaced her glasses off.
“Perhaps she is opposing a love affair. Don’t mind an old woman’s plain speaking; but, of course, we saw the sweet face in your photograph, and it doesn’t seem as if there could be anything wrong with that girl. I like the quaint way she does her hair. I’m a lady of the old school, and it’s refreshing to see a coiffure like that in this day of bobbed idiots. Did Aunt Sukey oppose her?”
“With tooth and nail,” replied Hugh. “You are a mind reader.”
“Well—dear boy”—Miss Frink hesitated—“I want to do anything in this world I can[72] for you. Are you sure I can’t do anything in this matter?”
“It’s a little late,” said Hugh.
“Never too late to mend,” returned Miss Frink stoutly and hopefully. She regarded the beauty of her companion, considering him in the r?le of a lover. “You look just as if you were ready to sing ‘Faust,’” she said. “I shall call her Marguerite until you tell me all about it.”
Miss Frink little suspected that she had set fire to a train of thought which hardened her companion against her, and accented the repugnance to the part he was playing; a repugnance which had dominated him ever since the breaking of his fever.
Many times he had definitely made up his mind that, the minute sufficient strength returned, he would disappear from Farrandale and repay John Ogden every cent of his investment if it took years to accomplish it. Two things deterred him: one, his last interview with Ogden in which the latter reminded him of his lack of initiative and self-control—in other words, his spinelessness. That stung his pride. “Remember,” said John Ogden, “of the unspoken word you are master. The spoken word is master of you.” The other incentive to continuing[73] the r?le in which he had made such a triumphant début was Miss Frink’s secretary. Hugh was a youth of intense likes and dislikes very quickly formed. In spite of himself he liked his brusque, angular hostess. To be sure, saving any one’s life creates an interest in the rescued, but it was not only that. Hugh liked the sporting quality of his great-aunt. He liked the way she had done her duty by him and not fussed around the sick-room. She was a good fellow, and he didn’t like her to be under the influence, perhaps domination, of the spectacled cockatoo who was also, in his own estimation, cock of the walk. If Miss Frink had kept away from the White Room, Leonard Grimshaw had not done so. He came in frequently with a masterful air and the seriousness with which he took himself, and his patronizing manner to patient and nurse grated on the convalescent.
“I’ll be darned if I’ll leave Aunt Sukey to him,” was the conclusion Hugh invariably reached after one of his visits.
“There is something on my mind, Miss Frink,” said Hugh, now, “and that is Mr. Ogden. I’m sure he is wondering why he doesn’t hear from me.”
“I’ll write him at once,” said Miss Frink.[74] “It shall go out this afternoon. We’ll mail it together.”
The patient’s long eyes rolled toward her listlessly.
“Yes. You’re going for a drive with me. Dr. Morton says you may.”
“H’m,” returned Hugh. “Not until I get a little more starch in my legs, I guess. I can barely get to this chair from the bed.”
“Oh, of course the butler and the coachman will carry you over the stairs.”
“Thanks, no. I prefer not to be handled like a rag doll.”
“What have you got that blanket on for?” demanded Miss Frink, suddenly becoming conscious of the patient’s garb.
“Why—” John Ogden in his preparations for his protégé had not had the foresight to prepare for inaction on his part. “I—I haven’t any bathrobe with me.”
Here the door opened and Leonard Grimshaw walked in. It entertained Hugh to note the abasement of the uplifted crest as the secretary saw his employer.
“I beg pardon. I didn’t know you were here, Miss Frink.”
“Whether you knew it or not, you might have knocked,” she retorted. “Look here,[75] Grim, Mr. Stanwood doesn’t wish to drive to-day, so I am going now instead of later.”
“Now, Miss Frink?” deferentially. “Luncheon will be served in fifteen minutes.”
“Now,” repeated Miss Frink. “There is an errand I wish to do. Order the horses at once, please.”
The secretary bowed in silence and withdrew.
“Bully for you, old girl. You know your own mind,” thought Hugh, and at that moment the nurse appeared with a tempting tray. The patient regarded it with a little less apathy than usual. The last few minutes had been an appetizer.
Miss Frink rose. “Eat all you can, my boy. I shall let you see my letter to Mr. Ogden before I mail it.”
“Do you know his address?”
“Certainly; Ross Graham buys of him. To tell the truth, I should have written him long before this if it hadn’t been I was ashamed to have him know the reception I gave his friend.”
Hugh smiled faintly. Age must have ripened Aunt Sukey. She was certainly a good sort. Grimshaw couldn’t put it over her whatever Mr. Ogden might think. Hugh still smiled as he thought of the depressed crest, and the deference of that voice so full of unction.
[76]
The secretary shook his head as he departed on his errand. To postpone luncheon—why, it was nearly as unheard of as to connive at cigarettes!
“She’s breaking—breaking,” he reflected. “It’s the beginning of the end.”
CHAPTER VII AT ROSS GRAHAM’S
 The horses were at the door, likewise the secretary. He had encountered Mrs. Lumbard in the hall, and informed her that the luncheon gong would not sound at present.
She lifted her shoulders. “Curfew shall not ring to-night! Why the bouleversement?”
“Miss Frink wishes to do an errand.”
“It must be a marvelous one that won’t wait.”
The crest was lifted high. “She behaves very strangely,” was the dignified reply. “She is”—Grimshaw tapped his temple—“somewhat changed since her shock. It betrays itself in many ways. My deeply beloved and respected Miss Frink!” He shook his head.
Adèle gazed at him curiously, with little whimsical twitches at the corners of her lips. “We can’t expect anything else at her age,” she replied, in the low tone that he had used.
The subject of their remarks now appeared at the head of the stairs, dressed for her drive. She looked a little annoyed to see the couple waiting below together.
[78]
“Well, well,” she said testily. “I am not going on a journey. You look as if you were waiting to bid me a long farewell.”
“Would you like me to go with you?” asked Mrs. Lumbard. “I can get my hat very quickly.”
As Miss Frink reached the foot of the stairs, she returned the young woman’s eager gaze coolly. “I am not in the least shy of asking your company when I want you, Adèle,” she returned, pulling on her gloves. “Any last wishes, Grim?”
“I am simply waiting to put you in your carriage, dear lady,” he returned, injured dignity again to the fore.
“All right,” brusquely. “Order lunch to be served in three quarters of an hour; and, Adèle, Mr. Stanwood doesn’t feel ready to come downstairs yet, but he’s sitting up, and you might open the piano again. There is no objection to your playing if you feel like it. He might like it—in the distance.”
Mrs. Lumbard lingered until the secretary had his employer safely ensconced and the glistening horses had driven away. She watched him come up the path, and then went out on the wide veranda behind the white columns to meet him.
[79]
“Grim by name and grim by nature,” she said, laughing. “You look funereal.”
“Don’t make silly jokes,” he snapped. “I should think you had had a snub to last you for one while.”
“Wasn’t it right between the eyes?” she returned cheerfully.
“Everything that dear Miss Frink says is straight from the shoulder always,” said her secretary.
“I thought you were going to say straight from the heart. No wonder you call her ‘dear.’ So ingratiating, so affectionate.”
“That is enough of that,” said Leonard curtly. “I am here to protect Miss Frink—even from her poor relations.”
Mrs. Lumbard crimsoned to the roots of her white hair. “That is a nasty, insulting thing to say.” The brown eyes scintillated. “The sacred lunch hour is postponed. I may play in the daytime. If you are here to protect Miss Frink, you would better let her relatives take care of themselves, and turn your attention to the crippled Greek god she has been visiting the last hour. Don’t you know, as well as I do, that she has gone on some errand for him? Perhaps not cigarettes this time, but for something he wants, and wouldn’t you be glad if I could have gone[80] with her and found out what it was? You won’t get anywhere by insulting me, Leonard Grimshaw.”
“There, there, Adèle.” The secretary was coloring, too. He disliked hearing put into words the thoughts that had been grumbling in the back of his head; but Mrs. Lumbard flashed past him and into the house, and, hurrying to open the piano, in a minute the crashing chords of a Rachmaninoff Prelude were sounding through the house. Every time those strong white hands came down, it was with a force which might have been shaking the cockatoo crest.
In the White Room the convalescent’s pensive eyes widened. “Who can that be?” he asked the nurse.
“I’m sure I’ve no idea, Mr. Stanwood. It sounds like a man. Perhaps it is Mr. Grimshaw.”
“Say, if it is, he’s some good, after all. Only that’s a punk thing he’s playing. That stuff’ll do when you’re dead. Would you mind going down and asking him if he knows anything from ‘The Syncopated Playfellows’?”
“I shall be glad to, Mr. Stanwood.” And Miss Damon went downstairs and stood outside the entrance to the drawing-room until the last[81] dignified chord was dying away, then she entered.
“Why, Mrs. Lumbard!” she exclaimed in surprise; “we thought it was a man.”
“I wish I was,” said Adèle vindictively, “and that I was just going to fight a duel, and had the choice of weapons. I’d choose horsewhips and I guarantee I’d get there first.”
Miss Damon’s demure little mouth smiled leniently. “Mr. Stanwood sent me down. He was very pleased to hear music, and we thought it might be Mr. Grimshaw; and Mr. Stanwood wanted me to ask him if he could play something from ‘The Syncopated Playfellows.’”
Adèle’s eyes grew their widest. “Goodness, he’s human then if he did come from Olympus!” The eyes brightened. “To think of having a live one in the house! It’s the jazziest kind of jazz, Miss Damon. I might just as well meet Miss Frink at the door with a string of profanity. Will you stand at the window and watch for the carriage while I loosen up?”
She plunged at once into the audacious rhythm and jerking melody requested, and it was not long before Leonard Grimshaw’s pointed nose and amazed spectacles appeared between the heavy satin portières. Adèle flashed defiance at him and pounded on her[82] complicated way. The secretary felt beating symptoms in his feet, but he still glared.
The barbaric strains came to a close.
“I’m surprised,” he said.
“You look it,” retorted the musician.
Miss Damon glided from the room and upstairs. She found enthusiasm in the pale face of her patient.
“Thank you. Grimshaw isn’t so dusty, after all. Why, he’s a wizard.”
“It wasn’t Mr. Grimshaw. It was a Mrs. Lumbard, a niece of Miss Frink’s, who lives here.”
“Lives here? I wonder why she hasn’t played before.”
“Oh, Miss Fink wouldn’t allow the piano opened while you were ill, Mr. Stanwood.”
“Say”—Hugh looked out the window thoughtfully—“she’s been awfully white to me. Miss or Mrs. Lumbard did you say?” looking back at the nurse.
“Mrs. She’s a widow with white hair. Quite pretty.”
“H’m! She’d better have her hair dyed if she’s going to play like that. It’s a wonder it doesn’t turn red and curl of its own accord.”
Meanwhile Miss Frink had directed her liveried coachman to drive to Ross Graham[83] Company’s. Rex and Regina would probably have gone there if left to themselves, so often did they traverse the road. Holding their heads high, their silver harness jingling, they, like their mistress, seemed to be scorning the parvenu motors among which they threaded their way.
Arrived at the store, Miss Frink told the new coachman where to wait—it was a nuisance to have to break in new servants, to have to initiate a novice into her established customs. She supposed the man who had held that position for so many years could not help dying; nevertheless, if he had not done so Rex and Regina would never have run away with her; and, as she left the victoria with this reflection, another consideration followed close on its heels. She would never have known Hugh Stanwood. A softened expression grew around her thin lips.
Yes, she would probably have received him into the store to please John Ogden, but she would never have taken any notice of him. The clerks in the big establishment held just the same place in her consideration as the lights, or the modern fixtures for carrying cash.
She entered the store and was met by a deferential floorwalker.
“How do, Mr. Ramsay. Where are the men’s[84] dressing-gowns or bathrobes or smoking-jackets, or whatever you call ’em?”
“Why, that’s quite flattering, Miss Frink. I didn’t know that you trusted the manager to plan a department out of your knowledge.”
“That is because you don’t know me, then. I make certain that a person is competent, and after that I don’t tie any strings to him; but this is the first time in my life I ever bought anything for a man. I hope you’ve got something decent.”
“Now, look here, Miss Frink”—they were walking toward the back of the store, and every unoccupied clerk was casting furtive glances at the eagle-eyed proprietor—“that’s heresy, you know. New York might come over here and take a few lessons from our stock.”
Miss Frink’s lips twitched. It was her usual manner of smiling.
“Glad to hear it. Now, prove it.”
They reached the section desired, and Mr. Ramsay nodded to a blonde girl busy with her cash book.
“Dressing-gowns, Miss Duane”—then he bowed and moved away.
Miss Frink’s bright gaze fixed on the clerk. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere else?” she demanded.
[85]
“Yes, Madam,” returned the girl. “I am in the glove section, but Miss Aubrey has gone out to lunch, so I’m over here.”
“Do you know anything about the stock?”
Millicent colored under this abruptness, but she smiled.
“Not very much, but I can show you what we have.”
Miss Frink liked her tone and manner.
“Human intelligence, eh?—Do you know who I am?” with sudden consideration that perhaps this sweetness was for the occasion.
“Yes, indeed, Miss Frink. We all know you. I have fitted you to gloves.”
The lady of the old school still regarded the blonde head with its simple twist of hair carried back from a low broad forehead. “I was sure I had seen you. Are you always patient with people that snap you up?”
“Oh, yes. I might lose my job if I wasn’t.” The girl laughed a little.
The wholesomeness of her, with her color coming and going, pleased her customer, but above all the charm of her low-pitched voice attracted Miss Frink.
“Well, let’s get at it, then,” she said. “I want a dressing-gown for a man who is recovering from a severe accident and beginning to sit up.”
[86]
Millicent approached a series of hangers, Miss Frink close on her heels.
“What size does he wear?”
“Heaven knows, but he’s built on the quantity plan.”
“Takes a large size, then.”
“That’s the idea.”
“How about this?” Millicent drew out a garment covered with Persian figures.
“Take it away, child. I don’t want a Sheik pattern.”
The girl tried next a soft blue wool wrapper with cord and tassels.
“Nor a baby bunting,” snapped Miss Frink. “I tell you he’s a he-man.”
Millicent could feel the tears of amusement pressing to her eyes, but she was quite frightened at the same time. The customer towered so above her and now began pulling over the gowns with her own hands.
“Look here, haven’t you got something handsome?” demanded Miss Frink at last.
“Oh, I’m sure we have what any one has,” stammered Millicent. “I thought if it was for a sick person, something soft—”
“Well, he isn’t going to be sick all his life, I hope.”
Millicent hurried to some drawers at one side,[87] and opening one drew forth a dressing-gown of heavy black satin on which were printed small wine-colored flowers. Each one burst into brightness with one crimson petal, giving an effect of jewels. The rich cord and tassels showed threads of crimson.
Miss Frink’s expression was one she had probably not worn since she was confronted by her first wax doll with real hair. She grimaced her eyeglasses off.
“Well, I think better of Ross Graham,” she said, after an eager pause.
“It is very rich,” remarked the saleslady, demurely.
“Not too rich for his blood, I guess,” said Miss Frink, handling the lustrous fabric and putting back her eyeglasses.
“Do you suppose it’s big enough?”
“It is a large size.”
“Do you think he’d feel like a Christmas tree in it?”
“Is he a young man?” asked Millicent.
“Oh, yes. He’s got a mustache and beard now,” said Miss Frink, appearing to think aloud as she caressed the satin musingly. “Of course that makes him look older, and his beard is quite red. Much redder than his hair and, of course, crimson—but that will be off[88] in a few days—” She paused, continuing to consider, and Millicent’s soothing voice fell upon her perturbed thought.
“You see the lining is very nice. They have taken that dark tint in the flowers and matched it, so there is nothing too gay about it, I should think.”
Her hazel eyes met Miss Frink’s and her smile was winning. “Of course, you know best, but it seems to me this is a dressing-gown for Prince Charming.”
Miss Frink grimaced her eyeglasses off.
“For whom did you say?” quickly.
Millicent blushed. Miss Frink liked to see her do it.
“Oh, that’s just nonsense, but you know, the hero of all the fairy tales?”
“Don’t know one of them.”
“Well, Prince Charming is always the hero,” laughed Millicent. Miss Frink in her present torn mental condition was not frightening. “I think this dressing-gown looks good enough for him.”
“Very well.” Miss Frink took a long breath and replaced her glasses. “I’ll take it.”
“Do you wish it sent?” Millicent was again the demure saleslady.
“No. Just wrap it up.”
[89]
“There are mules that go with it,” suggested the girl. She turned back to the drawer and brought out the glinting satin slippers.
The corners of Miss Frink’s lips drew down. “What fool things for a man!” she remarked.
“I don’t see why,” said Millicent, perceiving that the customer wished urging. “They’re very comfortable, and when he wears the gown he must have some sort of slippers.”
Miss Frink started. “I don’t believe he has any,” she mused. “Put them in,” she added, and sighed again.
“You’re a very good saleswoman,” she said at last. “Probably hungry this minute. I am.”
“Oh, that’s no matter for me. Did—” the girl paused, the box in her hand. “Did you want the price marks taken off?”
“Well, well! You have got more than human intelligence. Of course I do. How much are they, by the way?”
Millicent said nothing, for her customer seized the articles and examined the marks.
“Well”—straightening up—“Prince Charming thinks pretty well of himself, doesn’t he? All right, let the hide go with the hoofs, put the mules in.”
While the box was being wrapped, Miss[90] Frink looked so closely at Millicent that her ready color came again.
“What did Ramsay say your name was?”
“Duane. Millicent Duane.”
“I never have time to beat about the bush. How would you like to come and read to me an hour every day? I’ve lost my reader and I like your voice.”
“Oh, Miss Frink”—the girl’s hands clasped together unconsciously. “I know Damaris. She was so sorry to have offended you. Her hair will grow again very soon—”
“Well, her common sense won’t,” returned Miss Frink impatiently. “When a thing is past with me it’s past. I have no post mortems. Think it over, Miss Duane.”
“But I can’t afford to lose my job, Miss Frink,” said the girl with soft eagerness. “They would never let me go for an hour a day, and my grandfather has just a small pension; we have to be very careful.”
That voice. That wholesome face. That delicately clean shining hair. Miss Frink smiled a little at the ingenuous lack of consciousness of the power of money.
“That would be my care,” she said. “Think it over.”
“Oh, of course, I should like it,” said Millicent,[91] still with eagerness, “if it was right for me. It would give me so much more time with Grandpa. But there is Damaris! I can’t bear to think of hurting her feelings.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” said Miss Frink. “Business is business. You’ll hear from me again.”
A boy was called to carry the box and the purchaser departed leaving Millicent flushed, and happy, and apprehensive.
CHAPTER VII AT ROSS GRAHAM’S
 The horses were at the door, likewise the secretary. He had encountered Mrs. Lumbard in the hall, and informed her that the luncheon gong would not sound at present.
She lifted her shoulders. “Curfew shall not ring to-night! Why the bouleversement?”
“Miss Frink wishes to do an errand.”
“It must be a marvelous one that won’t wait.”
The crest was lifted high. “She behaves very strangely,” was the dignified reply. “She is”—Grimshaw tapped his temple—“somewhat changed since her shock. It betrays itself in many ways. My deeply beloved and respected Miss Frink!” He shook his head.
Adèle gazed at him curiously, with little whimsical twitches at the corners of her lips. “We can’t expect anything else at her age,” she replied, in the low tone that he had used.
The subject of their remarks now appeared at the head of the stairs, dressed for her drive. She looked a little annoyed to see the couple waiting below together.
[78]
“Well, well,” she said testily. “I am not going on a journey. You look as if you were waiting to bid me a long farewell.”
“Would you like me to go with you?” asked Mrs. Lumbard. “I can get my hat very quickly.”
As Miss Frink reached the foot of the stairs, she returned the young woman’s eager gaze coolly. “I am not in the least shy of asking your company when I want you, Adèle,” she returned, pulling on her gloves. “Any last wishes, Grim?”
“I am simply waiting to put you in your carriage, dear lady,” he returned, injured dignity again to the fore.
“All right,” brusquely. “Order lunch to be served in three quarters of an hour; and, Adèle, Mr. Stanwood doesn’t feel ready to come downstairs yet, but he’s sitting up, and you might open the piano again. There is no objection to your playing if you feel like it. He might like it—in the distance.”
Mrs. Lumbard lingered until the secretary had his employer safely ensconced and the glistening horses had driven away. She watched him come up the path, and then went out on the wide veranda behind the white columns to meet him.
[79]
“Grim by name and grim by nature,” she said, laughing. “You look funereal.”
“Don’t make silly jokes,” he snapped. “I should think you had had a snub to last you for one while.”
“Wasn’t it right between the eyes?” she returned cheerfully.
“Everything that dear Miss Frink says is straight from the shoulder always,” said her secretary.
“I thought you were going to say straight from the heart. No wonder you call her ‘dear.’ So ingratiating, so affectionate.”
“That is enough of that,” said Leonard curtly. “I am here to protect Miss Frink—even from her poor relations.”
Mrs. Lumbard crimsoned to the roots of her white hair. “That is a nasty, insulting thing to say.” The brown eyes scintillated. “The sacred lunch hour is postponed. I may play in the daytime. If you are here to protect Miss Frink, you would better let her relatives take care of themselves, and turn your attention to the crippled Greek god she has been visiting the last hour. Don’t you know, as well as I do, that she has gone on some errand for him? Perhaps not cigarettes this time, but for something he wants, and wouldn’t you be glad if I could have gone[80] with her and found out what it was? You won’t get anywhere by insulting me, Leonard Grimshaw.”
“There, there, Adèle.” The secretary was coloring, too. He disliked hearing put into words the thoughts that had been grumbling in the back of his head; but Mrs. Lumbard flashed past him and into the house, and, hurrying to open the piano, in a minute the crashing chords of a Rachmaninoff Prelude were sounding through the house. Every time those strong white hands came down, it was with a force which might have been shaking the cockatoo crest.
In the White Room the convalescent’s pensive eyes widened. “Who can that be?” he asked the nurse.
“I’m sure I’ve no idea, Mr. Stanwood. It sounds like a man. Perhaps it is Mr. Grimshaw.”
“Say, if it is, he’s some good, after all. Only that’s a punk thing he’s playing. That stuff’ll do when you’re dead. Would you mind going down and asking him if he knows anything from ‘The Syncopated Playfellows’?”
“I shall be glad to, Mr. Stanwood.” And Miss Damon went downstairs and stood outside the entrance to the drawing-room until the last[81] dignified chord was dying away, then she entered.
“Why, Mrs. Lumbard!” she exclaimed in surprise; “we thought it was a man.”
“I wish I was,” said Adèle vindictively, “and that I was just going to fight a duel, and had the choice of weapons. I’d choose horsewhips and I guarantee I’d get there first.”
Miss Damon’s demure little mouth smiled leniently. “Mr. Stanwood sent me down. He was very pleased to hear music, and we thought it might be Mr. Grimshaw; and Mr. Stanwood wanted me to ask him if he could play something from ‘The Syncopated Playfellows.’”
Adèle’s eyes grew their widest. “Goodness, he’s human then if he did come from Olympus!” The eyes brightened. “To think of having a live one in the house! It’s the jazziest kind of jazz, Miss Damon. I might just as well meet Miss Frink at the door with a string of profanity. Will you stand at the window and watch for the carriage while I loosen up?”
She plunged at once into the audacious rhythm and jerking melody requested, and it was not long before Leonard Grimshaw’s pointed nose and amazed spectacles appeared between the heavy satin portières. Adèle flashed defiance at him and pounded on her[82] complicated way. The secretary felt beating symptoms in his feet, but he still glared.
The barbaric strains came to a close.
“I’m surprised,” he said.
“You look it,” retorted the musician.
Miss Damon glided from the room and upstairs. She found enthusiasm in the pale face of her patient.
“Thank you. Grimshaw isn’t so dusty, after all. Why, he’s a wizard.”
“It wasn’t Mr. Grimshaw. It was a Mrs. Lumbard, a niece of Miss Frink’s, who lives here.”
“Lives here? I wonder why she hasn’t played before.”
“Oh, Miss Fink wouldn’t allow the piano opened while you were ill, Mr. Stanwood.”
“Say”—Hugh looked out the window thoughtfully—“she’s been awfully white to me. Miss or Mrs. Lumbard did you say?” looking back at the nurse.
“Mrs. She’s a widow with white hair. Quite pretty.”
“H’m! She’d better have her hair dyed if she’s going to play like that. It’s a wonder it doesn’t turn red and curl of its own accord.”
Meanwhile Miss Frink had directed her liveried coachman to drive to Ross Graham[83] Company’s. Rex and Regina would probably have gone there if left to themselves, so often did they traverse the road. Holding their heads high, their silver harness jingling, they, like their mistress, seemed to be scorning the parvenu motors among which they threaded their way.
Arrived at the store, Miss Frink told the new coachman where to wait—it was a nuisance to have to break in new servants, to have to initiate a novice into her established customs. She supposed the man who had held that position for so many years could not help dying; nevertheless, if he had not done so Rex and Regina would never have run away with her; and, as she left the victoria with this reflection, another consideration followed close on its heels. She would never have known Hugh Stanwood. A softened expression grew around her thin lips.
Yes, she would probably have received him into the store to please John Ogden, but she would never have taken any notice of him. The clerks in the big establishment held just the same place in her consideration as the lights, or the modern fixtures for carrying cash.
She entered the store and was met by a deferential floorwalker.
“How do, Mr. Ramsay. Where are the men’s[84] dressing-gowns or bathrobes or smoking-jackets, or whatever you call ’em?”
“Why, that’s quite flattering, Miss Frink. I didn’t know that you trusted the manager to plan a department out of your knowledge.”
“That is because you don’t know me, then. I make certain that a person is competent, and after that I don’t tie any strings to him; but this is the first time in my life I ever bought anything for a man. I hope you’ve got something decent.”
“Now, look here, Miss Frink”—they were walking toward the back of the store, and every unoccupied clerk was casting furtive glances at the eagle-eyed proprietor—“that’s heresy, you know. New York might come over here and take a few lessons from our stock.”
Miss Frink’s lips twitched. It was her usual manner of smiling.
“Glad to hear it. Now, prove it.”
They reached the section desired, and Mr. Ramsay nodded to a blonde girl busy with her cash book.
“Dressing-gowns, Miss Duane”—then he bowed and moved away.
Miss Frink’s bright gaze fixed on the clerk. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere else?” she demanded.
[85]
“Yes, Madam,” returned the girl. “I am in the glove section, but Miss Aubrey has gone out to lunch, so I’m over here.”
“Do you know anything about the stock?”
Millicent colored under this abruptness, but she smiled.
“Not very much, but I can show you what we have.”
Miss Frink liked her tone and manner.
“Human intelligence, eh?—Do you know who I am?” with sudden consideration that perhaps this sweetness was for the occasion.
“Yes, indeed, Miss Frink. We all know you. I have fitted you to gloves.”
The lady of the old school still regarded the blonde head with its simple twist of hair carried back from a low broad forehead. “I was sure I had seen you. Are you always patient with people that snap you up?”
“Oh, yes. I might lose my job if I wasn’t.” The girl laughed a little.
The wholesomeness of her, with her color coming and going, pleased her customer, but above all the charm of her low-pitched voice attracted Miss Frink.
“Well, let’s get at it, then,” she said. “I want a dressing-gown for a man who is recovering from a severe accident and beginning to sit up.”
[86]
Millicent approached a series of hangers, Miss Frink close on her heels.
“What size does he wear?”
“Heaven knows, but he’s built on the quantity plan.”
“Takes a large size, then.”
“That’s the idea.”
“How about this?” Millicent drew out a garment covered with Persian figures.
“Take it away, child. I don’t want a Sheik pattern.”
The girl tried next a soft blue wool wrapper with cord and tassels.
“Nor a baby bunting,” snapped Miss Frink. “I tell you he’s a he-man.”
Millicent could feel the tears of amusement pressing to her eyes, but she was quite frightened at the same time. The customer towered so above her and now began pulling over the gowns with her own hands.
“Look here, haven’t you got something handsome?” demanded Miss Frink at last.
“Oh, I’m sure we have what any one has,” stammered Millicent. “I thought if it was for a sick person, something soft—”
“Well, he isn’t going to be sick all his life, I hope.”
Millicent hurried to some drawers at one side,[87] and opening one drew forth a dressing-gown of heavy black satin on which were printed small wine-colored flowers. Each one burst into brightness with one crimson petal, giving an effect of jewels. The rich cord and tassels showed threads of crimson.
Miss Frink’s expression was one she had probably not worn since she was confronted by her first wax doll with real hair. She grimaced her eyeglasses off.
“Well, I think better of Ross Graham,” she said, after an eager pause.
“It is very rich,” remarked the saleslady, demurely.
“Not too rich for his blood, I guess,” said Miss Frink, handling the lustrous fabric and putting back her eyeglasses.
“Do you suppose it’s big enough?”
“It is a large size.”
“Do you think he’d feel like a Christmas tree in it?”
“Is he a young man?” asked Millicent.
“Oh, yes. He’s got a mustache and beard now,” said Miss Frink, appearing to think aloud as she caressed the satin musingly. “Of course that makes him look older, and his beard is quite red. Much redder than his hair and, of course, crimson—but that will be off[88] in a few days—” She paused, continuing to consider, and Millicent’s soothing voice fell upon her perturbed thought.
“You see the lining is very nice. They have taken that dark tint in the flowers and matched it, so there is nothing too gay about it, I should think.”
Her hazel eyes met Miss Frink’s and her smile was winning. “Of course, you know best, but it seems to me this is a dressing-gown for Prince Charming.”
Miss Frink grimaced her eyeglasses off.
“For whom did you say?” quickly.
Millicent blushed. Miss Frink liked to see her do it.
“Oh, that’s just nonsense, but you know, the hero of all the fairy tales?”
“Don’t know one of them.”
“Well, Prince Charming is always the hero,” laughed Millicent. Miss Frink in her present torn mental condition was not frightening. “I think this dressing-gown looks good enough for him.”
“Very well.” Miss Frink took a long breath and replaced her glasses. “I’ll take it.”
“Do you wish it sent?” Millicent was again the demure saleslady.
“No. Just wrap it up.”
[89]
“There are mules that go with it,” suggested the girl. She turned back to the drawer and brought out the glinting satin slippers.
The corners of Miss Frink’s lips drew down. “What fool things for a man!” she remarked.
“I don’t see why,” said Millicent, perceiving that the customer wished urging. “They’re very comfortable, and when he wears the gown he must have some sort of slippers.”
Miss Frink started. “I don’t believe he has any,” she mused. “Put them in,” she added, and sighed again.
“You’re a very good saleswoman,” she said at last. “Probably hungry this minute. I am.”
“Oh, that’s no matter for me. Did—” the girl paused, the box in her hand. “Did you want the price marks taken off?”
“Well, well! You have got more than human intelligence. Of course I do. How much are they, by the way?”
Millicent said nothing, for her customer seized the articles and examined the marks.
“Well”—straightening up—“Prince Charming thinks pretty well of himself, doesn’t he? All right, let the hide go with the hoofs, put the mules in.”
While the box was being wrapped, Miss[90] Frink looked so closely at Millicent that her ready color came again.
“What did Ramsay say your name was?”
“Duane. Millicent Duane.”
“I never have time to beat about the bush. How would you like to come and read to me an hour every day? I’ve lost my reader and I like your voice.”
“Oh, Miss Frink”—the girl’s hands clasped together unconsciously. “I know Damaris. She was so sorry to have offended you. Her hair will grow again very soon—”
“Well, her common sense won’t,” returned Miss Frink impatiently. “When a thing is past with me it’s past. I have no post mortems. Think it over, Miss Duane.”
“But I can’t afford to lose my job, Miss Frink,” said the girl with soft eagerness. “They would never let me go for an hour a day, and my grandfather has just a small pension; we have to be very careful.”
That voice. That wholesome face. That delicately clean shining hair. Miss Frink smiled a little at the ingenuous lack of consciousness of the power of money.
“That would be my care,” she said. “Think it over.”
“Oh, of course, I should like it,” said Millicent,[91] still with eagerness, “if it was right for me. It would give me so much more time with Grandpa. But there is Damaris! I can’t bear to think of hurting her feelings.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” said Miss Frink. “Business is business. You’ll hear from me again.”
A boy was called to carry the box and the purchaser departed leaving Millicent flushed, and happy, and apprehensive.
CHAPTER VIII A TELEGRAM
 As Miss Frink was leaving the store the floorwalker intercepted her. He had in his hands a letter.
“I wonder if you can throw any light on this, Miss Frink. A letter that came several days ago to Mr. Hugh Stanwood in care of the store. We have no employee of that—”
“No, but you will have,” interrupted Miss Frink, almost snatching the letter. “Hugh Stanwood is the man who hindered the rendezvous my horses were trying to keep with that express train a few weeks ago.”
“You don’t say so. The young hero who put us all under such obligation?”
“Me, anyway. I’m in no hurry to play the harp. Yes, he was on his way to Ross Graham’s when he stubbed his toe, poor boy.”
Mr. Ramsay bowed. “I’ve heard that you are caring for him royally. I’m sure we shall be very glad to welcome him into our ranks if it is your wish.”
“Well, we’ll let him catch his breath first, anyway. He’s doing well and, believe me, I[93] couldn’t sleep nights if he wasn’t. I’ve just been getting him a dressing-gown; you don’t sell dressing-gowns for your health here, do you?”
The floorwalker smiled deferentially. “Do you find us exorbitant?”
“Do I! I’ll have to pay for this on the installment plan.”
“Ha, ha! Very good. Very good, indeed. Glad we had something that pleased you. Good-afternoon, Miss Frink.”
On the way home the lady gazed at the letter she was carrying.
“John Ogden has beat me to it,” she reflected. At certain moments the lady of the old school found a relief to her feelings in slang. “Saber cuts of Saxon speech,” Mark Twain called it, and Miss Frink liked saber cuts. She hadn’t time to beat about the bush.
Leaving her box below stairs where her secretary and Mrs. Lumbard could if they wished whet their curiosity on its shape and the Ross-Graham label, she went in to lunch with her bonnet on.
The others of her family dutifully took their places. Adèle’s ivory tints were somewhat flushed. She knew from Miss Damon that she had scored a triumph with her invisible audience, and it was a certainty that that meant[94] credit with Miss Frink. She cast an occasional unforgiving glance at the secretary who kept to his usual safe programme of speaking when he was spoken to.
Miss Frink addressed him now. “Here is a letter from John Ogden to our patient,” she said.
Adèle’s brown eyes suddenly glanced up, startled. Still, there were probably hundreds of John Ogdens in the world.
“Yes. I do feel mortified not to have written him as soon as I received his letter of introduction. He will think I’m a savage when he learns why he hasn’t heard from his young friend.” The speaker regarded the letter beside her plate. “He addressed it in care of the store. Mr. Stanwood was headed for Ross Graham’s, you know; and they had no more idea there who Hugh Stanwood was than the man in the moon.”
“That is a little embarrassing,” returned Grimshaw circumspectly. “Is there anything I can do about it?”
“No,” returned Miss Frink good-naturedly, “since you didn’t stand over me and make me answer that letter.”
“You never showed me the letter of introduction,” said the secretary, “or I might have ventured—”
[95]
“Oh, you would have ventured,” returned Miss Frink, “though I don’t think, Grim, that your slogan is ‘Nothing venture, nothing have.’”
“My duty is to protect you, dear lady,” declared Leonard, unsmiling.
“Oh, I know that, and you’re a good boy,” said Miss Frink carelessly. She set down her tea-cup. “Well, I’ll go upstairs and take my medicine. I hope both the boy and Mr. Ogden will forgive me. Will you both excuse me, please?”
She left the room. Adèle longed to comment on the interesting-looking box she had passed in the hall, but she was still too angry with Grimshaw to address him.
“Miss Frink is in remarkably good spirits,” he observed; and because Adèle knew she could irritate him, she responded:
“Yes. She must have succeeded in finding something very fine for her protégé.”
“It is going rather far to call that young person her protégé,” said the secretary stiffly.
Adèle shrugged her shoulders. “Personally I think it is a mild name for him.”
“She will give him the employment he seeks, doubtless, when he is about again,” remarked Leonard.
[96]
“Unless she just passes over half her kingdom to him,” said Adèle. “You have been seeing him. Is he really such a beauty as he seemed that first day?”
“Remarkable,” answered the secretary dryly, “with a flaming red beard and mustache.”
“Horrors!” ejaculated Adèle. Then: “Poor thing, I suppose he couldn’t be shaved.”
The secretary pushed his chair back from the table. “Only a most common person could have demanded the music you played for him.”
Adèle grimaced. “Go on. I know what you want to say—And only the commonest sort of person could have played it. Go on. Have courage, the courage of your convictions.”
“I think Miss Frink will be the best person to comment on your actions, in this as in all other matters while you are a guest in her house.”
The two exchanged a dueling glance. Again Adèle experienced that fear of her antagonist which she sometimes experienced. She didn’t dare to allow him to dislike her.
“Oh, what’s the use, Leonard,” she said with a sudden change of tone and manner, and she held out her hand.
He drew back. “Persons shake hands when[97] they are about to fight,” he said. “I hope there is nothing of that sort in the air.”
Adèle dropped her hand. “I should hope not,” she returned, trying to hold him with her soft brown glance; but he was impervious and left the room.
Miss Frink, armed with her box, went to the White Room and knocked on the door. As the nurse opened it, her grave little mouth was smiling.
“We’ve nearly cured Mr. Stanwood while you have been gone,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve heard that music was being used a good deal now to heal the sick; and here we have an example.”
Hugh was smiling, too, above his blanket wrappings. “Some pianist you have here,” he said.
“Oh, did you like that?” asked Miss Frink. “Mrs. Lumbard played, then.”
“By George, it was all I could do to stay in the chair,” said Hugh.
“Well, now I’m glad to hear that,” said Miss Frink. “Music is one thing we can give you. I’m glad you’re in a good mood, too, for I’m just a little bit more ashamed than I ever thought I should be again.” She dropped her box on a chair, and, advancing, held out the[98] letter. “From Mr. Ogden,” she continued, “and I don’t know how old it is, and I’m real sorry I’m too old to blush.” She noted that the invalid’s hands were enveloped in the blanket. “Would you like me to read it to you?”
“No, oh, no,” returned Hugh hastily, thrusting out a hand for the letter. “I can read it all right.”
The caller crossed to a window and sat down; and as Hugh opened his letter Miss Frink noticed that he was not too old to blush.
Dear Hugh (he read)
I am nonplussed at not hearing from you. A little more and I will have to institute a search; for as you know I left orders for your mail to be forwarded to me, and a letter has come from your sister. I am being heroic not to open it, and I don’t dare forward it until I know surely where you are. The earth seems to have opened and swallowed you up. Please send me a wire as soon as you get this. Yours sincerely
John Ogden
“Say, Miss Frink”—Hugh’s brow was troubled as he folded the letter. “I ought to send a wire to Ogden. He has been the best sort of a friend to me and—and sending me with that letter of—of introduction to you—he can’t understand not hearing from me—whether[99] I got the job or—or anything you—you understand.”
Long before the stammering speech was over, Miss Frink was beside Hugh’s chair. “Don’t you worry another minute,” she said. “I’ll send a wire at once explaining everything, and Mr. Ogden will know I am the only villain in the plot.”
“Plot,” thought Hugh, his heart beating with repugnance to the situation.
There was a knock on the door. It was a maid announcing the barber. “Oh, yes, Miss Frink,” said Miss Damon. “While you were gone Dr. Morton called up and said he was sending the barber.”
“Let him come up,” said Miss Frink, “and don’t let him cut your head off, boy, because I want you to hear the telegram I’ll be sending John Ogden.”
She proceeded downstairs to her study and dashed in with the novel excitability she had displayed ever since the runaway. The shell-rimmed spectacles glanced up and the secretary rose. His dignity of manner was exceptional to-day.
“Grim, I wish to send a wire. I don’t want to send it over the phone nor by a servant. I want you please to take it down for me.”
[100]
The secretary inclined his head in silence.
An hour later John Ogden in his office read the following:
Have been very remiss not to tell you that your friend Mr. Stanwood on day of arrival stopped my runaway, saved my life, broke his arm and head, very ill for a time at my house. Doing well now. If you wish to come to see him happy to entertain you long as you can stay. He called constantly in delirium for Aunt Sukey, but will not let me send for her. Advise me and forgive my carelessness.
Susanna Frink
John Ogden stared at this communication for a full minute with an incredulous gaze before he emitted a peal of laughter that brought tears to his eyes, and an office boy from the next room.
He sent a prompt reply:
Thank you. Will be with you next Thursday.
When Miss Frink returned to the White Room, she found the invalid transformed from the r?le of Faust, to that of some famous movie hero of the present day. He was in bed again too tired and worried to smile at her.
“I guess a nap will be the next thing, Miss Frink, and then perhaps Mrs. Lumbard will give us some more music,” said Miss Damon.
“Very well,” returned the lady briskly.[101] “Here’s what I sent to Ogden.” She stood by the bedside and read the telegram. At the mention of Aunt Sukey, Hugh started to laugh. He was afraid to let himself go. He felt capable of a fit of schoolgirl hysterics.
“Yes, sir,” said Miss Frink stoutly; “it shall be just as Mr. Ogden says, not as you say, about sending for her. I know you, and your modesty about making trouble. Next time he gets up, Miss Damon, put this on your patient.” Miss Frink opened the waiting box and took out her gorgeous gift. She unfolded it before Hugh’s dazzled eyes, and Miss Damon exclaimed her admiration.
“You see Ross Graham isn’t such a country store, Mr. Stanwood,” declared Miss Frink.
Hugh whistled. “You called me modest,” he said. “Is it your idea that I shall ever wear that?”
“The clerk called it a dressing-gown for Prince Charming,” said Miss Frink triumphantly, “and here are the slippers, Mr. Stanwood. Of course, they’ll fit you because they haven’t any heels. I think the girl said they were called donkeys.”
“Queer,” remarked Hugh, “when donkey’s heels are their long suit.” But because his hostess was holding the satin near his hand and[102] evidently wished it, he felt the rich fabric admiringly, again wishing himself back in that familiar basement, packing boxes, honestly.
“So music means a great deal to you, Mr. Stanwood,” said Miss Frink, regarding the patient thoughtfully.
“I don’t like that Mr. Stanwood from you,” he returned restlessly. “Hugh is my name, and I’d like you to use it.”
“Of course I shall, then, boy,” returned his hostess promptly. “You like music, Hugh?”
“Well,” put in the nurse with a little laugh, “if you had seen his eyes when Mrs. Lumbard was playing!”
“H’m,” grunted Miss Frink. “Well, that’s easy. Now go to sleep, Prince Charming, and later this afternoon you shall have another concert.”
Hugh stifled a groan and held out his pale right hand. “You know I thank you, Miss Frink, for all your kindness.”
“Ho,” returned that lady, taking the hand in her dry grasp, and quickly dropping it. “If I should begin thanking you, when do you suppose I should stop talking?”

She swept out of the room and Hugh closed his eyes.
CHAPTER IX THE NEW READER
 The Queen of Farrandale had long passed the time for waiting patiently for anything she wished for, so it was the very next day that Millicent Duane came to the big house for a trial reading.
She gave such perfect satisfaction that it was scarcely five minutes after she began that a delicate snore began to proceed from Miss Frink’s slender nose. Millicent regarded the recumbent figure in some embarrassment, and stopped reading.
Miss Frink’s eyes opened at once. “Well, well, child, what are you waiting for?” she asked testily. “Got a big word?”
Millicent, crimsoning to the tips of her ears, began again to read. She was afraid to stop, although the snoring began again almost immediately, and read on and on in the novel of the day. Although Miss Frink was a lady of the old school, she proposed to know what was going on in the world at the present time, and she always bought the book which received the best reviews, though Millicent came to wonder[104] how she made anything of it in the hashed condition in which it penetrated her consciousness.
At last, when the lady was positively fast asleep, Millicent closed the book, took her hat and wrap in her hand, and went noiselessly out into the hall and down the stairs.
Mrs. Lumbard met her at the foot, and the young girl accosted her.
“This is Mrs. Lumbard, isn’t it?” she said shyly. “I am Millicent Duane. Miss Frink didn’t tell me what to do if she went to sleep.”
“You guessed right,” returned the other. “There is nothing to do but leave her until she has her nap out. You have evidently qualified.” Mrs. Lumbard laughed; it was not a pleasant laugh Millicent thought. “I tried to read to her, but she wouldn’t have me. Won’t you sit down a minute, or are you too busy?”
Millicent hesitated, but seated herself near the other in the spacious hall with its broad fireplace. “I am not busy at all,” she said, “and it seems so strange after being a whole year in the store.”
“I suppose you mean the Ross-Graham establishment. That is the store in Farrandale, is it not?”
[105]
“Yes, indeed, and I suppose it is the finest one anywhere,” returned Millicent seriously.
Adèle gazed upon her earnest face with its youthful color and nimbus of blonde hair.
“Have you known Miss Frink long?”
“Oh, we all know her by sight, but I never spoke to her until yesterday when she came in to buy a dressing-gown, and I happened that day to have been put on the dressing-gowns. Wasn’t I lucky?—for this came of it.”
Millicent’s happy smile revealed a dimple. Mrs. Lumbard’s eyes scrutinized her.
“I’ll warrant she bought a handsome one,” she said.
“Oh, gorgeous. The handsomest one we had. I told her it was fit for Prince Charming.” The young girl gave a little laugh.
“Well, one would do that for the man who had saved one’s life,” remarked Adèle.
The guest’s lips formed a round O. “Does he still live here?” she asked, “and is he getting well?”
Mrs. Lumbard shrugged her shoulders. “I hear so, but I’ve never seen him.”
Millicent looked about her in some awe. “I suppose in such a great place as this, people might not meet for days. Grandfather and I live in a little cubby-house”—the admiring[106] eyes came back to Mrs. Lumbard’s brown, curious stare—“but it has a big yard and we love it.”
The older woman leaned back and shrugged her shoulders again. At this juncture Miss Frink appeared on the stairs.
Millicent saw her, and, springing up, met her where the brass jardinières filled with ferns grew at the foot of the wide descent.
“I didn’t know what to do about leaving, Miss Frink. I saw you were resting so well.”
The hostess, with a sharp glance at Adèle’s luxurious posture, laid a kind hand on the girl’s shoulder as she returned the sweet, eager look.
“You did quite right,” she replied. “Leave me when you see I am dead to the world, and then—you may go right home.”
“Right home,” repeated the girl, a little falteringly.
“Yes,” said Miss Frink pleasantly. “When you leave me, go right home. You read well.”
“Thank you,” said Millicent. “I hadn’t thought to ask you. Good-afternoon, Miss Frink. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Lumbard.”
Her cheeks were hot as she hurried into her hat and jacket and out the door. When she reached home, her heart was still quickening with a vague sense of having done wrong. The[107] pretty white-haired lady’s eyes and laugh were curious and cold. Miss Frink had been displeased that she had stayed and talked with her. Perhaps she ought not to have told about the dressing-gown.
Old Colonel Duane was bending his white head and smooth-shaven face over the little green sprouts in a garden plot when his granddaughter flung open the gate and rushed to him.
He raised himself slowly and looked around at her flushed cheeks. She pushed her hand through his arm and clutched it.
“Well, how did you get along, Milly? Does it beat fitting on gloves?”
“I’m so mortified, Grandpa,” was the rather breathless reply. “I had to be sent home.”
“Oh, come, now! You can stay home if that’s the case. Is Miss Frink an old pepper-pot as folks say?”
“No, no; she was kind to me, and I read her to sleep, which is what she wants; but I wasn’t sure what to do then, so when I met Mrs. Lumbard in the reception hall downstairs she asked me to sit down and I did. You remember my telling you about the white-haired lady who looks like a beauty of the French Court with big brown eyes? Well—there’s something[108] queer—I don’t like her—and you know the Prince Charming dressing-gown I told you Miss Frink bought of me? Well, I told Mrs. Lumbard about it and she hadn’t known it.” Big tears began to form and run down the girl’s cheeks. “You know how we tell each other everything and show each other everything? Well, they don’t, for she didn’t know it, and she said it was for that man who stopped the runaway, and he’s still there and she has never seen him, and—and Miss Frink suddenly came downstairs, and said hereafter I was to go right home when I left her. Oh”—Millicent raised her handkerchief to her burning cheek—“very pleasantly she said it, but what will she think when she hears that I told about the dressing-gown? She’ll think I’m a common gossipy girl.” The tears flowed fast. “It’s worse than Damaris bobbing her hair. Perhaps I’ll get word to-morrow morning not to come, and I’ve given up Ross Graham’s—” The speaker’s voice encountered a large obstruction in her throat and stopped suddenly, while she mopped her eyes.
Her grandfather patted the hand clutching his arm and gave a comforting little laugh.
“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, child. I judge Miss Frink doesn’t care much[109] for the French beauty. She didn’t like finding you together.”
“Do you think it might be that? Why, she is her niece.”
“Yes, but I’ve heard of such phenomena as lack of devotion between aunt and—grand-niece, isn’t it?”
“Yes—I believe so, but how funny that you know, Grandpa!” Millicent sniffed and mopped.
“What I don’t know about what goes on in Farrandale has never been known by anybody. I’m an easy mark for every one who has anything to tell. Always doddering around the house or the estate,” waving his hand about the fifty feet of yard, “if people can’t find anybody else to unburden themselves to, there is always old Silas Duane.”
“You’re so charming, Grandpa,” exclaimed the girl, clasping his arm tighter than before and trying to check her tears, “that’s why they come; and if you told me everything you hear, I shouldn’t be such a greenie and lose my job.”
“You won’t lose your job. You succeeded, and that’s what Miss Frink wants. No failures need apply.”
“But, Grandpa”—Millicent swallowed a[110] sob—“did you know that the man, the hero, was still at Miss Frink’s?”
“Surely I did. Leonard Grimshaw was here day before yesterday. He has troubles of his own.” Colonel Duane laughed.
“Does Mr. Grimshaw confide in you?” Millicent asked it with some awe. “Now I know that you don’t tell me anything.”
“Yes, so long as I always have the rent ready, Grimshaw is quite talkative. This Mr. Stanwood is somewhat of a thorn in his flesh evidently. He says it is because a sick person in the house upsets everything, and it is a nervous strain on Miss Frink; but I imagine her personal interest in the young man is a little disturbing.”
“Is he a young man?”
“Yes; according to Grimshaw a young nobody from nowhere, who was on his way to look for a job at Ross Graham’s.”
Millicent’s pretty eyes, apparently none the worse for their salt bath, looked reflective. “He may have been a nobody, but any one who Miss Frink believes saved her life becomes somebody right away.” The girl paused. “I see now why she seemed pleased to have me say it was fit for Prince Charming. Oh, that hateful old dressing-gown! If only Mrs. Lumbard didn’t say[111] anything to Miss Frink about it after I came away! Grandpa, I can’t bear to do that the first thing.”
The girl buried her eyes against the arm she was holding. “Miss Frink doesn’t know that I didn’t know she had a young man in her house, and I calling him Prince Charming. Mrs. Lumbard has never seen him. Miss Frink doesn’t know that I have a grandfather who never tells me anything when I tell him every thing.”
Colonel Duane smiled and patted her. “Just go on telling me everything, and don’t tell it to anybody else. You laugh at me when you catch me talking to myself; but I’m like that man who had the same habit, and said he did it because he liked to talk to a sensible man, and liked to hear a sensible man talk.”
Then, as Millicent did not lift her head, he went on. “I’ll give you another quotation: a comforting one. It was our own Mr. Emerson who said: ‘Don’t talk. What you are thunders so loud above what you say, that I can’t hear you.’ Now, Miss Frink is, I suppose, as shrewd a woman as ever lived; and something that you are has thundered so loud above all that dressing-gown business that you needn’t lose any sleep to-night or quake in your little shoes to-morrow when you go back to her.”
[112]
Millicent breathed a long sigh and straightened up.
“Then I think I’ll go in and make a salad for supper,” she replied. “It’s such fun to have time—and it—it seems so ungrateful—”
“Tut-tut,” warned her grandfather; and just then Damaris came in at the gate.
“I heard you began reading to her to-day,” she said eagerly and without preface. “You look sort of pale. Did she scare you to death?”
“No. She went right to sleep. How could you hear about it, Damaris? I was coming to tell you.”
“Dr. Morton had to come to see Mother, and he told us. He told us all about that Mr. Stanwood, too. He’s nearly well. Dr. Morton says he’s so handsome all the girls in town will mob him; and there you will be right on the inside. Some people’s luck!”
“Oh, don’t—I don’t want to see him,” said Millicent, so genuinely aghast that the girl with the bobbed hair laughed.
“Why, perhaps you’ll see that dressing-gown. He must have been the one she was buying it for.”
“Damaris, did I tell you about that dressing-gown?” The girl’s tone was tragic.
[113]
“Why, of course—you were telling me only last night the way you met Miss Frink.”
Millicent caught her breath. “Never speak of it again, Damaris.”
“How exciting!” The flapper’s eyes sparkled. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Millicent’s usual serenity had entirely vanished. “It’s dangerous to have to do with powerful people, that’s all. I was so safe in the glove section and my customers liked me”—another sob caught in the speaker’s throat. “Everything is your fault, Grandpa, if your eyes hadn’t been injured in the Cuban War I shouldn’t have begun to read aloud when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and I shouldn’t read so well—and you never tell me anything, and—Damaris, I lay awake last night thinking that if I did leave the gloves, you ought to have my place. What could we do with your hair!”
Damaris shook it ruefully.
“Let’s go in the house and see what we can do with ribbons and an invisible net—and I’ll ask Miss Frink—if I ever see her again.”
CHAPTER X JOHN OGDEN ARRIVES
 As the heavy door closed behind Millicent, Mrs. Lumbard straightened up. How could Miss Frink reasonably criticize her for civility to the young girl, although the mandate just expressed revealed an objection? “Disagreeable old thing!” reflected Adèle, while her face expressed only deferential attention.
She expected to see her hostess disappear as usual in the direction of the study; but instead, Miss Frink, eyeing her steadily, came and took the chair Millicent had vacated, and began at once to speak: “The presence of a sick person in the house throws out the general routine,” she said. “I have really been very anxious until now about Mr. Stanwood; but he is coming out all right and now I can give my mind to your affairs. You said your idea in coming here was to get me to help you decide what to do. I presume you have been studying on your problem. Have you come to any conclusion?”
Mrs. Lumbard blinked under the unexpected attack, and for a minute could not find the right words to reply to the entirely impersonal and businesslike regard bent upon her.
“You are young,” went on Miss Frink.[115] “You are an expert musician. My house is a very dull place for you to live.” Adèle wondered if Leonard had quoted her. “You must have been revolving some plans in your mind. I can give my full attention to you now. Speak on.”
Oh, how hard it was to speak under that cool gaze; since she could not say, “Yes, this house is a regular morgue, but my luxurious bed and your perfect cook reconcile me to staying here.” There was nothing in Miss Frink’s manner to suggest that she had any idea that this guest might make an indefinite stay.
Mrs. Lumbard’s face maintained its deferential look and her voice took the childlike tone she could use at will. “A spineless tone,” Miss Frink dubbed it mentally. She rebuked herself for not liking Adèle, but the latter’s love of idle luxury “thundered above” her inefficient meekness, and not all of Susanna’s still green memory of her Alice could antidote her distaste for the young woman’s lack of energy.
“To tell the truth,” said Adèle slowly, “it has been so wonderful to be in a safe, quiet harbor that I have given up to the refreshment of it for this little while, and just enjoyed your sweet hospitality. I think I have been unconsciously waiting for just such a moment as this,[116] when your experience and wise thought could direct me—”
“No, no, child, don’t talk that way. A woman of your age shouldn’t need directing—”
Miss Frink paused, for a servant entered the hall, and went past them to the door.
As he opened it John Ogden entered, a suitcase in his hand. At sight of his hostess he paused in announcing himself.
“Well, Miss Frink,” he exclaimed, as the servant took the suitcase, “I counted on your not minding a surprise party, for I found it was possible to come at once.”
The two women rose, and Adèle saw that the mistress of the house could be cordial if she wished to.
Scarcely had Ogden dropped Miss Frink’s hand when he realized her companion. “Why, Mrs. Reece,” he said, in a changed tone, “what a surprise to find you here—away from your sunny South,” he added hastily, fearing his amazement betrayed more than he wished.
Adèle, coloring to the tips of her ears, shook hands with him and murmured something which Miss Frink’s brusque tone interrupted.
“Stebbins,” she said to the servant, “Mr. Ogden will have the green room. Show him to it, and when he is ready take him to Mr. Stanwood[117] at once. Mr. Ogden, you are more than welcome, and I know you will do Mr. Stanwood a world of good. I will see you a little later.”
When the guest had vanished up the stairs, Miss Frink resumed her seat and her companion sank into hers, as pale as she had been scarlet.
“I suppose you can explain,” said Miss Frink.
“Mr.—Mr. Ogden never met me after my second marriage,” said Adèle faintly.
“The first one died, I hope.”
“I suppose you know why you are so rough, Aunt Susanna.” Adèle was evidently controlling tears.
“Well, you know how I feel. I like the sod kind better than grass. Never mind my bluntness, child. That’s neither here nor there. Mr. Reece left you something?”
“His life insurance, yes.”
“Then it was all gone, I suppose, when you decided to try again, and drew a blank in the matrimonial market.”
“Yes—almost,” faltered Adèle.
“Then, did the unpleasant ceremony you were forced to go through afterward result in your getting any alimony?”
“A—a very little.”
[118]
Miss Frink’s lips twitched in her peculiar smile. “And you still had some life insurance from number one. You’re a fast worker, Adèle.”
At this the tears came.
“Now, don’t cry,” said Miss Frink impatiently. “You can do that later. I was wondering if you would care for a position in Ross Graham’s. I took Miss Duane away from the gloves, and I told them not to fill the place at once.”
The young widow’s angry breath caught in her throat, but she stammered meekly:
“And go on—living here?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t be willing to do that, would you?” said Miss Frink reasonably.
“Would you want Miss Frink’s niece to be selling gloves in her store?”
“Ho!” exclaimed the other with a short laugh. “Miss Frink herself sold candy and cake and waited on table and was glad when she got a tip, and everybody in town knows it.”
Adèle’s cheeks burned again. “It would be foolish not to utilize my music,” she said. “Since you have no pride in the matter, no doubt there are movie theaters in Farrandale, and I can perhaps play in one.”
The young woman got the reaction she was trying for.
[119]
“No, you can’t,” returned Miss Frink promptly. “That’s where I draw the line. Let the men do that.”
Mrs. Lumbard rose. “Please excuse me,” she said faintly. It was the psychological moment. She had put Miss Frink in the wrong. Let her reflect a little. She knew the conscientious fairness under that rough husk. “I feel ill, Aunt Susanna,” she faltered. “I should like to lie down for a while.”
Her handkerchief to her eyes she passed up the broad staircase, Miss Frink looking after her, and feeling baffled.
“Yes, you’d like to lie down the rest of your life,” she declared mentally. It was too bad that Alice Ray could not have given the legacy of her splendid backbone to her descendants. “It’s tiresome, too,” added Miss Frink to herself. “I meant her to play to the boy about now; but I suppose she’s got to snivel just so long.”
There being no tears behind Mrs. Lumbard’s handkerchief, she was herself when in the dim large hall above she met Mr. Ogden and the butler coming out of the green room.
“You can go,” she said hurriedly to the latter. “Mr. Ogden and I are old friends, Stebbins. I will show him Mr. Stanwood’s room.”
[120]
The man bowed and departed.
“Mr. Ogden, I’m not Mrs. Reece—that is, you know, not any more.” She gave a nervous little laugh. “I’m—I’m Mrs. Lumbard now.”
Ogden bowed. “I’ll remember. Such matters are very quickly arranged, these days. I’m sorry not to have been up-to-date.”
She forced another little laugh at this.
“You know Aunt Susanna is a lady of the old school and she detests—er—second marriages, and things like that—divorces and everything. You understand.”
“Your aunt!” exclaimed Ogden in amazement. “Well, I am indeed ’way, ’way behind the times. I had no idea Miss Frink had a niece and, and—”
“Least of all, me, I suppose,” put in Adèle, laughing again.
“Your little girl, is she here?”
“Oh, never mind about the baby either, Mr. Ogden, please. You see, Aunt Susanna is so peculiar, and we’ve always been strangers. I haven’t even told her about the baby. I didn’t want to annoy her by bringing a child here. Just don’t know anything, please, except that I’m Mrs. Lumbard now, and you met me in Atlanta, and never say a word about what I was doing, because she would faint away at a[121] mention of the stage, and I don’t want to offend her.”
“I understand perfectly.” Ogden bowed gravely. He thought he did.
At this moment Leonard Grimshaw, always silent-footed as a cat, appeared in the dimness of the hall, coming from his room. Adèle had no means of knowing whether he had heard any of their talk, but was alertly conscious that he must notice the intimacy of their position as they stood conversing in hushed tones like a pair of conspirators.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Grimshaw,” she said lightly. “Perhaps you know—”
“Indeed, I do,” said Ogden, and the two men approached and shook hands.
“We expected you Thursday,” said the secretary, with a formal bow.
“And I hope Miss Frink will forgive my impatience. She says she will.”
“Mr. Ogden and I were so surprised to see each other,” said Adèle. “We met in Atlanta through our interest in music. You came in the nick of time, Leonard. Stebbins was just going to take Mr. Ogden to Mr. Stanwood’s room and I intercepted him. Now you will do it.”
The secretary bowed again. “If that is Miss Frink’s wish.”
[122]
“Both Miss Frink’s and mine,” said Ogden pleasantly. “I understand the boy has provided a good deal of excitement in this corner of the world.”
“One can’t help being ill,” said Grimshaw stiffly, “but it is astonishing how that sort of thing permeates a house and changes its routine.”
Ogden’s fist doubled as he followed his guide, but he made no reply. The secretary as usual forgot to knock at the door of the White Room, and throwing open the door ushered in the guest.
Miss Damon had gone downstairs, and there sat the convalescent in the big chair by the window. Ogden gasped. The secretary stared.
Freshly shaved, the rich folds of the dressing-gown about him, his feet in the glinting mules on the footrest, his handsome head leaning against the white upholstery of the armchair, he formed a picture which filled one of his guests with enthusiasm, and the other with fury.
“Is this the Rajah of Nankagorah!” cried Ogden.
Hugh’s heart leaped with a combination of joy and rage. It was ages since he had seen a soul who knew him, and here was the reason. He[123] wanted to hug him. He wanted to choke him.
He kicked away the stool, pulled himself to his feet and showed his teeth in a snarling sort of smile. “Damn you, Ogden!” he said.
John Ogden laughed and, striding forward, threw an arm around the satin-clad shoulders.
“Which is the safe hand? Which arm was it?” he asked.
“They’re both safe to do for you one of these days,” returned Hugh, clutching his friend.
The secretary waited for no more. The apparition of Miss Frink’s extravagance and its stunning effect roused a fever of resentment in him. He went out and closed the door. He continued to stand outside it for a minute, but the old house was well built and the voices within were low. He moved away and downstairs, and was just in time to see Miss Frink going out the front door, attired in wrap and hat.
“Dear lady, aren’t you coming into the study?”
“Some time,” she replied lightly. “I made a purchase by ’phone this morning and I want to look at it before it is sent up. Have you seen Mr. Ogden?”
“Yes, I’ve just taken him to Mr. Stanwood’s room.”
[124]
“I suppose the boy was delighted to see him.”
“I don’t know. He swore like a trooper,” replied the secretary with a righteous, long-suffering lift of his crest.
The lady of the old school looked pensive, and smiled.
“Can the boy swear? What a naughty boy!” she said. “I imagine he looks handsomer than ever when he is excited.”
Grimshaw’s full lips tightened as he escorted her out to the carriage.
“Breaking. Breaking fast,” he thought, and he made up his mind to be on the lookout for the bill for that dressing-gown. As a matter of fact, he never did see it. In some way Miss Frink managed to extract that from the usual routine.
“What is she up to now?” he muttered, watching the spirited bays jingling up the street at the pace they took when their owner was in a hurry. An awful certainty possessed him that the occupant of the White Room—the resplendent young Rajah who looked handsome when he swore—had something to do with their celerity.
CHAPTER XI A MUTINOUS ACTOR
 John Ogden waited long enough to shake his fist toward the closed door before he turned back to regard Hugh, who, with features refined by illness, perfectly groomed, and grandly arrayed, seemed to him a new person. The gloomy expression in the eyes, however, warned him.
“Sit down again, Hugh,” he forced the tall fellow back into the white easy-chair, “and let me speak first.”
Hugh sat down perforce, but with a belligerent expression. “No, sir. I’m going to do all the speaking,” he said. “You got me into this and you’ve got to get me out.”
“Now, now, boy”—Ogden drew the nearest chair forward and dropped into it. “I expected I might find you a bit morbid—”
“Morbid!” explosively. “Me with a nurse! Me being stuffed four times a day with the delicacies of the season! Me dressed up like a Christmas doll! I don’t need anything but a wrap of tissue paper and a sprig of holly to be ready for delivery; and me a liar all the time—”
“Look here, Hugh”—John Ogden faced[126] the indignation in the dark eyes. “Did you notice my escort as I came in? And is he on such intimate terms with you that he bolts into your room without ceremony?”
“We’re on no terms at all. I despise the little cockatoo and he hates me—”
“He has reason,” put in Ogden with a nod.
“I’d like to know why. I haven’t done anything to him.”
“Oh, yes, you have.” John Ogden spoke slowly.
“What, I’d like to know?”
“You’ve delayed the settling of the estate—unwarrantably, and—indefinitely.”
Hugh stared, and then broke forth hotly. “Oh, look here, that’s a darned mean thing to say!”
“I think he’s a darned mean little man,” returned Ogden calmly. “Now we’ve got to look this ground all over, if I’m to get you out of here. How comes on Sukey the Freak?”
Hugh’s face flushed. “She’s a wonder, and a sport,” he answered. “If she wasn’t so infernally grateful to me for breaking my arm, she’d be all right.”
“Well, I think the Queen of Farrandale likes her job pretty well. You probably did help her to keep it, you know.”
[127]
“Oh, well, I’m sick of hearing about it,” said Hugh restlessly, “and if she knew who I am I could stand all this pampering better; but it’s degrading to be waited on, and stuffed, and having to accept presents when—when I’m deceiving her; and I warn you”—he began speaking faster—“I’m not going to stand it, and I just waited to see you. Miss Damon, the nurse, is a good scout, but I hate the sight of her. I want to be let alone. My arm is all right”—he moved it about—“a little weak, but here’s my right all the time.”
“But you went off your head, my dear boy, and shouted for Aunt Sukey till you brought tears from a bronze image.” Ogden didn’t dare to laugh. “It rests with me to bring her here right now.”
“Yes, and you think that’s very funny, I suppose.”
“I think that such a début as you made in the r?le I planned for you was little short of miraculous; and to give it up and leave it would be flying in the face of Providence.”
“I don’t care whose face I fly in. I’m strong enough to move out of here, and I’m going.”
Ogden regarded him thoughtfully from the thatch of auburn waves down to his jeweled satin feet.
[128]
“If a film-producer should come in here now, you would never be allowed to learn the department-store business,” he said. “I’ll wager that Miss Frink is having a romance—rather late in life, I admit, but it goes all the deeper.”
Hugh shook his head gravely. “Don’t make any fun of her. Whatever she did to my father, she has been wonderful to me. I’ll be ashamed to face her when the truth comes out.”
“By that time you won’t, boy. Grimshaw is so jealous of you that it shows your work is well begun.”
“Ugh! The meanness of it,” said Hugh repugnantly. “She is so frank and honest that it’s disgusting to be plotting against her. Grimshaw has got it all over me. He’s in his own cockatoo colors when all’s said and done; but I”—the speaker lifted a fold of his rich robe and dropped it with a groan.
“I’m pleased that you like Miss Frink so much,” said Ogden, ignoring this. “Everything will come out all right. Everybody confined to a sick-room gets morbid.” The speaker looked about the spacious apartment, and through a door ajar had a glimpse of the silver and tile of the bathroom. “Isn’t the house charming?”
“I don’t know,” replied Hugh curtly. “I[129] know when I once get out of it I’ll never see it again.”
Ogden smiled. “My actor is more temperamental than an opera star,” he mused aloud. “Promise me one thing, boy; I think you owe me that much. Promise me you won’t take any step without forewarning me.”
“Of course I owe it to you,” said Hugh bitterly. “I owe everybody. I’ve been the most appalling expense both to you and Miss Frink, it makes me sick to think of it when I don’t know how I can ever get even.”
“You’ll get even with me by just doing what I say,” returned the other forcefully. “Of course, I haven’t seen you and Miss Frink together yet, but I’m certain you have been and are being a wonderful event in her life. She has been the loneliest woman I ever knew except on her business side. Look at this perfectly appointed house. I never heard of any entertaining here, nor even a passing guest. It took somebody with the nerve to come in and go right to bed and stay.”
Hugh drew a long breath, and felt that he should never like John Ogden again. He might be a ne’er-do-well himself, but at least he had a sense of honor.
“But, by the way, I found the record broken[130] to-day,” went on Ogden. “I was much surprised to find Miss Frink had a niece, and that she is staying here: a Mrs. Reece—or I think she said it was Lumbard or some such name, now.”
“Yes, I shall have to divide the fortune with one person.”
John Ogden laughed cheerfully. The statement came so tragically from between clenched teeth. “Have you met her?” he continued.
“No; but I heard her play yesterday. She’s a wizard, even if she has got white hair as the nurse told me.”
Ogden gave his head a quick shake. “Don’t be misled by that white hair. I’ve met her several times in the South; and she is just about the last person on earth that I should expect to turn out to be Miss Frink’s niece. In fact”—the speaker paused reflectively—“I must say I can’t help doubting the fact.”
“Oh, yes. I suppose you think she’s an impostor like me.”
“Not like you, at any rate.”
“Any one as strictly honorable as Miss Frink makes an easy prey,” declared Hugh severely, “but it would be a little hard to get away with the false declaration by a woman that she is her niece.”
[131]
“A niece more incredible than a nephew, you think?” said Ogden cheerfully.
This persistent light-heartedness was met with a scowl.
“You and I can’t hope to look at this matter alike, Mr. Ogden. You see something amusing in hoodwinking one of the finest, most straightforward women who ever lived in the world—”
“Bully! Bully! Bully!” ejaculated the other. “Better than I could have hoped. Now, hold your horses, boy, you’ve proved you know how, and you’re going to be smiling at me instead of scowling a little later.”
“She’s killing me with kindness,” burst forth the convalescent obstreperously. “She means well; but, thunder, how bored I am!”
“This is the end of it,” replied Ogden. “We’ll get rid of the nurse. I can stay a few days and give you what assistance you need, and in a very short time you will be an independent citizen and have the run of the house.”
“The run of the house”—scornfully. “Like a tame cat. I suppose you think I’ll be shut in, nights.”
A knock on the door was followed by the entrance of the nurse with a tray whose contents made John Ogden hungry. Hugh regarded[132] it gloomily. The ignominious fact was that his appetite waxed daily.
“Miss Damon, this is my friend, Mr. Ogden, come on from New York to get me out of here.”
The nurse smiled and went on deftly arranging the tray. “He will do that very easily now, Mr. Stanwood. In fact, I don’t think I’m needed any longer, and I’ve had a summons to-day to a very sick woman, and I am hoping Miss Frink will let me go at once. She seemed so unwilling for me to leave.”
“Yes, indeed. Yes, yes,” exclaimed her patient eagerly. “There’s nothing for you to stay for. It’s utter nonsense. Of course, you shall leave. I’ll insist upon it.”
“And I can stay a little while,” said Ogden, “and give Mr. Si—Stanwood any assistance he needs.”
“Miss Frink is out just now, but I think I’ll be packing up my things and be all ready when she comes.”
“By all means,” said Hugh, and Miss Damon vanished into a dressing-room.
“You said you had a letter from Carol.”
“Yes.” Ogden took it from his pocket. “Don’t let your broth get cold. The letter has waited this long. A few minutes more won’t mean anything.”
[133]
“Oh, hers are always short. Let me have it.”
Hugh opened the letter and glanced over it frowningly. “Poor little Carol!” he exclaimed; then he read aloud to an absorbed listener:
Dear Hugh,
The end has come for Alfred. I am sure you will not be surprised to hear it. I have known for months it must come and have braced myself to bear it. I am glad he always let me know the inside of his affairs, and, from the time his illness started, I set myself to learn the business so I could take his place. Alfred’s partner, Mr. Ferry, I never wholly liked and trusted. I do not feel sure of his loyalty, and for the sake of my children I feel I must guard every step of my business way. I do not say this to trouble you, or make you feel you must come to me. You could not help me by coming, and it is a long, expensive journey. I promise to tell you if I see any definite cause for anxiety. Don’t worry about me, dear. I am well and so are both the children; but let me hear from you soon.
Your loving sister
Carol
Hugh looked up. John Ogden’s eyes were shining.
“There’s only one Carol,” he said.
“I’m a nice support for a sister to lean on,” said Hugh bitterly. “And this letter is two weeks old.”
[134]
“I will attend to that with a wire,” said Ogden.
“You’ll tell her not to write to me, I suppose,” said Hugh with a sneer.
“No, I’ll tell her to write in my care, as you are recovering from a slight illness.”
“I told you, in the first place, what Carol would think of this whole performance.”
“I shall convert her,” declared Ogden. “I shall write to her to-night. Eat your luncheon, Hugh, and go on trusting in me.”
“Ho! Trusting!” muttered Hugh.
CHAPTER XII THE CONSOLE
 John Ogden continued to reassure his protégé, telling him that he would be right behind him if there was anything he could do at any time for Carol, and Hugh was fast clearing the dainty tray when, replying to a knock at his door, Miss Frink walked in.
Hugh noticed at once that she was wearing that triumphant expression which portended some contribution to his well-being; and, indeed, she was at once followed by the bearer of a handsome piece of furniture which proved to be the latest artistic shape, and most expensive wood, that can encase a musical machine.
“Music is good for him, Mr. Ogden,” she explained when the polished beauty was set against the wall and the man had left. “Hugh is very fond of music, and I wanted him to be able to have it whenever he wished, and choose his own pieces.”
“Oh, Miss Frink!” exclaimed Hugh, not joyfully, rather with an accent of despair.
“Yes, I know,” she responded, opening the door of the record depository. “He doesn’t[136] want me to get him anything; but for my own sake I ought to have one of these in the house.”
“That is a corker, Miss Frink,” said Ogden, coming forward to make an admiring examination of the Console.
“You pick out something for him,” said Miss Frink. “Where’s Miss Damon?”
“I’m here.” The nurse appeared from the dressing-room and removed Hugh’s tray while Ogden put an opera selection on the machine and started it to playing.
They all listened in silence to the Pilgrims’ Chorus, and Miss Frink watched Hugh’s face, noting that none of that stimulation which the nurse had described as the effect of music appeared upon it.
“Turn it off,” she said brusquely. “He doesn’t like that piece. We’ll try another.”
“Why, yes, I do,” said Hugh when quiet again reigned. “You make me feel deucedly ungrateful.”
“Don’t bother to be grateful, boy,” said Miss Frink imperturbably. “I want you to have what you like. I let the clerk pick out these records and they’re here on trial. Back goes Wagner. Perhaps you’re like the man who heard ‘Tannh?user’ and said he thought Wagner had better have stuck to his sleeping-cars.”
[137]
“I’ll tell you, Miss Frink,” said Miss Damon in her demure voice. “You have the catalogue there, and I think, if you would let Mrs. Lumbard come up and make some selections—she seems to understand Mr. Stanwood’s taste—”
“Bright thought!” exclaimed Miss Frink. “Miss Damon, go over to her room and get her, will you?”
No sooner said than done; and, as soon as the nurse had disappeared, Hugh spoke: “Miss Damon has to leave this afternoon, Miss Frink.”
That lady faced him with a slight frown. “I don’t know about her having to,” she returned.
“Yes, a very sick woman has sent for her,” said Hugh. His voice suddenly burst from his control, “And I can’t stand it any longer!”
“I didn’t know you didn’t like her.”
“You know I do like her,” returned Hugh roughly, “but you know I’ve been trying to get you to let her go for a week.”
“And if you will allow me,” said Ogden, with his most charming and cheery manner, “I will stay a few days and chaperon Hugh over the stairs a few times, enough to give you confidence—he seems to have it plus—”
Miss Frink gave her rare laugh. “That boy is a joke, Mr. Ogden. He spends his days[138] counting my pennies, I do believe. He sees me bankrupt. All right, you stay and Miss Damon shall go.” And here the nurse and Adèle came into the room.
The latter stared greedily at the object of her curiosity. Flushed with his recent resentment, and robed in the small crimson jewels glinting against their lustrous black background, he sat there, and she devoured him with her eyes.
“Mr. Stanwood, this is—” began Miss Frink, when Hugh, pushing on the arms of his throne, sprang to his feet with a smile of amazement.
“Ally!” he exclaimed.
Miss Frink stared. Another strange name for her incubus. She was no more surprised than the object of Hugh’s laughing recognition. Mrs. Lumbard gazed at him for a delighted, puzzled space.
“I do believe you don’t know me. Why should you?” he cried. “This”—he grasped his robe—“is a little different from the canteen.”
“Hughie!” exclaimed Adèle, and hurried forward to take both his hands.
“She made music for us over there, Miss Frink. I ought to have known it when I heard her yesterday. Nobody can hit the box quite like Ally.”
[139]
“Why do you call her Ally?” Miss Frink found voice to ask.
“Short for Albino,” laughed Hugh. “Of course, Ally.”
Miss Frink’s heart quickened. “In a single night.” The sad statement recurred to her at once; but it was characteristic that she postponed this consideration.
“Here is another chance for you to be useful, Adèle,” she said. “Take this catalogue over to Mr. Stanwood and between you make out a list of his preferences. Give me three numbers right away.—No, don’t either of you say, ‘Do you remember,’ until I’ve got those numbers. I suppose you can find some of the tunes you had over in France.”
“I don’t want one of them,” said Hugh emphatically. “Not much. That thing you played yesterday, Ally.”
“Oh, yes, that will be here, and other selections from the same opera.”
Meanwhile Miss Frink was exchanging words with Miss Damon, and, as the nurse left to get into her street dress, Miss Frink went to the phone and called a number.
“Is this you, Millicent? This is Miss Frink. Hold the wire. Now, then, Adèle?”
Mrs. Lumbard came near with the catalogue[140] and gave three numbers in turn. These Miss Frink repeated over the wire. “Have you a pencil there? All right. You’ve written them? All right. Now take a cab, please, and get these records. If you can’t find them one place, go to another. Have them charged to me, and drive out here and ask to be shown up to the White Room.”
She hung up. “You can go on making a longer list now. Perhaps Mr. Ogden will help you. Excuse me while I see Miss Damon.”
Miss Frink left the room, and Adèle and Hugh immediately fell into reminiscence, John Ogden looking on with an expression not wholly in keeping with the mirthful chuckles that accompanied their resurrected jokes.
“And what’s doing now, Ally? Are you a lady of leisure?” asked Hugh at last.
“Yes; I am visiting Aunt Susanna for a little while, but I’ve got to go at something to earn my living. Do you know Farrandale well, Mr. Ogden?”
“Why—a—pretty well,” returned that gentleman who had suddenly been galvanized by seeing that the young woman had unconsciously picked up a letter lying near her, and was twisting it nervously in her hands. It was Hugh’s letter from Carol.
[141]
“Do you think I would have a chance of getting enough music pupils here to make my bread and butter, with occasionally a little jam?” Mrs. Lumbard’s eyes sparkled at the welcome bit of life that had come her way, and she felt jubilant that the drudgery of first moves in an acquaintance had been done away with in the case of herself and “Hughie.” So his name was Stanwood. He was one of the crowd of “Buddies” who doubtless would all remember her, though her stay at their canteen had not been long, and only Hugh’s exceptional looks had marked him out for her remembrance. She hoped his pleasure at seeing her and his enjoyment of her music would weigh in her favor with the difficult relative she had stormed but not conquered. That awful break about her hair! How would she get over that?
“Why, yes, it is a flourishing little town,” returned Ogden, coming nearer, with hungry eyes on the letter. “If there was some way to give them a chance to hear you play.”
Here Miss Frink returned, and Hugh accosted her.
“Ally says she wants to teach music, Miss Frink. You’re always doing nice things for people. Why not let her give a recital here in[142] the house and show the Farrandale folks what she’s made of?”
Miss Frink drew near to his chair, attracted by the interested expression of his face, a vital look she had not before seen.
“You would like that, eh?” she returned indulgently. “You want to give a party? I’ve never given a party,” she added thoughtfully. “I’ve never had the courage.”
“Mr. Ogden and I will back you up.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ogden, edging nearer the tortured letter, but even then unable to get as close to it as Miss Frink was.
“Mr. Hugh Stanwood Sinclair,” stood out clearly on the envelope, and Ogden could see that its owner was miles away from the consciousness of it.
He slid around Miss Frink’s back. “Excuse me, Mrs. Re—Lumbard, my letter, please.”
Adèle flattened the bent thing quickly. “Oh, pardon me,” she said, and put it in the outstretched hand. Mechanically, and from the force of fixed habit to see everything, especially those things which it was desired she should not see, she glanced at the letter in passing it; but her attention was quickly absorbed in Hugh’s further suggestions regarding publicity for her, and she was divided between hope[143] and fear as to the effect on Miss Frink of his interest.
Miss Frink continued to stand there, looking down absorbedly into the boy’s gay face, and listening quietly. Hugh laughed and joked with Ogden, planning how they would be ushers on the great occasion, and she stood still, watching him.
Adèle started to rise. With a motion of her hand Miss Frink prevented her. “Sit still, Adèle.”
Downstairs a little later Leonard Grimshaw left the study intending to go up to his room.
Stebbins was just opening the front door as he came through the hall. Millicent Duane entered. She bowed to the secretary, but addressed herself to the servant.
“Will you please show me to the White Room?” she said.
Grimshaw, after a patronizing return of her greeting, was moving toward the stairway, but now he paused. “What did you wish, Miss Millicent?”
“Miss Frink sent me for some records and asked me to bring them here to the White Room.”
“Records?” Grimshaw looked dazed. “I thought I heard a band in the street a few[144] minutes ago. I wonder if Miss Frink—” He paused and fixed his round spectacles on Millicent as if he suspected her of being in some plot.
The girl turned again toward Stebbins.
“You don’t need to go up. I’ll take them,” the secretary came forward and held out his hand for the parcel.
“Thank you, but I want to do just what Miss Frink asked me to.” The girl clasped her package closer.
Grimshaw smiled disagreeably. “The White Room is a very attractive place, eh?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” returned the girl, her cheeks reddening at his manner. “I only know that I feel I would rather do exactly what Miss Frink asked. She may have a further errand for me.”
The secretary motioned to Stebbins to go.
“I will take you, then,” he said shortly.
He preceded her up the stairs in silence, thinking his own disturbed thoughts about that band in the street, and poor broken Miss Frink’s obsession.
Arrived at the door of the White Room, they could hear a buzz of voices within, and a man’s laugh. The secretary knocked punctiliously, and Miss Frink herself opened the door.
“That’s a good child,” she said to Millicent.[145] “You made good time. I think you must have read ‘A Message to Garcia.’ Come in and meet Prince Charming.”
Millicent, her cheeks stinging in the sudden understanding of the secretary’s gibe, yielded up her package, and with wide eyes beheld the smiling face above the dressing-gown. She impulsively took a step backward and Adèle’s lip curled at her expression.
“No, no,” said Miss Frink, “come right in. That’s what she called you, Hugh, before she even knew of your existence. Prince Charming. Now see if you can live up to it.”
Hugh rose, and, though his mind was still echoing with their jokes about the recital, this surprising statement fixed his attention on the blushing, unsmiling girl with the startled eyes, whom Miss Frink was drawing forward. “Miss Duane, Prince Charming,” she said.
The two young things gazed at each other. Poor little intense, conscious Millicent could only nod, her eyes frightened and fascinated.
Hugh nodded, too, smiling. “A case of mistaken identity, Miss Duane,” he said, and dropped back into his chair.
Millicent noted the proximity to it of Mrs. Lumbard’s, as she gave a little nod toward Adèle and breathed her name.
[146]
“Mr. Ogden,” said Miss Frink, without releasing the girl’s hand, “this is my friend Miss Duane; no, don’t go, Millicent. I want you to stay and hear these things you’ve brought. Perhaps we shall want to send them back.”
Leonard Grimshaw had remained in the room, and stood sphinx-like, his eyes first on the new piece of furniture and then on Adèle, who appeared to be chatting with Hugh in the manner of an old friend.
Mrs. Lumbard noted his surprise.
“I don’t believe I told you I worked in France, Leonard,” she said. “Imagine my amazement to find that Mr. Stanwood is one of my old Buddies.”
The secretary received this information with a stiff bow.
“Sit down, Grim. Never mind me,” said Miss Frink. “Mr. Ogden is teaching me how to run this new plaything. Here”—she carried the unwrapped records to Hugh—“choose your opening number.”
Adèle, with her head close to his, pointed out the desired ragtime. Miss Frink took it back to the machine.
Hugh looked at Millicent. Her fair hair was shining palely under her blue hat. Her cheeks[147] were glowing. Her eyes were fixed on the music-machine. How could Miss Frink have been so cruel! She could feel the secretary’s scornful spectacles, and Mrs. Lumbard’s cold glance. This fashionable Mr. Ogden. Probably he was contemptuous, too, of the countrified errand-girl so ready to admire Prince Charming.
The music started. As it went on, Miss Frink, staring at her new purchase, began to frown in a puzzled way as if it had maliciously betrayed her, and was chuckling. She finally turned toward Hugh. His face was beaming. He had risen and was sitting on the arm of his chair swinging one of his big satin-shod feet, while he softly beat his knee with one hand.
He looked so handsome and happy she glanced at Adèle. “Wicked and happy!” was her quick mental exclamation. On, to Millicent, her gaze roved. Plenty of color was there, but no expression. There was no face more naturally expressive. Miss Frink began to suspect that she had embarrassed the girl.
The strains ceased, and “silence like a poultice” fell.
“Bully!” cried Hugh, gayly snapping his fingers. “That’s the stuff.”
“You liked that?” exclaimed Miss Frink. “You like to be cross-eyed and pigeon-toed?”
[148]
John Ogden laughed. “He’ll never let you send that one back, Miss Frink. The youth of to-day have reverted to savagery.”
“My vote is that it should go back,” declared Leonard Grimshaw. The sphinx had spoken, and in a voice that cracked.
“Oh, we’re in the minority, Grim,” sighed Miss Frink.
“I don’t believe so,” he said, making one last stand for the circumspection and decency of the house. “Mr. Stanwood and Mrs. Lumbard find it to their taste evidently, but Mr. Ogden I’m sure does not. I think it is simply disgusting, and if Millicent Duane is honest she will say the same.”
His heat amused Hugh, who caught the glance which the young girl, appealed to, turned to him, involuntarily. He leaned forward and held her there. She could not free herself quickly from that laughing, questioning gaze.
Starting up from her chair she said: “I—I don’t believe I heard it—much.”
“Didn’t hear it!” exclaimed Miss Frink, putting her hands over her own suffering ears.
“I—Grandpa is waiting for me, Miss Frink. If you don’t need me any more—”
“No, child. I don’t need you. Thank you, and run along.”
[149]
Millicent swept the room with a vague, inclusive nod, and, going out into the hall, hurried to the stairs, and ran down. Her breath came fast, her eyes were dim and she stumbled. Some one behind her, unheard on the thick covering, caught her. She started and flung a hand across her eyes.
“Did you have your cab wait, Miss Duane?” asked John Ogden.
CHAPTER XIII MILLICENT DUANE
 She glanced at him through the moisture. His face was seriously questioning. “No—I sent it away,” she replied indistinctly.
“If you don’t mind I’ll walk on with you a bit, then.” He took his hat and opened the door for her. “My favorite part of the day,” he added.
In silence they crossed the wide veranda, and when they were descending the steps Millicent spoke again: “It sounded very foolish, for me to say I didn’t hear that record.”
“Perhaps you are one of the fortunate people who can close their ears to what they don’t wish to hear.” They passed through the iron gates. “Or perhaps you didn’t want to take sides. I saw Mr. Stanwood trying to hypnotize you.”
Millicent met her companion’s kind smile. “Why did Miss Frink want to make me feel so foolish?” she burst out impetuously.
“I’m sure she didn’t wish to or mean to. You shouldn’t grudge her a little fun. I’m certain she doesn’t have much. What she said shouldn’t have been embarrassing. It was extremely mysterious, however.”
[151]
Millicent regarded her companion again, suspiciously; but his was a most reassuring face, and, besides, he had a number of gray hairs.
“She said,” he went on, “that you called Mr. Stanwood Prince Charming before you knew of his existence. Nothing in that to offend you, but a riddle of riddles all the same, to me.”
Ogden’s pleasant voice soothing her vanity made swallowing a much easier matter. “You see,” she hesitated, “I used to be in Ross Graham’s.”
“Long ago?” He glanced at her childlike profile.
“Yes.—About three days. Miss Frink bought something of me—and I said—it was fit for Prince Charming—and Miss Frink didn’t know about fairy tales.”
“I dare say not,” remarked Ogden.
“So I told her, and we—we got acquainted that way.”
“Not that gorgeous robe!” said Ogden, suddenly enlightened.
“Yes, that horrid dressing-gown!”
“Horrid? It’s a dream!”
“Yes, a nightmare.”
“What’s all this? What’s all this?”
“I didn’t know he was there—in Miss Frink’s house.”
[152]
“She said you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know it was for him.”
“She said so.”
Millicent of the glowing cheeks turned quickly on her companion; and he smiled into her disturbed eyes.
“There is only one explanation of Miss Frink’s remark causing you embarrassment,” he said.
“Oh, of course I know I ought to have said something bright, and funny, and careless, but I never am bright, and funny, and careless. What do you mean by explanation?”
“Oh, just that the—the disturbing fact was that you found you had hit the nail on the head: that he was Prince Charming, you know.”
If Millicent’s cheeks could have gained a deeper hue it would have been there. Her temples grew rosy, and her lips parted. A little frown met her companion.
“Now, if it had been I that sat there sporting all those crimson jewels, I, with my high forehead, and silver threads among the gold, you would just have given a little sympathetic grin at Papa, and curtsied, and let it go at that.”
“Mr. Ogden,” with displeasure, “I am not so—”
“Just let me tell you, Miss Duane, so you’ll[153] think better of him, that Prince Charming isn’t working at it as a profession at all. I never saw anybody whose good looks disturbed him less.”
“Mr. Ogden, do you suppose—”
“So I don’t want you to let it set you against him, or feel the way you did when you ran downstairs just now. By the way, Miss Duane, do you happen to be related to the Colonel Duane who has a war record? Very distinguished man. I’ve heard he lives in Farrandale.”
The speaker had the pleasure of watching the transformation in the transparent face, from bewildered resentment to eagerness.
“There!” he said suddenly, “I suspected you had a dimple. If I had been wearing that dressing-gown, I should have seen it sooner.”
“Why, it’s Grandpa. Colonel Duane is my grandfather.—Perhaps you knew it all the time, and that is the reason you’ve been so—so disrespectful in your talk.”
Ogden laughed. “Indeed, the fact should have made me far more respectful. I didn’t know it, but your pretty name brought up the association. I certainly should like to meet Colonel Duane.”
“Well, you’re going to,” said Millicent eagerly. “We live together and we have a garden. We live in one of Miss Frink’s houses,[154] and when I used to be in Ross Graham’s—”
“Three days ago,” put in Ogden.
“Well, it seems three months. Then I had so little time with him; but now that I only have to get Miss Frink to sleep—”
“To sleep!”
“Not at night, you know. Just in the daytime. She has some one come and read to her, and now it’s me. It used to be another girl, but she bobbed her hair and lost the place. Poor Damaris! I do so wish I could get Miss Frink to let her have my position in the gloves, Miss Frink hates bobbed hair so. Do you think you might help, Mr. Ogden?”
“Anything I can do. Buy her some hair tonic, perhaps?”
Millicent laughed. “I may ask you to help,” she said earnestly. “We’re nearly there, Mr. Ogden, and I want to tell you before we meet Grandpa that I appreciate your kindness in seeing that I was unhappy and running after me. Mrs. Lumbard—do you know Mrs. Lumbard?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, she—even in that short time she made me feel I was in the way—and—and everything was wrong. I don’t want you to think I’m too stupid.”
[155]
Ogden met her appealing look. “I understand you very well,” he said.
They approached the little old house built before Farrandale had grown up.
“I’m so pleased that you appreciate Grandpa,” the girl went on. “You see Grandpa was a celebrated lawyer when he laid down his profession to go into that war. He is Somebody!”
Ogden perceived the white-haired figure in the garden. The old man had the hose in his hand and was sprinkling plants, shrubs and lawn.
When Ogden returned to the White Room, he found Hugh alone and rather impatient.
“Where did you disappear to?” inquired the boy.
“I eloped with that record-bearing peach.”
“What did you do that for?”
“Why, didn’t you see she was much disturbed in her mind?”
“She didn’t have pep enough to stand up against the cockatoo.”
“She had one object in life just then, and that was to get out of here.”
“We’re kindred spirits, then, even if she doesn’t care for jazz. Say, I’m going down to dinner, Ogden,” added the boy eagerly. “I’m[156] going to get out of these infernal swaddling clothes—”
Ogden laughed. “There you are kindred spirits, too,” he said. “The peach has it in for that dressing-gown.”
Hugh glanced down over it. “That’s queer. You’d think a girl would just revel in it.”
“Probably she would if you hadn’t been wearing it.”
Hugh looked inquiring.
“Miss Frink ‘fussed’ her with all that Prince Charming stuff.”
The boy shook his head. “What was Miss Frink up to, anyway?”
“Why, Miss Duane used to be in Ross Graham’s—three days ago; and she sold your benefactress the royal robe, and told her it was fit for Prince Charming, not knowing whom it was for.”
“And that ‘fussed’ her?” asked Hugh incredulously. “Aren’t girls the limit? What did she care who it was for, so she made the sale?”
Ogden looked at his protégé quizzically. “Oh, she’s been to the movies.”
Hugh stared and scowled deeper. “Now, don’t you get bats in the belfry, too,” he said.
“Miss Duane has retired from business and is now reader-in-chief to Miss Frink.”
[157]
“So Ally told me. She tried for the job herself and was turned down, she says.”
“Really? You didn’t seem to realize that your friend was playing with that letter of Carol’s some time before I rescued it.”
“Well, why shouldn’t she?”
Ogden raised his eyebrows and smiled.
“Oh, shoot!” ejaculated Hugh gloomily, suddenly understanding. “Say, I ought to be writing to Carol.”
Ogden nodded. “I have just been sending her a full day-letter in your name, and you promised to write at once, and also asked her to write you in my care, as your plans are unsettled just now.”
“I’ll say they are!” said Hugh emphatically. He was thoughtful for a space. “Carol all alone,” he said presently. “I tell you, Mr. Ogden, it makes me feel like taking a brace and amounting to something. I read law the last year before the war. I’d like to go on with it. If Carol’s partner in the business is unreliable, I’d like to be able to attend to him.”
“I’ve been talking to an ex-lawyer to-day, one who has made his mark. Little Miss Duane’s grandfather. He is a veteran of the Cuban War. Colonel Duane. Perhaps he has his law library still.”
[158]
“He could steer me, anyway,” replied Hugh, looking interested—“if I should stay on in the town,” he added, looking away. After another pause he went on: “It was good fun to see Ally again and made everything seem more familiar.”
“How much do you know about Mrs. Reece-Lumbard?” asked Ogden.
Hugh laughed reminiscently. “Nothing except those twinkly fingers of hers. She tried some highbrow stuff on us at first—uplift, artistic, that kind; but when she found we walked out on her she changed. Great Scott, she could whoop it up, and we sang till the roof nearly lifted. I may have heard her name in those days, but if I did I’d forgotten it.”
“Well, she married Tom Reece,” said Ogden. “He was in the Medical Corps over there, and when they came home they had a baby with them, and Mrs. Reece, being a very gay lady, they had lots of trouble. She was shining in cabaret performances when I knew her, and last winter I learned that there was a divorce. To-day I asked her, when we were alone in the hall, about her baby girl, and she said she hadn’t brought her, fearing a child in the house might annoy her Aunt Susanna.”
“Well, that was considerate, wasn’t it?”[159] returned Hugh, in defense against Ogden’s manner. “A woman never gets any sympathy.”
“The courts didn’t give Mrs. Reece any,” said Ogden dryly. “I knew that Dr. Reece was given the custody of the little girl. I just wanted to see what she would say about it.”
Hugh’s brow clouded. “I’m sorry to hear of that mess,” he replied. “Is that why you think she is deceiving Miss Frink about herself? People that live in glass houses, you know.”
Ogden smiled. “Yes, I’m not going into the stone business at present.”
The dinner that night was what Adèle called a really human meal. Miss Frink sat at the head of the table and her secretary at the foot. He did the honors in a highly superior manner. Adèle sat at his right and the two men guests were placed, one each side the hostess.
Miss Frink looked thoughtfully at Hugh, dressed in the new suit she had paid for. He was happy in his promotion from the invalid chair, and responded to Mr. Ogden’s amusing stories, while Adèle put aside dull care and told canteen reminiscences of her own, some of them sufficiently daring to draw upon her the gaze of the neighboring spectacles.
After dinner they all adjourned to the drawing-room,[160] and Miss Frink, for the first time in all the years, saw its dignified furnishings as background to a social gathering. Adèle played, and Hugh sauntered up and down the room, singing when the familiar melodies tempted him. Miss Frink’s eyes followed him with a strange, unconscious hunger.
When at last Mrs. Lumbard sought her pillow, she was too excited for sleep, and the little spurt of jollity faded into the dull consideration of her situation. Why had handsome Hughie made that break about her hair! She reviewed all that had been said in his first recognition of her. She saw herself again, sitting and nervously twisting that letter. She felt something inimical in Ogden. He had known Dr. Reece. He wanted to get his letter away from her. There, in the darkness of her unquiet pillow, she saw the twisted envelope again. It was not his letter at all. She had flattened it out and seen that it was Hughie’s.
Mr. Hugh Stanwood Sinclair. She saw the address again. Sinclair. Why? when Hughie’s name was Stanwood? Why was the address Sinclair? Her head lay quieter as she meditated. Mr. Ogden had been anxious to get that letter! He had made her feel rebuked for twisting it. She lay a long time awake.
CHAPTER XIV ALICE
 When Miss Frink went to her room that night, two red spots burned in her cheeks. She was a creature of habit and proud of it. Her maid had the bed turned down and prepared for the night as usual. A silk negligée hung over the back of a chair. The silver carafe of ice water with its cut-glass tumbler stood by the side of the bed. Her programme would be to slip off the black satin gown, don the negligée, go to the lighted bathroom and wind the waves of her front hair back on their crimping pins, and so proceed to the point of extinguishing the lights, getting into bed, and going at once to sleep.
The mental picture behind those red spots was of the same envelope which was absorbing Adèle’s meditations. It had lain directly in the line of Miss Frink’s bi-focals when Mrs. Lumbard gave it its final flattening. Miss Frink crossed the room to where the enlarged portrait of her girlhood’s chum hung on the wall.
“Come on, Alice, let’s talk it over as we used to,” she said, and with a quick movement[162] unhooking the picture, she sat down in the nearest chair with it in her lap, and gazed into the eyes. “I want to look at a friend. I’m seventy-odd, Alice, and you’re still my only one: the only being who has ever loved me.” She paused in her soliloquy to swallow something. “I’m not going to make a tragedy of it. I could have adopted a child after Philip disappointed me. I could have had some one to love me, but I liked business better than domesticity, so I made my own bed and I’m not going to complain of it. You told me I was all wrong about Philip, wrong in not giving him his freedom, wrong to quarrel with him, wrong to cut myself off from him, I remember now everything you said, though I haven’t thought of it for years. The book was closed. Nothing could have surprised me more than to have it opened again. But, Alice”—Miss Frink’s hand pressed the sides of the picture frame until it hurt—“it is only my money. That is the humiliation. I couldn’t believe that I would feel it so.” The soliloquizing lips quivered. “Your Adèle—if she is yours, something in me cries out all the time that she is not—what interest would she have had in an Aunt Susanna who was old and poor? She fawns on me with meek, loving expressions[163] as if I could be fooled. Forgive me, dear, but you wouldn’t like her, either. There’s Grim, of course; it’s a religion with him to look after me, but he hasn’t any natural, spontaneous interest in his fellow-beings. The calf of gold rules his consciousness. He’s narrow, narrow as I am myself. Oh, Alice, if I had you here! If I could only do it over again and do it better.” For the first time in years tears stood in Miss Frink’s eyes. She winked them away quietly, and fell into meditation. Presently, her thoughts seething through the past and present, her lips moved again:
“John Ogden is a finished rascal; polished, suave, a real society man. Full of charm he is, and I wonder how he ran into the boy, and persuaded him. I’m hurt, Alice. Hugh’s old Aunt Sukey is hurt;—but it’s better to be hurt than dead, and he didn’t know who he was saving, I have that comfort. That was no part of John Ogden’s plan; and it makes the boy more mine than Ogden’s. He hasn’t been happy a minute since he came, and the why is plain. He hates the double-dealing, while Ogden thinks it is the best joke going. I hate lies, Alice”—with sudden heat. “You know I always did; and the humiliation—why does it cut me so that the boy, my own[164] flesh and blood that I’m mightily near to loving, has cold-bloodedly entered into some plan that has only my money for its object? I’ve been a dupe; and, of course, any young person would chuckle over my sympathy for his delirious longing for Aunt Sukey. Alice!”—suddenly Miss Frink clutched the picture frame again—“that girl—that photograph—is his mother. He said Aunt Sukey opposed her tooth and nail, and I asked him if I could do anything. He said it was too late.”
Miss Frink let the picture slide down into her lap while she followed this train of thought and looked into space. Presently she propped the frame up again between her hands.
“Of course, Alice, that single night in which your much-married granddaughter’s hair turned white might have come before she went over to France. I’m about as mean to the girl in my thoughts as anybody could be, and she has made the boy look really happy for the first time in all these weeks. I ought to give her some credit for that. It was pleasant down in the drawing-room to-night through her means; but the iron had entered into my soul, and I felt inside the way Grim looked outside. Poor Grim, he is not a society man. He doesn’t want our habits changed. Now, I’m up[165] against another fight, Alice, girl. It’s a long time since I’ve had to fight. It’s a temptation to say to them all—Ogden, the boy, and Adèle—‘I know you through and through. I’m not the dupe you think me. Get away all of you and never let me see you again.’ But, Alice, what’s the use of living seventy years unless you’ve learned to do nothing impulsively? I look right back to my treatment of Philip Sinclair and recall the things you said to me then. I shall let you help me, Alice. I will take the advice that I scorned thirty years ago. Good-night, Alice, girl.”
Miss Frink didn’t sleep much that night, and the next morning, the weather having made a sudden start summerward, she felt a new chapter of her life beginning.
Hugh came down to breakfast with John Ogden, and Adèle was ready with new ideas for her recital. Miss Frink allowed herself to be carried along on the tide of their talk until breakfast was over.
“What a lovely morning. Your grounds are charming,” said Ogden.
“Everything is blooming,” returned the hostess. “Let us make a little tour of inspection.”
She led the way through the small conservatory[166] attached to the dining-room, and out upon the lawn.
“How beautifully this place is kept,” said Ogden.
“Yes. I have so few amusements,” assented his companion.
“Thoroughness is your watchword, I’m sure.”
“I believe it is,” she agreed. “Whether I was doing right or wrong, I always seem to have made a clean sweep of it.”
Ogden regarded her in genuine admiration. “All your thoughts must be of satisfaction, I should think.”
Miss Frink tossed her head with a dissenting gesture. “You’d think wrong then, man. Let us sit down here awhile.”
She led the way to a rustic seat under an elm tree. “Shan’t I go in and get a wrap for you?” asked Ogden. The prospect of a tête-à-tête with his hostess was not without its qualms.
“No, no. This sun is hot.”
“So is this one,” thought Ogden, but he smiled with his usual air of finding the present situation inspiring.
“I’d like to know how you came to take such an interest in Hugh,” began his companion without prelude.
[167]
“Through liking his father, and loving his sister,” replied Ogden glibly.
“Eh? His sister?”
“Yes, his sister Carol. She couldn’t see me,” continued Ogden cheerfully. “She married a man named Morrison and went to Colorado. Hugh received word yesterday that her husband has died. She is left with two little children” (Miss Frink began to stiffen mechanically, and Ogden saw it), “but she is a young woman after your own heart. Her husband’s illness was a long one, and she learned his business in order to carry it on, and she won’t allow Hugh to come out there or worry himself about her.”
Miss Frink gazed at him with unconscious fixedness. “Yes. His mother’s name was Carol,” was the thought behind her stiff lips.
“Hugh couldn’t seem to find himself when he came back from France, and was rather down in the mouth when I got hold of him, so I thought. He is so young, it would be better for him to learn a business from the bottom up, and I thought of Ross Graham’s.”
“Oh, you thought of Ross Graham’s.” Miss Frink nodded slowly and continued to meet her companion’s debonair look. “I wonder why you thought of Ross Graham’s.”
“I told you in my letter of introduction,”[168] responded Ogden, without hesitation. “It is just one of the compact pieces of perfection that you have been bringing about all your life.”
Miss Frink nodded acceptance of the compliment and of his self-possession.
“I should say his nerve was one piece of perfection,” she reflected; and then her habit of honest thought questioned how she would have received the frank proposition. If John Ogden had come to her with the information that she had a robust, handsome, grand-nephew, Philip Sinclair’s son, who needed a boost toward finding his right place in the world, would she have listened to him? Would she have received the boy? She would not, and she knew it.
Ogden was speaking on: “How little I dreamed that I was doing as much for you as for Hugh when I saw him off on that train.”
“Oh, perhaps some other bystander would have saved the old lady,” she replied, with sudden rebellion against Ogden’s making a virtue of his duplicity.
“Really?” he returned suavely. “I have understood that Hugh had the street all to himself just at that time.”
“Well, I think he did,” said Miss Frink brusquely, looking away.
[169]
Ogden’s gray eyes were rather large and prominent, and just now their gaze irritated her.
“You know it is very interesting to me,” he went on, “that the mere fact of my choosing Ross Graham’s for Hugh rather than some other concern, should have saved your valuable life. I believe in Providence, Miss Frink. Don’t you?”
“I believe that Heaven helps those who help themselves,” she retorted; “and that’s you, I’m sure, Mr. Ogden.”
“But we’re not talking about me,” he responded with a gay air of surprise.
“Well, we’re going to,” responded Miss Frink. “I want you to tell me everything you know about Mrs. Lumbard.”
“Why—” he returned, clearing his throat to gain time, “it’s on the surface. She is a very pretty woman who is a fine musician. You can tell by Hugh’s attitude what she meant to the boys over there, and she has a reputation all through the South.”
“Did you know her before her marriage when she was Miss Morehouse?”
“Yes.”
“What was her father like?”
“Why—” Ogden hesitated. “I understood they were your relatives.”
[170]
“No. They’re not. Is her father living?”
“I—I really don’t know; but Mr. Morehouse died only last year.”
“Well, he was her father, wasn’t he?”
“No; he married her mother when the daughter was a child prodigy at the piano.”
Such a strange change passed over Miss Frink that Ogden was startled. She gazed at him out of a face as stiff as parchment.
“Mr. Ogden, I am uncanny. My feelings are uncanny,” she said at last. “You might as well be sitting under an X-ray as by me. I know the whole truth about you. I know all your double-dealings—”
“Oh, Miss Frink, why should you give me heart failure? I don’t know why you should be so excited. I hope I haven’t told any tales.” Ogden flushed to the ears.
“Yes, a great big one, but, oh, the relief it is to me. She has nothing to do with my Alice. Be careful not to let her know that you’ve told me this. Once I had a friend, Mr. Ogden, a real friend. She never tried to get the better of me. She never deceived me. She loved me as herself.”
John Ogden thought he had never looked into such bright eyes, and their strenuous gaze seeming, as she had claimed, to see absolutely[171] through him, sent a prickling sensation down his spine. She seemed to be contrasting him with that single-minded friend, frightfully to his disadvantage.
“She has died,” went on the low voice, “and I never found another. Now Mrs. Lumbard has claimed me through her; claimed to be her granddaughter. I never could believe it, and it seems I was right.”
Ogden frowned and shook his head. “If you’re glad, I suppose I shouldn’t regret my break; but I wouldn’t for anything have thrown a monkey-wrench into Mrs. Re—Lumbard’s machinery if I had known.”—“Supposing Miss Frink knew all!” was his reflection.
His companion nodded slowly. “Let me have the truth once in a while, once in a while. Don’t grudge it to me. You’ve only clinched my feeling that she is a liar.”
Ogden looked up toward the porch where Adèle and Hugh were laughing.
“There is one thing I wanted to speak of to you. You take such a kindly interest in Hugh—”
“That is barely decent,” responded Miss Frink with sudden sharpness. “What is it you want? When a poor young man saves the life of a rich old woman, it is to be expected that[172] she gives him a good plump check as reward, isn’t it?”
Ogden regarded her in surprise. “What the love of money does to people!” was his reflection. “I shan’t tell Hugh you said that,” he replied quietly. “He has had enough to bear. You know whether his attitude toward you is mercenary.”
Miss Frink’s old cheeks flushed in their turn. “Well, I know it isn’t,” she said bluntly; “but you are his manager, aren’t you?”
“My dear lady! Please don’t spoil this beautiful morning.”
“I’m excited, Ogden. I know it,” she said nervously. She was glad he had trapped her, but how had he dared to do it, and how could she forgive him!
“This is what I was going to say,” he went on. “The last year before Hugh went to France he read law. Since hearing that his sister is alone, he feels that he would like to go on with it. He might be able to help her some day. Yesterday I met Colonel Duane. He is a lawyer and still has a good library. What would you think of Hugh’s working at that, evenings?”
“Why evenings?”
“Because I judge you intend to give him a[173] job in the store that will at least partly pay his board.”
Miss Frink looked off at the fountain where two marble babies were having an unending water duel, and apparently from their expressions having great fun over it.
“That is a very good idea,” she said, “to read law with Colonel Duane.”
Ogden accepted her ignoring of the “job.” There was a change in her since yesterday. She seemed to be smothering and controlling some spite against himself. If she suspected anything, he must prepare Hugh. The sudden meeting with Ally and the plan to help her with the recital had changed the boy’s gloomy, rebellious mood; and certainly nothing had occurred since last evening, when Miss Frink had been a sufficiently complacent though passive hostess.
“I will attend to the matter,” she said after a pause, and rose. “I must go in. Grim will wonder if I am forgetting the mail.”
CHAPTER XV APPLE BLOSSOMS
 Adèle was in a porch swing, her pretty slippers and ankles very much in evidence when Miss Frink and Ogden came up on the veranda. She was singing “Madelon,” and Hugh was trying to stop her, amid much laughter and threatening.
The lady of the old school crossed to her and pulled down the skirt of the young woman’s pink dimity morning dress. It would have kept Miss Frink busy if she had performed that office for all the girls in Farrandale who needed it that morning, and all the mornings; although Farrandale was no more lax than any other town.
Adèle rose quickly from the swinging seat, and Miss Frink turned to Hugh. “Well, what’s this I hear about our young lawyer?”
“Oh, has Mr. Ogden told you of my wish to read with Colonel Duane? I’m keen for it, Miss Frink.”
That lady looked up into his eager face with a lingering regard. What would he say if she told him here and now that she knew him to be[175] hers; her own flesh and blood; she who but a few weeks ago had believed herself alone in the world? This splendid specimen of young manhood was hers, hers to assist or to renounce. Her habitual shrewdness and forethought warned her that she did not know him: that he must show the stuff he was made of before she could discover whether she cared to own him. He was deceiving her, at the present moment. He was only watching for opportunities to use her. No wonder his conscience had revolted at the succession of favors pressed upon him by the woman he was hoodwinking. Miss Frink’s X-ray mentality told her that here was an honest thought manipulated by the man of the world with whom she had just been tête-à-tête. Nevertheless, Hugh was at fault. He should have spurned such a plan—“And let you lie under the simple granite monument provided for in your will?” added some small inner voice.
Probably that suggestion was what made her smile at him now, so reflectively.
“That is, if Colonel Duane is willing to be bothered with me,” went on the boy, still eagerly. “I can’t trust you, Miss Frink. I won’t have the old gentleman bound hand and foot and thrown down at my feet.”
This egregious remark touched Miss Frink’s[176] sense of humor. She laughed spontaneously. The implication of her power pleased her no less than that of her devotion to this dastardly, double-faced youth.
“You just mind your own business, Hugh,” she returned. “You shall see the Colonel to-day.”
“I should love to walk over there with him,” said Adèle.
“I believe you,” replied Miss Frink, “but do you know Colonel Duane?”
“Why, no, but—”
“I think another arrangement would be better,” said Miss Frink, and, turning, went into the house.
Adèle pretended to shiver. “Oh, she does sit on me so hard!” she cried, then she dropped back into the porch seat and continued her gay badinage with Hugh, the undercurrent of her thought triumphing over her difficult hostess, inasmuch as she knew her to be a dupe and could reveal it, at any time.
John Ogden watched the young woman uneasily. It was evident that she was doing her best to attract Hugh.
“Say, boy, I’d look out for Ally if I were you,” said Ogden when again they were alone.
“Oh, she’s lots of fun.”
[177]
“Yes, she means to be; but she’s in wrong with Miss Frink. It seems she is here, entirely under false pretenses.”
Hugh turned and stared down at his mentor.
“Indeed!” he replied. “How shocking!”
“Miss Frink has found it out,” said Ogden, flushing, “and through me. That’s the worst of it.”
“A little stone-throwing in your glass house, eh?”
“Totally unintentional.” And Ogden repeated what had taken place.
Hugh stared into space. He hated to have people get in wrong. It disturbed him all the time that Ally should have been such a fool as to deserve to get in wrong with the courts.
“Of course Miss Frink doesn’t dream of the court disgrace,” added Ogden.
“Women always get the worst of it,” said Hugh moodily.
“Well, I’ve no doubt she will at least keep her word about the recital,” remarked Ogden.
“We must take it for granted,” said Hugh energetically. “We must help the poor girl, and have some pep about it.”
Ogden laughed. “You can be trusted for pep,” he returned. “That was a good line about Colonel Duane. I should have expected[178] Miss Frink to have Grimshaw escort your conceited self to the gate.”
At that moment the Colonel was watching a pair of birds feeding their young. Millicent came to the door and called him in to the ’phone.
“It is Miss Frink,” she said with bated breath. “I do hope it is nothing about me.”
The old gentleman patted her hand as he took the receiver, and the girl stood with parted lips, listening.
“Good-morning, Miss Frink.”
“Why, yes, if an old fogy like myself can be of any use to him, certainly.”
“Oh, yes, plenty of time. I’m a very small farmer, you know.”
“Yes, I have the foundational books.”
“No doubt you would, Miss Frink.”
“To-day? Yes, I shall be very glad to see him.”
“Very well, I shall be here.”
Colonel Duane hung up the receiver and smiled at the girl with the rapt eyes.
“No, you’re not discharged, my dear. She has another errand for you to do.”
“What is it, Grandpa?”
“Don’t lose those eyes out, my dear. You’re sure to need them again some time. The young[179] man there, Mr. Stanwood, wants to come over here to see my law books.”
“Are you sure it isn’t Mr. Ogden?” asked Millicent earnestly. “He was so interested in everything yesterday.”
“No, it is Mr. Stanwood. It seems he started to read law, and then they needed him in France.”
“Oh, I told Mr. Ogden that you were a celebrated lawyer.”
“You little girl! Blowing the old man’s horn.” He put his arm around her.
“What is the errand, Grandpa?”
“To bring Mr. Stanwood over here.”
“Oh!”
“When you get through the reading, he will be waiting for you on the veranda.”
“I don’t see why Mr. Ogden doesn’t bring him.”
“Why should he, when you are coming right home, anyway? Possibly Mr. Ogden doesn’t care to call on us every day.”
What could be simpler than picking Mr. Stanwood up on the veranda, and showing him the way to her grandfather? Millicent was vexed with herself for feeling as if she were setting out on an adventure when she went to her reading that day. She could see Hugh as he sat[180] on the arm of his easy-chair, bejeweled with crimson petals, swinging his gay foot, and snapping his fingers in time to the jazz. At least he would not have on that cursed dressing-gown to-day, and she would show him by her businesslike manner that she was simply doing an errand for Miss Frink in being his escort.
When that lady lost consciousness to-day, and began gently to blow the silk handkerchief thrown over her face, Millicent despised the sensation of her heart beginning to beat a little faster as she tripped down the wide staircase to the ponderous front door. As she came out upon the veranda, she saw him. He was sitting in the porch swing with Mrs. Lumbard, and Mrs. Lumbard looked unusually pretty in a pink dimity gown, and was exhibiting lengths of crossed silk stockings as she impelled the swing with the tip of one slipper.
Hugh at once jumped up, and Adèle nodded. “You made a short job of it to-day,” she remarked, and Millicent hated her.
“Perhaps you are not quite ready, Mr. Stanwood,” she said, with what was Farrandale’s most formal and forbidding manner.
“Indeed, I am,” he replied, picking up his hat.
“Don’t you think you’d better take an overcoat, Hughie?” asked Adèle affectionately.
[181]
“No, indeed, it’s warm. Well, good-bye, Ally, I won’t ask you to be good—just to be as good as you can.”
She laughed and threw him a kiss. Millicent stood, stiff as a ramrod, hating them both.
Hugh smiled at her disarmingly as they went down the steps together. “You know I am as pleased as a boy with a pair of red boots to think Colonel Duane will take me,” he said.
“He seemed very willing,” returned the girl, without looking at him.
Had Damaris been the escort of the most talked-about young man in Farrandale, she would have paraded him: taken him by the most populous ways. Millicent had mapped out a semi-rural route, longer to be sure, but one in which few people would see them and say that Millicent Duane was out walking with Miss Frink’s young man.
“Mrs. Lumbard worked among us doughboys in France,” said Hugh, sensing an iciness in the atmosphere.
“I heard her say so yesterday,” returned Millicent, eyes ahead.
“She plays like a house afire,” said Hugh, “and she has to earn her living. Do you believe she could make a go of it teaching piano here?”
[182]
“I don’t know why not?” returned the girl civilly.
“Anyway, Miss Frink is going to let her give a recital in her house and let the people hear her. Will you help boom it?”
“I’m afraid I’m a person of no influence, Mr. Stanwood.”
Hugh regarded the persistent profile, a very grave profile with a slightly tilted nose.
“Mr. Ogden says you had a grouch yesterday,” he said good-humoredly. “Is this a hang-over?”
At this she turned and gave him a look which came out somewhere beyond him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why, you don’t seem to realize that this is a great day. Spring is here, and the birds are busy—this is a mighty pretty street, by the way, like the country, and I’m out of that infernal room walking on my own legs. I feel we should be taking hold of hands and skipping—Merry, Merry May, fol-de-rol, tiddle-de-winks, and all that, you know.”
She met his laughing eyes and relaxed slightly. “It is a celebration for you, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes. Ogden said Miss Frink teased you yesterday.”
[183]
“Oh, how silly to speak of it!” exclaimed Millicent, reverting to the profile and coloring beautifully. He thought she looked very pretty, and he laughed gayly at her sudden temper.
“Well, I just want you to remember that I wasn’t the guilty party. An innocent bystander shouldn’t be crushed, yet how often they are!”
In the rural road, Hugh was effervescing with the joy of living, and his prim escort was gradually unbending. When an apple tree in full bloom came in view, it helped wonderfully.
“Grandpa has a little orchard. It looks marvelous. You will see—we’re almost there.”
“Wait a minute, Miss Duane”—Hugh put out a hand gropingly—“just a minute. I feel queer—”
Millicent looked around at him. He was very pale.
“Can you beat it?” he demanded feebly. “That apple tree—it’s whirling. I think I’m—going to—”
“Oh, don’t, Mr. Stanwood.” His groping hand grasped her arm, and she held him with the other while he sank on the bank under the apple blossoms, his weight pulling her down beside him.
“Oh, shoot!” he gasped.
“Please don’t faint,” she said. “We’re so[184] nearly there. Just lie still; I’ll go get Grandpa to help.”
She fled away, and he closed his eyes and called himself names.
Back they came, Millicent white and flushed by turns, and the old gentleman coming along with his hale and hearty tread.
“Not such a bad couch,” he said cheerily, bending over Hugh while Millicent stood with clasped hands, suffering all the throes of guilt. The regular road would have been little more than half as long, and she could hear Mrs. Lumbard’s comments on choosing the romantic path.
“Lie there a bit while Milly brings you some hot milk, then you’ll get to the house easily enough between us two sturdy ones. Tried to do a little too much, I guess.”
Millicent went back with winged feet and soon returned with the hot milk. He drank the milk, supported by Colonel Duane’s arm, and soon his dizziness ceased. Leaning on the two friends he walked slowly, and soon entered the back gate of their cottage. The little orchard made the place look in festive array.
“All dressed up for you, you see,” said the Colonel.
“Heavenly!” said Hugh.
[185]
Millicent was valiantly supporting one of his arms, and his other was around the Colonel’s neck.
“I’ll say it’s pretty here,” said Hugh. “Sorry I was a fool.”
“Going to put you in the hammock,” said Colonel Duane, “and let you look the apple blossoms out of countenance awhile.”
This he did, arranging the pillows deftly under Hugh’s head. He went into the house for another, and Millicent stood there looking down at the patient.
Hugh smiled up at her; and there was that dreadful smile again, that Prince Charming smile that made so much defense necessary, and she hadn’t any more. Remorse had drowned it.
“He’s all right now, childie,” said her grandfather comfortingly. “I’ll bet you’re blaming yourself for taking that road. How did you happen to?”
“It’s lots—lots prettier,” said Millicent with a gulp. She sank into a receptive rocking-chair.
“And the joke is,” said the Colonel, “that Miss Frink didn’t think he was up to the short road, even. She was expecting you to drive, and somehow or other Grimshaw was tardy[186] with the team and you had gone. So he hopped in and came the whole way, beating up the sidewalks for you.” Colonel Duane laughed. “I told him to go over to Damaris and see if you were there.”
“Oh, Grandpa!” groaned the girl.
“So he went, and he said if he didn’t find you he would go back and tell Miss Frink that you preferred to walk.” The old gentleman laughed again. “Grimshaw believes in self-preservation. That is what we are all to say. You preferred to walk.” He rose. “I promised to call up as soon as you arrived. I’ll tell them you enjoyed the trip. Eh?”
CHAPTER XVI MISS FRINK MAKES A CALL
 At the tears on Millicent’s face now, Hugh laughed aloud. She was looking aghast.
“To-morrow everybody will know it!” she ejaculated.
“Know what?”
“That Mr. Grimshaw couldn’t find us.” And crystal drops began again to race down her cheeks.
“You cry-baby!” said Hugh, regarding her curiously. “Here, I have more of a handkerchief than that. Come here and I’ll bail while you pour.”
“Oh, am I crying?” she returned, distractedly mopping her cheeks. “I must speak to Damaris as soon as Grandpa gets through. You don’t know what it is to live in a little town.”
“Oh, is that it?” returned Hugh, regarding her flushed, troubled face, and thinking it was as sweet as a dew-washed flower. “They’ll say we eloped, eh? I’ll tell the world I thank ’em for the compliment.”
Colonel Duane here reappeared and Millicent dashed by him into the house. He seemed to be serenely unaware of his grandchild’s[188] excitement, and, telling Hugh not to talk, but to rest, he seated himself a little way off, and Hugh had the full benefit of the one-sided conversation within.
It was a particularly cheerful and care-free voice speaking, with little gulps in the throat that caught it at unexpected moments.
“Oh, yes, Damaris, it’s Millicent. I was sorry Mr. Grimshaw had to trouble you.”
“Oh, yes, I’m home. It was such a beautiful day, you know, we walked over.”
“Yes, Mr. Stanwood had business with Grandpa, and—and he didn’t understand that Mr. Grimshaw—What? Yes, didn’t know that he was expected to wait for the carriage. What? Yes, it was queer Mr. Grimshaw didn’t see us. We were just—walking along, you know, just walking along. What? Yes, he’s here. He and Grandpa are together. Did you say Mr. Grimshaw looked scared? Why, what for? Yes, of course, Mr. Stanwood isn’t entirely strong yet. Oh, that’s all right. I just wanted you to know that nobody is lost, strayed, or stolen.” Suddenly, with great dignity, the voice changed. “No, no, indeed. Good-bye.”
When Millicent went back to the piazza after washing her face and applying powder[189] where it would be most effective, she found her grandfather seated by his recumbent guest and asking him about his previous studies.
“You might bring Mr. Stanwood a cup of bouillon, Milly,” said the Colonel, and the girl went back into the house.
When she reappeared, her own fresh, fair, and demure self, bearing her offering, Hugh looked at her approvingly.
“My life is just one tray after another,” he said.
The patient had just taken his last swallow when a sound of wheels was heard. Miss Frink’s victoria stopped before the gate, and that lady herself dismounted and came up the path. Colonel Duane hastened to meet her. Millicent stood up, holding the tray undecidedly, with an expression of face which seemed to be bracing for a coup de grace, and Hugh flung a long leg out of the hammock.
“Lie still, Hugh,” ordered the visitor, waving her parasol authoritatively.
Hugh withdrew the leg. Miss Frink had never walked up on that piazza before, although it was her own property. She looked around approvingly.
“You’ve made this place lovely, Colonel Duane.”
[190]
“Well, we think it is a good deal of a paradise this time of year.”
“So you overdid yourself,” said Miss Frink, seating herself in the offered chair by the hammock.
Colonel Duane lifted Millicent’s tray and carried it into the house, and the girl took a chair near the visitor.
“What makes you think so?” inquired Hugh blandly.
“You didn’t come by the road. There was only one other way you could come.”
No one in the world ever looked guiltier than Millicent at this moment. Her awe of Miss Frink kept her eyes dry and very large, but she saw her job disappearing, and herself stingingly rebuked.
Miss Frink’s gaze turned upon her.
“What was your idea?” she asked bluntly, but she was conscious of the picture made by the blue-gowned girl against the background of apple blossoms.
Millicent’s lips opened and closed several times without a sound emerging.
Miss Frink laughed, and exchanged a look with Hugh.
“You took him down Lover’s Lane. That’s what you did,” said Miss Frink, regarding the[191] girl accusingly. “Of course, it’s ever so much more romantic than the highroad; but we’ve got to build Prince Charming up before you can cut up any such didos as that.”
“Oh, Miss Frink!” It was a gasp, not only of extreme embarrassment, but also of relief that the matter might be treated jocosely.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” said Hugh, grinning. “I’ve found out what she did it for. She was hiding me.” Miss Frink grimaced her glasses off. “Yes, madam, she lives in a small town and she was hiding me.”
“And set every dog and goose to barking and cackling,” declared Miss Frink.
“But I revenged myself on her. I waited till we came to a mossy couch under an apple tree, and then I keeled over.—Look out”—a warning hand toward Millicent—“don’t you cry now. She was the best little sport you ever heard of. I nearly crushed her poor little wing while she and Colonel Duane were getting me up here, and they have filled me with the milk of human kindness and beef tea ever since.”
“It was all Grimshaw’s stupidity,” said Miss Frink. “I put it in his hands and he didn’t order the carriage in time.” Her lips twitched amusedly. “He tried to shift the responsibility,[192] and make out that you preferred to walk; but I X-rayed him. He hadn’t a chance. Did I ever tell you, Hugh, to beware of my X-ray mind?” She regarded him quizzically, admiring his beauty as she always did. “Double-dealing hasn’t a chance with me. I always see directly through it.”
Hugh rearranged his pillows. “Quite a business asset, I should judge,” he returned, and for a minute his complexion matched the hectic hue of Millicent. Why should Miss Frink be boring into him, as it were, with her dark, bright eyes?
“So when Grim got through the account of his pilgrimage, I knew you must have come by Lover’s Lane.” The speaker suddenly turned again upon the young girl with a smiling frown.
“Oh, Miss Frink, I can’t tell you how sorry I am!” Millicent’s hands were clasped.
“Now, be careful,” broke in Hugh. “Remember the size of your handkerchief.”
“I’ll try not to cry,” she responded, her voice teetering, as it were, like a person trying to keep his balance on a tight rope. “I’m so thankful if you’re not vexed with me. I do think now it was awfully stupid; but you know what Farrandale is.”
[193]
“Bless me!” said Miss Frink. “Then the child really was trying to hide you!”
“Yes,” said Millicent frankly; “and then Mr. Grimshaw went right over to the Coopers’, hunting!”
Miss Frink gave her rare laugh. Millicent was so pretty against the apple blossoms, and so genuinely disturbed, and Hugh so handsome and amused, she thoroughly enjoyed the situation.
“Didn’t I say you set all the geese to cackling? I will call a town meeting and announce that there is nothing in it. How will that do?”
Millicent struggled not to feel embarrassed. “With your X-ray mind you’ll know there isn’t,” she returned, with more spirit than Hugh had given her credit for.
Colonel Duane reappeared with another tray. It bore tea and little cakes this time. Miss Frink liked the way his granddaughter sprang to his assistance and arranged everything on the porch table. Colonel Duane was a gentleman of the old school and his breeding showed in Millicent. She liked their simplicity and fineness. The girl’s job was never safer.
When tea was served, Millicent opened a subject near her heart.
[194]
“Miss Frink,” she said, “will you let me beg a favor of you?”
“Certainly. Speak right up.”
“It is about Damaris. I have experimented, and I can fix her hair so you would never know it was bobbed.”
The caller eyed her sharply. “Are you tired of reading to me?”
“No, indeed!” The ejaculation was earnest. “But couldn’t she have my place in the gloves, if—if I show you the way I can fix her hair? And she is so attractive, and bright, and pretty, and people would love to have her fit them, and she knows so many people—” The girl stopped, it was so extraordinary to be talking courageously to Miss Frink.
That lady turned toward Colonel Duane. “Your granddaughter would make a good press-agent, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes, Milly would,” he returned, composedly sipping his tea.
“Then if people didn’t believe her she would cry,” remarked Hugh.
“What’s all this about your crying, Millicent?” asked Miss Frink.
“When I’ve done wrong, like making Mr. Stanwood too tired and—and having everybody talk about it, I cry; that’s natural, isn’t[195] it? But never mind his teasing. I wish I could get the place for Damaris.”
“This generation is so full of silly girls,” said Miss Frink. “Hugh, have you your mother’s picture in your pocket?”
He blinked, and colored again. Throwing his long legs out of the hammock, he sat up against the netting. “I didn’t tell you it was Mother,” he blurted out.
“No,” said Miss Frink quietly. “There are a number of things you didn’t tell me.”
Hugh felt in his pocket and produced the case.
“You don’t have to tell her things,” said Millicent—“with an X-ray mind, you know.”
Silently Miss Frink accepted the offered morocco case, and opened it under Millicent’s eyes.
“Isn’t she lovely!” exclaimed the girl.
“Yes. Look at that hair and compare Damaris’s with it. Does your sister resemble your mother?” Miss Frink suddenly addressed Hugh.
His tea-cup jingled in his hand.
“I didn’t—I—yes, she does. You have been X-raying, Miss Frink. I didn’t tell you about my sister.”
“No, but Mr. Ogden did. She must be a very fine woman.”
[196]
Hugh regarded the speaker with parted lips. Was she about to release the sword of Damocles before these witnesses; or was this all she knew?
“But it will be growing all the time, you see,” said Millicent; and Miss Frink passed the photograph to the Colonel. “I wish you’d let me show you, Miss Frink.”
That lady’s lips twitched and the bright eyes were very kind as she looked at this girl who didn’t sprawl, or loll in her chair, and who was fresh as Aurora.
“Very well, I suppose I must listen to such a special pleader. I offered the position to Mrs. Lumbard, but she seemed to think that teaching music would be more in her line.”
“I can’t see her there,” said Millicent, shaking her blonde head seriously, “nearly so well as I can Damaris.”
“To tell the truth, neither can I,” returned Miss Frink.
“Then—then may I tell her there is hope?” asked Millicent eagerly.
“Yes. You might use it as a bribe to get her not to tell everybody of Mr. Grimshaw’s coming around with a search-warrant. Eh?” The speaker returned the photograph case to its owner. “It’s time I took this boy home. Have we some big books to carry, Colonel Duane?”
CHAPTER XVII ADèLE
 As they entered the carriage, and on the way home, Hugh waited for some further personal remarks from his companion, but none came regarding themselves. Miss Frink declared herself in favor of pushing through the plans for Mrs. Lumbard’s recital.
“I should like to get it over with for many reasons. One is that I feel like a bull in a china shop when it comes to entertaining. I know no more about it, nor half so much as my cook. I rely on you to be host, Hugh.”
“I’ll do the best a clumsy doughboy can; but there is Mr. Ogden. He knows the ropes about everything.”
“Yes, he does. I admit that.” Miss Frink nodded in a way which again made Hugh feel that the day of reckoning was upon him. “He’s a smooth rascal!”
Hugh felt profoundly uncomfortable. He yearned to loose that Damocles weapon himself. He couldn’t break his promise to Ogden, but he could relieve himself in an honest remark, something that would lend some respectability to the situation.
[198]
“Are you going to let me have that job in the store that I came for, Miss Frink?” he asked.
She smiled vaguely at the roadside. “Of course. Let us see. You want to begin at the sub-basement, and learn how department stores are constructed.”
Hugh blushed furiously. “Don’t make fun of me, please. I was packing boxes in a basement when Mr. Ogden looked me up, for my family’s sake.”
“Yes. He says he used to be in love with your sister,” returned Miss Frink composedly; “but he says so many things besides his prayers.”
“I guess there’s no doubt about that,” returned the boy, miserably embarrassed. “It took some pretty strong impulse to make anybody take any interest in such a shuffling proposition as I was.—It seems a year ago, that day he found me. My hand against every man, and every man’s hand against me.”
“And he dressed you up in nice clean clothes, and laid out your programme, and sent you on your way.”
“Why—he did—but did he tell you so this morning when you were hobnobbing so long?”
[199]
Had Ogden laid down the cards without telling him?
“No,” replied Miss Frink equably. “I just X-rayed him a little. He was taking all the credit of your saving my life. I believe he allowed Providence a small part.”
“Oh, do let us forget that, Miss Frink!” ejaculated the boy. “I’m a chap that’s come to you for a job, and you are kind enough to give it to me. I do want to learn the business.”
“And perhaps you will,” was the quiet reply; “but we’ll wait a bit yet till you can walk a mile or so and stand up under it. I do like those Duanes. That little Millicent—I can’t help calling her little, though she’s as tall as I am. What a refreshment it is in these days to find a girl a lady.”
“I’m sorry you don’t like Ally,” said Hugh.
“I don’t like liars,” returned Miss Frink calmly.
The boy’s ears grew crimson.
“I suppose I ought to have been a man,” she added. “I seem to be out of sympathy with most things feminine. Mr. Ogden gave me information concerning Mrs. Lumbard this morning which lifted a big irritation. It makes whatever I do for her now a favor instead[200] of a duty. Once, Hugh, I had an honest friend—just one. There never has been another. We loved each other. Mrs. Lumbard came here representing herself as this woman’s granddaughter, and she called me Aunt Susanna on the strength of it. Mr. Ogden unconsciously spoiled her game this morning. I never had trusted her, and had rebuked myself for it; but I’m usually right—that X-ray, you know.”
Hugh, rolling along beside her in the charming little carriage, wondered wretchedly if she trusted him, or if the X-ray was working.
“I’m sorry for Ally,” he said gravely.
“So am I,” responded Miss Frink promptly. “I hope she will develop some day into a worthy woman. I regret that it has to be in Farrandale, but we can’t have all things to please us.”
“Some day,” thought Hugh, “she will want me to be a worthy man, anywhere but in Farrandale.”
He was in his room dressing for dinner when Ogden came in.
“Well, admitted to the bar yet?” demanded the latter gayly.
“Look here, Ogden”—Hugh advanced and seized his friend. “When you were spilling[201] Ally’s beans this morning, did you spill mine, too, and never told me?”
“Not so, dear one. Will you kindly not pull the button off my coat?”
“She acts as if she knew. We were all on the Duanes’ porch and she asked me to show my mother’s picture to Miss Duane. How did she suddenly know it was my mother?”
“Whew!” Whistled Ogden, surprised. “Search me. I never gave her a clue; but she seemed to have it in for me for some reason this morning. Oh,” after a thoughtful moment, “she doesn’t know! She’s the yea-yea, and nay-nay, kind. If she knew you were Hugh Sinclair, she would either say, ‘bless you, my child,’ or tell you to get off the earth. I know her.”
“I’m growing to know her,” said Hugh, going on with his toilet, “and I’ll say she’s a trump. I don’t like to look forward to being despised by her.”
“Hugh, my son, don’t make me laugh. You’ve got the woman. I don’t know whether it’s the shape of your nose or your general air of having the world by the tail, but the deed’s done.”
Hugh regarded him gloomily. “All to be knocked over by a simple twist of the wrist when she learns that I’m the thing she despises[202] most—a liar. She says she has had only one honest friend. I’d tell her the truth to-night if it weren’t for Ally’s recital. I don’t want anything to disturb that, poor girl.”
Under Ogden’s guidance, the invitations to Mrs. Lumbard’s recital were sent out promptly, and Farrandale society rose to its first opportunity to be entertained in the Frink mansion. Not a regret was received by Miss Frink’s social secretary pro tem. Adèle, as the star of the occasion, took an oddly small part in the preparations. She did some practicing on her programme, apologizing to Hugh for its more weighty numbers.
Leonard Grimshaw observed her infatuation for the young man, and it added to the score against him which began on the day Hugh was carried into the house. Was he in love with Adèle himself? He sometimes asked himself the question. She had sparkled into such life and vivacity in these last days that any man would have felt her attraction.
One day he found himself alone with her on the veranda. “Do you realize all Miss Frink is doing for you in giving this affair?” he asked.
“No. Is it such a great indulgence?” she returned lightly.
[203]
“Positively. It is breaking her habits of years, and it will be a great expense. She is making lavish preparations,” declared Grimshaw severely.
“Well, don’t blame me for it, Leonard,” said the young woman, reverting to the appealing manner. “It was Hughie’s idea.”
“For pity’s sake don’t call him ‘Hughie’!” exclaimed the other irritably. “It makes me sick. You’re so crazy about him, anyway.”
Adèle smiled up at her companion. “How delightful! I do believe you’re jealous, Leonard. I’m complimented to death.”
“You have far more reason to be jealous,” he retorted. “Anybody with half an eye can see that Stanwood is fascinated with Millicent’s demure ways. ‘In the spring a young man’s fancy,’ etc., you know, and these walks with her every day—”
“He has to go to her grandfather,” broke in Adèle, a frown gathering and quenching the light in her eyes. “He cares nothing for that stupid creature except to tease her.”
“And you should care nothing for him, Adèle,” said Grimshaw quickly. “He is a crude boy without a cent, just beginning life. Why waste your time? You are meat for his masters.”
[204]
She lifted her head coquettishly, the frown disappearing. “Are you his master?”
“Perhaps,” said Grimshaw.
His regard for Adèle had been deepened by the fact that Miss Frink was giving this affair for her. It seemed to prove that she was more and more a person to be reckoned with, and likely to share with himself in all his employer’s favors. Moreover, the young woman’s attraction to and for Hugh Stanwood had seemed to create a new eagerness for her in himself which at moments threatened to overcome his caution. If Adèle were really to be one of Miss Frink’s heirs, there was no need for caution. What worried him was that he feared that some time he might commit himself on an uncertainty. Adèle in her present mood was a menace to clear thinking.
The day of the recital arrived. John Ogden was here, there, and everywhere. The piano was freshly tuned. He supervised the removal of the drawing-room furniture and the placing of the crowd of camp-chairs. Miss Frink, feeling invertebrate for the first time in her life, forgot that he was a smooth rascal, and followed his suggestions implicitly as to dressing-rooms and the servants’ duties. Leonard Grimshaw’s nostrils dilated when his employer informed[205] him that Mr. Ogden had given instructions to the caterer and that he, Grim, need feel no care.
“I think you would find, Miss Frink, that we could manage this affair if Mr. Ogden were still in New York,” he said.
“Thank Heaven he isn’t,” returned that lady devoutly.
Millicent found it not such an easy matter to put her employer to sleep to-day. She was reading the book of an Arctic explorer; and Miss Frink was learning more about the astonishing flora of those regions than she had ever expected to know as the pleasant voice read on, with an intelligence born of long assistance to her grandfather’s failing eyes.
At last Miss Frink flung off the white silk handkerchief. “It’s no use, Millicent,” she said. “You know how it is when a young débutante is taking her first plunge into society. It’s exciting. I never gave a party before.”
“I’m sure it is going to be a wonderful one,” replied the girl, closing the book on her finger. “Every one is so pleased to be coming.”
She spoke perfunctorily. Adèle had been steadying a ladder for Hugh as she crossed the veranda coming in, and the look on the former’s[206] face as she gazed up, and he laughed down, had infuriated her by the sudden heat it brought on at the back of her own neck.
“How-do, Millicent,” Hugh had cried; “you’ll have to go home alone to-day. Don’t you cry!”
She had bowed to Adèle, ignoring his chaff, and said something pleasant about anticipating the evening.
“You would think,” she said now, “that Mrs. Lumbard would be the excited one. How coolly she takes it.”
Miss Frink shook her pillowed head. “I think it is nothing in her life to play to a lot of rubes,” she remarked.
“They won’t care to be taught by her if she feels that way,” said Millicent stiffly.
Miss Frink laughed. She had learned to laugh in the last month. “I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t repeat it and ruin business. I’m just guessing; but I don’t believe any kind of an audience would disconcert her. Have you heard her play?”
“No.”
“Well, you have a treat in store. As Hugh says, nobody can hit the box like Ally.”
“Why does he call her Ally?”
“Because of her white hair. When she was[207] working among the doughboys they called her an albino.”
“Is she one?” Millicent looked preternaturally serious.
“Search me,” returned the débutante carelessly. “Now, look here, Milly, I have another job for you. I want you to receive with me to-night.”
“What, Miss Frink?”
“Mr. Ogden says I’ve got to stand up there by the portières like a black satin post, and receive the guests as they come in. I thought I should like to have you and Hugh stand by me in the ordeal.”
It entertained Miss Frink to see Millicent blush, and she watched the color come now, and the startled look in the girl’s eyes, like that of a bird ready to fly.
“You see,” went on Miss Frink, “somebody will have to nudge me when I say, ‘Good-evening, Mr. Griscom; I see you put that deal over for the Woman’s Club Building!’ ‘Good-evening, Mr. Bacon; so that rise in real estate across the river is upon us. Congratulations!’ etc., etc.”
“But I wouldn’t be any good, Miss Frink, and I—and I couldn’t—it would—for you to honor Hugh and me together like that—”
[208]
Miss Frink sighed. “I suppose I should have to call another town meeting to tell them again that there was nothing in it. I was saying what I would like to have; but, as a matter of fact, Mr. Grimshaw would be very justly hurt if I planned on Hugh’s supporting me.”
Millicent looked relieved. “Mr. Grimshaw is just the right one,” she said.
“And you would have no objection to standing up with him?” Miss Frink’s quizzical smile was playing about her lips.
The young girl shook her head.
“Then you put on your prettiest frock and come and stand beside the old lady, and burst out with something about the weather if you hear me mention stocks, bonds, or real estate.”
Millicent went home and told her grandfather of the high honor thrust upon her. The responsibility, with that of netting Damaris’s hair into a demure coiffure for the occasion, made her all aquiver with excitement.
As soon as she had left Miss Frink that day, Adèle knocked on her hostess’s door.
“I heard you and Miss Duane talking, so I knew you were not asleep, Aunt Susanna,” she said. “I wanted you to see if I look all right for to-night.”
Miss Frink drew herself up to a sitting[209] posture and regarded her visitor. Adèle looked like a French marquise, with her snowy hair, excited color, and eyes sparkling like brown diamonds. Her white crêpe gown clung to her.
Miss Frink adjusted her glasses and nodded. “Very picturesque,” she said. “Sit down a minute, Adèle.”
The latter’s eyes scintillated with swift apprehension. There was no warmth in her hostess’s approval.
“What do you wish to say, Aunt Susanna? Is it about my hair? I’ll tell you.”
“No, no,” said Miss Frink. “We are way past that.”
Adèle liked the atmosphere less and less.
“Please wait, then,” she said impulsively. “I don’t want to be thrown off my balance for to-night.”
Miss Frink shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know much about temperamental people,” she said. “Go on, then. You look very handsome, Adèle.”
The young woman vanished quickly. Even Miss Frink said she looked very handsome. She exulted as she thought of Hugh. His image constantly filled her thought, and a thousand imaginings of the future went careering through her brain. 
CHAPTER XVIII THE RECITAL
 Of course, Adèle played wonderfully that night. No anxious to-morrow with Miss Frink ventured into the rose-color of her dreams. She was playing to Hugh; and occasionally she caught his spellbound and admiring eyes. Even the drop of gall occasioned by the fact that, Millicent’s duties with the hostess over, Hugh seated himself beside her to listen, was drowned in the sweetness of his frank admiration.
The great room was crowded. Miss Frink, unsmiling and reflective, regarded Adèle with a calculating eye and ear, absolving herself from any anxious care for the financial future of such a one.
To many of the audience this private view, as it were, of Miss Frink and her home was of as much or more interest than the programme. John Ogden, as master of ceremonies, conducted the affair with grace, and his easy cordiality among a crowd almost entirely strange to him was a marvel to Miss Frink, and all her mental reservations were for the time being submerged in gratitude.
[211]
But, in spite of the interest in the Queen of Farrandale as a private individual, Hugh Stanwood was really Exhibit A of the evening: the man who had saved Miss Frink’s life and lived in her house ever since. Was Leonard Grimshaw’s star descending? Was the handsome youth going to be adopted by his hostess? Why was Millicent Duane receiving with Miss Frink? Was Mr. Stanwood really reading law with her grandfather?
Tongues would wag to-morrow. To-night they were silenced, first, by the music of—according to the programme—“Mrs. Adèle Lumbard, famous pianist of Atlanta, Georgia,” and later, by a very delicious supper.
A procession of enthusiasts approached Adèle where she stood in a bay window at the close of the programme. Leonard Grimshaw was stationed beside her.
“You are a queen, Adèle,” he murmured worshipfully, and she let her brown eyes speak her thanks.
Colonel Duane approached her. “Please accept my compliments,” he said, bending over her hand. “You will have all us oldsters practicing five-finger exercises to-morrow. Here is Hugh; he is almost bursting with pride that he knows you.”
[212]
“For a fact, Ally, you outdid yourself,” said Hugh, taking her hand. “Here is Millicent fairly afraid to approach such a star.”
“It was perfectly beautiful,” said the young girl, gazing at her fervently.
“Thanks,” returned Adèle perfunctorily, looking by her and wondering if she should have patience to receive the oncoming stream of people whom Grimshaw formally introduced one by one ere they dispersed about the house and out into the grounds.
“I think one party will go a long way with me, Ogden,” said Miss Frink late in the evening, hiding a yawn behind her hand.
John Ogden stood beside her as she sped the parting guests.
When nearly all had gone, Adèle had opportunity to speak to Hugh: “Take me outdoors. Let us lose ourselves so I won’t have to say any more good-nights.”
They slipped away and strolled far out underneath the great trees.
“A perfect success,” said Hugh.
“Was it?” Adèle leaned wearily on his arm.
“You will have all Farrandale for pupils if you want them,” he went on; “but honestly, Adèle”—he looked down into her upturned[213] face—“it’s like hitching a blooded horse to a coal-wagon to make you teach.”
“You see it, do you?” she returned. “Oh, how I hate drudgery, Hughie.”
“You must have gone through a lot of it, to play the way you do.”
“I didn’t realize it. It didn’t seem so. I liked it.”
Back and forth they strolled in the shadow of the old elms, Adèle’s cigarette adding its spark to his among the magic lanterns of fireflies.
“The house looks quiet,” she said at last. “Let us go in and see if we can find something to eat. I am nearly starved.”
They crossed the lawn and went up the veranda steps. In the hall they met the butler, hanging about aimlessly.
“Mrs. Lumbard has been neglected, Stebbins,” said Hugh. “She hadn’t a chance to eat much of anything. See if you can’t get some sandwiches and grapejuice for us. Has everybody gone to bed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, when you’ve set out the stuff you go, too. You can lock up and I’ll see to putting out the lights.”
The two entered the big dim dining-room and sat down side by side at the table. For all[214] Adèle’s protestations of hunger, she only played with a sandwich and sipped the grapejuice. So far everything had gone exactly to suit her. Miss Frink, Leonard Grimshaw, and Mr. Ogden had all effaced themselves.
She had Hugh to herself in the high-ceiled old room, and her heart was still exulting in the incense that had been burned before her all the evening, incense that was valuable because Hugh had seen it burning.
Time was flying. This was her great opportunity.
“What are you planning to do with your life, Hugh?” she asked suddenly.
“I mean to keep on with the law work on the side while I go into Miss Frink’s store. Don’t you think you ought to go to bed, Ally? I know you must be very tired.”
She tossed aside the trivial suggestion with an impatient motion of her head. “I never sleep after playing a programme,” she said. Then she added in a low, appealing voice, her eyes fixed on his: “I want you to give up that idea, Hughie. Do you know what wonderful playmates we are—simply made for each other?”
Hugh began to feel uncomfortable under the clinging look. “Yes, but life isn’t play,” he returned.
[215]
“It would be for us—together. Come to me, Hughie. You would shrivel up, here. Let us go away. I will make you happier than you ever dreamed of being. I love you every second of every minute, and every minute of every hour. I—”
“Ally, Ally,” interrupted Hugh gently, “you’re mistaken. Love begets love, and if you loved me I should love you. I don’t, and—”
“Stop”—she seized his hand—“I’ll show you what love is. I will show you what happiness is. I will take care of the practical side. I have some money that no one knows of: enough to start you in business. We will work together, play together—I can’t live without you, Hughie, I can’t—”
“Adèle!” It was Miss Frink’s voice. In the silk negligée she was standing behind them inside the door.
Adèle sprang to her feet, the brown eyes flashing their fire directly into Hugh’s as he rose.
“Speak, Hugh,” she said, excitedly, “before she has a chance to talk. You know what I have said, and I mean every word.”
“No, you don’t. Now, let us forget it, Ally.”
“No, never; and whatever Miss Frink has heard she is welcome to remember. Speak,[216] Hugh.” There was hysterical appeal in the last words.
“Then I can only repeat, Ally. Oh, don’t spoil our friendship!”
“This is enough,” said Miss Frink, coming forward, and looking Adèle straight in the eyes. “Why must an artist be a fool?”
“Sometimes others are fools,” cried Adèle, carried away by her thwarted passion. “The great Miss Frink is a dupe herself. Hugh has fooled you as he has fooled me.”
Miss Frink lifted her head. “Do you refer to the fact that Hugh Stanwood is Hugh Sinclair, my nephew? That is ancient history.” A moment of tense stillness while the women’s gaze still struck a mutual fire. “Will you kindly leave us, Adèle?”
With a murderous parting look the young woman obeyed. With only a moment’s hesitation, and without a glance at Hugh, she dashed from the room, knocking over a chair in her flight. Hugh’s gaze was fixed on Miss Frink. She turned deliberately and faced him. The look in her eyes, the softness of her lips, were unmistakable even if she had not extended a hand; but Hugh had no use for the hand. With one stride, he reached her, flung his arms around her and she was held fast in his big embrace.[217] Some sealed door within her, whose firm fastening had already been weakened, opened gently. A flood of amazing happiness flowed through, and softly inundated her whole being.
From the hall came the chime of the Westminster clock. The four quarters rang; then through the stillness of the quiet house sounded the deep, deliberate strokes of the midnight hour.
Through it all they stood there. Miss Frink could feel the sobbing catch in the broad chest to which she was strained.
“I don’t deserve it,” she thought humbly. “The cross-grained, dominating, selfish, obstinate woman I have been, to be given this child of my old age!”
When the last tone died away and intense stillness reigned again, she spoke:
“Twelve o’clock, and all is well, Hugh. This is the first time I have been hugged in fifty years.”
Gently she pushed him from her with hands that still clung to him. He dropped his arms and stood looking down at her. She was touched to see the moisture in the eyes that met hers.
“It is good of you to let me hug you,” he replied in a low, thick voice.
“I suppose you think you have a lot of explanations[218] to make,” she said, her kind tone wavering a little in the intense feeling of the moment, “but you haven’t. It was all so obvious after I gained the first clue, that it scarcely needed your Aunt Sukey’s X-ray mind to see the whole thing clear as A B C.”
“Don’t use that name!” exclaimed Hugh, as if it hurt.
“What? Aunt Sukey? Oh, I’ve X-rayed that, too. I can fully understand the idea of your great-aunt that you grew up with. I”—a catch in Miss Frink’s throat stopped her speech for a second—“I was very unkind to Philip—to your father. Mr. Ogden knew me, knew that the only way you could reach my heart was to smuggle you in; but you got there, Hugh, my own dear boy, you got there.”
Hugh caught her slender, dry hand in his big one.
“If I was Aunt Sukey to your father, I am Aunt Susanna to you, and it was a gift of God that it was you, yourself, who saved my life that I might not die before I knew what it is not to be all alone in the world: what it is to have my own flesh and blood to love, and perhaps to love me a little.”
“Aunt Susanna, I don’t feel worthy of your love,” exclaimed the boy hotly, but softly as if[219] the dark wainscoted walls might have ears. “I hated it all the time.”
“I know that, too,” returned Miss Frink quietly.
“What you don’t know,” he continued, “is how I admire you. You’re the finest woman I’ve ever known, and the finer you were, and the more frank, and the more generous, the more miserable I was. Oh”—shaking his broad shoulders restlessly—“I’m so glad it’s over. I want to go away.”
“You want to leave me, Hugh?”
“To pick up my own self-respect somewhere. I feel as if you couldn’t really trust me!”
“My child”—Miss Frink spoke tenderly—“what is my boasted X-ray for if I don’t know, positively, that I can trust you? To lose you, to have you go away, would leave my life the same dry husk it was before you came.”
A line grew in Hugh’s forehead, his eyes dimmed as the two stood looking at each other. Then he put his arms around her again, and this time he kissed her.
“Thank you, Prince Charming. How little I ever expected to have a child to kiss me. Starving, famished, I was when you came, Hugh, and didn’t know it.” She pushed him away again with gentle, firm hands. “Now I want to do[220] a little explaining, myself. To-night I heard Stebbins stumbling up the servants’ stairs after everything was quiet, and I felt something was wrong. I came into the hall and saw that the lights below were still on. I came down, heard voices in here, and the rest followed. You mustn’t feel too unhappy about what happened to-night. Believe in my X-ray enough to know that her life has been made up of similar incidents; not just the same, of course, but the pursuit of excitement of some sort. I have a problem now unless she elects to leave Farrandale.”
“Be kind to her, Aunt Susanna!”
“I will, you soft-hearted boy. I imagine a man finds it the hardest of tasks to turn down a woman.”
“She said I had fooled her. I don’t know what she meant.”
“She doesn’t either. At that moment it was a necessity with her to sting, and she stung, that’s all.”
“How did she know—know about me?” asked Hugh, frowning.
“The same way I did: by the letter she held in your room addressed to your full name. She held it for a second under both our eyes. She thought she had a weapon; but the name did[221] not tell her what it told me. She didn’t know until to-night that you belonged to me.”
“I wish she would leave Farrandale,” said Hugh restlessly.
“Most women would, under the circumstances. She belongs to a genus I don’t know much about. It isn’t safe for me to predict.”
“I’m glad you’re so wonderful,” returned Hugh, “so big that you will be good to her.”
“I will be if you won’t be,” said Miss Frink, with her little twitching smile. “You might as safely try to show affection to a rattlesnake as to a woman without principle. You can’t know how or when she’ll strike.”
Hugh walked up and down the room. “Ally’s such a good fellow. I don’t like—”
“Yes, I know you don’t; and you may have to get your wisdom by experience; but she’s a hard teacher, Experience, Hugh, and she has given you one big lesson to-night.”
“I’m blessed if I know how I deserved it. I deserve to be kicked out of the house by you, but ‘not guilty’ when it comes to Ally.”
Miss Frink’s eyes followed him adoringly. It was of no use to try to make him understand.
“I guess I’m pretty tired,” she said at last, with a sigh.
“And I keeping you up!” returned Hugh,[222] suddenly penitent and stopping in his promenade.
“Débutantes find it rather difficult to go to sleep when they are tired. This is the first party I ever gave in my life, Hugh.”
“Never too late to mend,” he returned.
“But sometimes too late to go to bed,” she answered. “We must look out for that.”
“You go upstairs,” said Hugh. “I told Stebbins I’d see to the lights. Ally was hungry. I’ll fix everything.”
“Yes, she was,” thought Miss Frink, “and thirsty, too.” But she kept the reflection to herself. She turned toward the door. “Good-night,” she said.
Hugh took a long step after her. “Let me tell you before you go how I thank you: how happy you have made me!”
She looked up at him sideways. She even had inspiration to perform a novel act. She threw the big, earnest, troubled boy a kiss as she vanished into the hall.
For the first time in her life Miss Frink felt rich—and satisfied with her wealth.
CHAPTER XIX JOHN OGDEN
 John Ogden’s eagle eye had been on Adèle and Hugh when they slipped out of the house this evening, and he was well aware that they had not come in when he persuaded Miss Frink to seek her couch and leave the disposition of affairs below-stairs to him. At last, when Stebbins alone was prowling sleepily about, Ogden decided that Hugh might become unmanageable if he found his guardian up and waiting for him and his lady, as if with rebuke; so he decided to go to his room. It was scarcely past eleven o’clock, but, in this household of early hours, it was late.
Arrived in his room, Ogden opened a window, turned on the reading-lamp, and taking a book set himself to listen for his mutinous young friend. It was not long before he heard the murmur of voices beneath his window and then the muffled closing of the house door. He set his own ajar in order to hear the pair come upstairs. They did not come. He scowled at his book and said something between his teeth which was an aspiration concerning Adèle[224] Reece. Long minutes passed. He fumed. The clock on the stairs chimed the half-hour.
By the time the solemn midnight bell fell upon the quiet house, Ogden had made up his mind to have nothing more to do with his protégé. He would leave for New York the next day, after making a few straight-from-the-shoulder remarks to Hugh, releasing him from their partnership. Scowling at his book, he heard the clock chime another quarter, and, starting up, went to the door and pulled it open. The lights were still on. He set his teeth. He felt his ears burn. It was indecent. He was humiliated before the chaste image of Miss Frink. He would wait until the clock chimed again and then he would go downstairs, no matter what he came upon. He was determined to quarrel with Hugh, anyway. It might as well be to-night as in the morning.
He went back to his book. At the first stroke of the half-hour, he bounded to the door and opened it once more. All was dark below. Hugh’s room was near his. He went to it. The brilliantly lighted transom was open. He knocked softly on the door and opened it. Hugh, turning about, faced a gentleman in his shirt-sleeves with a scarlet face, rumpled hair, and a generally wild and angry appearance.
[225]
“Anything wrong, Mr. Ogden?” he asked.
“Anything wrong!” John Ogden was speechless. He had never seen Hugh look like this. The boy’s face was alive with—was it hope? It was certainly gladness, satisfaction.
“I’ve been frank with you, Hugh,” he said in a lowered voice; then to be more certain that there was no eavesdropping, Ogden turned and closed the transom. “I told you she was a person of no principle, knowing no law but her own will, and, to say nothing of the bad taste and danger of playing with such a woman, you risk outraging Miss Frink’s strict ideas of decorum by staying down there alone all this time. I’m thoroughly disgusted. I must be honest. Right at the time when you are wanting to disclose yourself, to have you play the fool like this, it’s painfully disappointing. That’s what it is, painfully disappointing. I shall leave for New York to-morrow, and you can conduct your affairs to suit yourself.”
The effect of this intense speech on his listener surprised Ogden even while he was delivering it. Was Hugh so fatuous, so impervious?
The boy, smiling and looking exasperatingly handsome and happy, seized the smaller man and pulled him down beside him on the couch at the foot of the bed.
[226]
“It is true,” he said. “I’ve been party of the second part in a love-scene downstairs, and I owe it all to you, Ogden.” Hugh threw an arm around his companion’s shoulders. “I’ll never, never forget it.”
Ogden with open mouth stared into the violet eyes.
“It’s Aunt Susanna. I’ve been hugging Aunt Susanna.”
Ogden went limp. He still stared. He brushed his hand across his eyes.
Hugh laughed low. “Yes; she’s known it ever since Ally held that letter of Carol’s in her lap; and she forgives us, and she understands.”
“What—where—when did you exchange Ally for Miss Frink?”
“Aunt Susanna couldn’t understand the lights, and she came downstairs.”
“Where—where is Ally?” asked Ogden, still stunned.
“Asleep, I suppose,” Hugh sobered.
“Intact, then?” Ogden looked questioning.
“Of course. She shared in the big surprise. Aunt Susanna told her I was her nephew—Ally had seen Carol’s letter, too.”
Ogden’s alert brain grasped the possible scene. “Ah! Perhaps she had thought that she was the one to provide the surprise.”
[227]
“Perhaps,” said Hugh vaguely; then impulsively, “Don’t go home, Ogden. Stay and be happy with us awhile. I told Aunt Susanna I wanted to go away, but the idea seemed to hurt her.”
John Ogden began to nurse his knee, and rock back and forth reflectively, keeping up occasional bursts of low, nervous laughter.
“It won’t hurt her to have me go away,” he said. “That explains all those side-winders and innuendoes. Ha, ha, it is a good joke on the lady. It gives her the nettle-rash that I got away with it, at the same time that she’s glad of it.” Ogden’s eyes were bright as he continued to consider. “And Grimshaw! Oh, Grimshaw! Draw a veil.” At this, his laughter threatened to grow violent. He buried his face in the satin cushions.
The secretary awoke the morning after the recital with a confused but happy sense that the world was a pleasant place to live in. He had not sounded many of its pleasures, and it was time he began. What a wonderful companion in all that was gay, in all of life that he had avoided, was the niece of his employer, the talented young creature about whom all Farrandale would be talking to-day!
How quietly and demurely Adèle had taken[228] the adulation of last evening: creeping off modestly to her room at the last, without even a good-night. Where had Stanwood been at the time? Grimshaw frowned a little in his effort to remember where Stanwood had been while the guests were departing. John Ogden had stood beside Miss Frink while the good-byes were being said. He, himself, had had too much to attend to in supervising the departure of the caterer’s retinue, and other household movements. He gave it up finally. Probably Hugh had been with the Duanes. Grimshaw had never liked Millicent since her mild defiance of him in the matter of taking the records to the White Room. A suggestion from any one that he was not in full authority in Miss Frink’s house put the culprit in his black books.
Getting out of bed, he now crossed the room and observed a white folded paper pushed beneath his door. He picked it up, opened it, and read as follows:
Dear Leonard: A strange thing came to my knowledge last night, and, fearing that it may be a shock to you to learn it, I thought I would prepare you and I hope you will not consider it presumptuous on my part. If it does seem so, pardon me, because it is only my solicitude for you. It seems that Hugh Stanwood’s real name is Sinclair,[229] and that he is a nephew of Miss Frink. She will doubtless tell you immediately her discovery of his identity; and we shall see if she resents his obtaining entrance to her under a false name.
Yours ever
Adèle
The secretary’s face became scarlet as he read. The shock was all his friend could have anticipated, and he felt grateful to her for the preparation. This interloper and liar to have had the damned luck to save Miss Frink’s life; to command her gratitude and regard! There was the chance now that his duplicity might antidote that gratitude. Grimshaw’s face became more hopeful as the thought grew. He saw Miss Frink, in her intolerance of falsity, sending the fellow about his business. Happy dénouement to the past afflicting weeks. Adèle was a sweet girl. Her thought was all of him, and for his protection.
At the same moment in another room another gentleman was finding a folded paper on the polished wood of his threshold. Opening it he read:
I am not responsible after playing. I am intoxicated, and a woman is as liable to tell the truth in her cups as a man. Can you forgive and forget,[230] Hugh? You can imagine how deeply I regret that hysterical outburst. Be generous to me.
Adèle
Hugh frowned as he read. Poor Adèle! What lay before her now? He dreaded to meet her at breakfast, and hoped that she would decide to leave Farrandale. Ogden had assured him, before they parted last night, that she had no more idea of teaching in this town than she had of flying to the moon.
Adèle did not come to breakfast, and, as for Ogden, it took some hardihood for him to present himself to his hostess that morning. His gay, debonair look was the same as usual when she greeted him. She was already seated behind the coffee percolator when he came in, and, instead of going to his place, he came to her and held out his hand, with an odd chuckle.
“I’m as nervous as a cat this morning,” he said, meeting her bright eyes.
After a little hesitation she gave him her hand for a quick shake. “What is it: your conscience or your digestion?” she inquired.
Leonard Grimshaw was in his place watching their every move as a cat watches a mouse; and here Hugh came into the room. He, too, approached Miss Frink’s chair, and she held his hand while she addressed her secretary.
[231]
“Leonard,” she began—and it was only in her most serious moments that she thus addressed him—“I have a great surprise for you. This young man who put me under such obligation and to whom we are so much attached, is my grand-nephew, Hugh Sinclair. I have known it only a short time.”
Grimshaw felt that but for Adèle’s warning he should have collapsed. As it was, he turned pale under the discovery of his employer’s attitude toward the culprit.
“I suppose he knew it,” he returned, with a carefully respectful manner.
“Yes, he knew it,” returned Miss Frink, smiling up at Hugh and still retaining the hand that clasped hers closely.
“Why didn’t he tell us sooner?” asked Grimshaw politely.
“Pretty good aim,” reflected Ogden.
“Because he thought of me as an old dragon,” returned Miss Frink. “We don’t beat about the bush in this matter any more than in any other. Go and sit down, Hugh, and I’ll give you a really good cup of coffee.”
The boy obeyed, scarlet humiliation upon him again. He knew the secretary’s thoughts. He knew what would leak out all through Farrandale, and that no one would ever realize how[232] he had hated it. He gave a glowering look at Ogden.
That gentleman spoke up cheerfully. “That was my doing, Mr. Grimshaw, that feature of the matter, not telling Miss Frink at first. Mr. Sinclair would have infinitely preferred telling her at once, and I think the full explanation of my not being crippled for life lies in the fact that he has been bedridden and weak; but my motto is always, ‘All’s well that ends well.’ Isn’t it yours, too, Mr. Grimshaw?”
“Has it ended?” returned the secretary, as lightly as he was able.
CHAPTER XX A PARTING INTERVIEW
 
 
Although Miss Frink had presented herself so promptly at breakfast that morning, she had been as sleepless as Adèle. Waves of wonder and joy had passed over her in the consideration of her happiness, and kept her awake. That honest boy—honest in spite of the part he had been induced to play—admired her, loved her. He had said so, and she believed him. She had not thought her life empty before, but now she felt compassion for her past. Her brain seethed with plans and possibilities, and certain charitable institutions lost a great deal of money that night.
As she thought thus, the remembrance of Adèle clouded the radiance of her reflections. She had yet this problem to meet. If the young woman would solve it by leaving town, what a mercy it would be! Of course, she had fallen in love with Hugh, head over heels. So, thought Miss Frink, sighing, would probably every girl who met him; but Adèle had hazarded all, tried to rush the boy off his feet, and, if she had known that he was related to Miss Frink, it[234] would not have deterred her. Her sort fears neither God nor man. Miss Frink shrank into her pillow and closed her sleepless eyes as she recalled Adèle’s bitter attitude toward herself, and the young woman’s triumphant hope of wounding her.
Miss Frink was a strong woman; but her excitement as she dressed that morning was not sufficient to lift her above her sense of weariness. Explaining the situation to Leonard Grimshaw was before her. It rankled that he would believe her splendid boy to be blameworthy. Then there was John Ogden to be met, and, looming dark above all these, was Adèle to be dealt with. She had been intending to have a final talk with Adèle this morning in any case; so, when the waitress at last went up to Mrs. Lumbard’s room with her breakfast, she carried a message that Miss Frink would come in to see her at ten o’clock.
“Pleasant prospect!” thought Adèle as she sat up in bed to receive the tray. “Thank you, Janet,” she said sweetly to the maid.
“You look awful tired, Mrs. Lumbard,” said the girl, “and so does Miss Frink. There’s all sorts of doings down in the breakfast room.” Janet’s eyes were big. “What do you think! Mr. Stanwood’s name is something else and he’s[235] some sort of relation to Miss Frink all this time, and nobody knew it!”
“Are you sure, Janet?” Adèle put the cream in her coffee.
“Yes, ma’am,” returned the excited girl. “Stebbins heard Miss Frink say so herself to Mr. Grimshaw.”
“Did Miss Frink seem pleased?” Adèle broke off a piece of toast, speaking languidly.
“Oh, yes, indeed, and holding his hand.”
“Mr. Grimshaw’s?” Adèle smiled wanly.
“No, Mr. Stanwood’s; and she seemed so happy over it.”
“Who wouldn’t be happy holding Mr. Stanwood’s hand?”
Janet giggled. “Yes, ain’t he awful handsome?—and now he’ll be the biggest catch in Farrandale; but I guess there won’t any o’ the girls have a chance when you’re around, Mrs. Lumbard.”
Janet’s head fell to one side in sentimental admiration as she regarded Adèle.
The latter smiled and nodded at her: “You’d better run along, Janet.”
The maid disappeared, and Adèle again clamped down the lid on the humiliating memories of last evening. She must not be humiliated when Miss Frink came in. She remembered[236] the violence of her own attack upon that lady and regretted it as most unwise; nevertheless, her head might be “bloody,” but it should be “unbowed.” It had been quite evident for some time that Miss Frink’s hospitality was being strained; Adèle could not in any case have hoped to remain here much longer. Why should she be ashamed of loving Hugh? Why should she be ashamed of trying to get him? She was not. It was all in the game. She had lost for the present, but who could tell?
By the time Miss Frink’s knock sounded on the door, the young woman was dressed and ready to open it with an attempt at a smile.
“Good-morning, Aunt Susanna.”
“Good-morning, Adèle.” Miss Frink regarded the calm face and unfallen eyes uncomfortably; and felt her own self-possession strengthened by such control.
“Well,” she began, as they sat down in neighboring chairs, “we have come to the parting of the ways, Adèle.”
“Have we? Where are you going?” was the astonishing reply.
Miss Frink grimaced her glasses off the eyes beneath which were dark shadows, and at once replaced them.
“You certainly help me not to beat about the[237] bush,” she said. “I thought perhaps last night’s experience would make you feel you did not care to stay in Farrandale.”
“After your giving such an expensive advertisement for me?” Adèle smiled.
Miss Frink’s own deep happiness embarrassed her. Hugh’s earnest “Be kind to Ally,” rang in her ears. This adventuress, pale and defiant, seemed to her so pitiful that, in spite of the other’s audacity, she had to summon her customary directness with an effort.
“That wouldn’t be good economy, would it?” added Adèle.
There was a pause; then Miss Frink spoke again: “I must tell you that I have discovered, quite by accident, that you are not the granddaughter of my dear friend. Her son married a lady with a little girl, a little pianist.”
Color stole over Adèle’s pallor.
“Ah, Mr. Ogden is a regular god in the machine, isn’t he?” she said lightly. “Delightful man!”
“My informant was unaware that he was telling me any news,” went on Miss Frink; “but, this being the case, I feel that it would be rather foolish for us to keep up the pose of aunt and niece.”
“Especially,” returned Adèle “since you[238] have found some one with the right of blood to call you ‘Aunt Susanna.’”
Miss Frink regarded her composed companion in silence. Not with her could she exchange words concerning her heart-warming miracle.
“A few days ago,” she said, “I obtained the refusal for you of a room at the Coopers’: cousins of Leonard’s. If you decide to stay in Farrandale, he will take you over there to-day and introduce you. Mrs. Cooper is ready for you to take possession at any minute. They have a very good piano.”
“I thought,” said Adèle, with unabashed eyes, “that I should like to go to the Duanes’. I hear they have such a pleasant garden, and I believe they are poor and might like a paying guest.”
Miss Frink regarded her incredulously. Was there, then, no limit to her audacity?
“Colonel Duane was very nice to me last evening,” added Adèle. “Such a courtly old gentleman.”
“They keep no maid and would not take any one,” said Miss Frink briefly.
“I shouldn’t be any trouble, for I would help Miss Duane like one of the family.”
Miss Frink felt a sort of horror of the smooth, fair speaker. She had been prepared to be very[239] kind to the poor woman who had blundered so pitifully, but her own assurances to Hugh came back to her: the occurrence was no tragedy to Mrs. Lumbard, evidently to her while there was life, there was hope. To suggest going to the Duanes’! The image of Millicent rose before Miss Frink as the antithesis of all that Adèle represented.
The latter smiled now, wan, but still unembarrassed.
“If you are thinking that it will be awkward for me to meet Hugh, you are mistaken. He hasn’t lived all his life in a small town. He knows his way about. No man ever thought less of a woman for caring a lot for him, and Hugh and I will always be pals. I don’t think any the less of him for coming into your house under false colors. He carried his point.”
Miss Frink’s cheeks flushed. “Why, indeed, should you criticize him? You did the same.”
“Only I didn’t carry my point. You never liked me.”
“Nor were you really my niece,” said Miss Frink briefly. “Adèle,” she added—and there was appeal in her voice—“in this nine days’ wonder that is coming upon Farrandale I wish that, for the sake of such hospitality as I have shown you, you would help to give the true[240] explanation of Hugh’s manner of introducing himself here. It was Mr. Ogden’s idea entirely, inasmuch as I had not been friendly to Hugh’s family. The sequel you know.”
Adèle’s stolid expression did not change, and she did not speak.
Miss Frink sat, looking at her and waiting.
“The truth generally comes out about everything,” said the young woman at last.
“Adèle, Adèle,” said Miss Frink solemnly. “Why won’t you try to make your life measure up to the beauty of your art? What I heard last evening will be buried forever, as you know, unless you yourself force a remembrance of it.” She looked at her watch. “Leonard will take you over to Mrs. Cooper’s as soon as you are ready.”
Miss Frink went out and closed the door. For the first time in her life she quivered with feeling. Her cheeks were flushed.
At the foot of the stairway she met John Ogden.
“Just the lady I want to see!” he cried cheerfully.
“Very well—my benefactor,” she said slowly.
“Do my ears deceive me? How good that sounds!” He seized both her hands for a quick[241] moment. Her flushed face and subdued tone impressed him.
“I’m afraid you’re very tired, Miss Frink. Too much excitement, perhaps.”
“Yes; in this world we must accept the bitter with the sweet, but—nothing is any matter. What did you want of me?”
“Why, I’m leaving for New York to-night, and I wish to ask a privilege before I go. I’ve no doubt there are numbers of gentle-folk in Farrandale, but I happen to have made the acquaintance of only two: Colonel Duane and his granddaughter. Tongues are going to buzz for a while now, and I would like to beat the gossips to it with those fine people. I should like to tell them my own part in what has taken place.”
“Very well; I have no objection. Open confession is good for the soul.” Miss Frink smiled wearily.
“Now you go to bed, Miss Frink. Please do. Let Grimshaw run the city of Farrandale to-day.”
“He is very soon going to escort Mrs. Lumbard to her new abiding-place at Mrs. Cooper’s.”
“That will rest you, eh?” asked Ogden appreciatively. “She really intends to stay here and teach the young idea?”
[242]
“I don’t know. Perhaps I ought not to let her,” returned Miss Frink, and her companion saw her hold her lip under her teeth to still its quivering. “I seem to be sponsoring her, you see.”
“My dear Miss Frink, don’t you worry,” returned Ogden, speaking low but emphatically, for they were still standing at the foot of the stairs. “Don’t worry a minute. She won’t stick to that teaching a month.”
Miss Frink gave him a rather tremulous smile of gratitude; and, before Ogden took his hat to run out on his errand, he went up to Hugh’s room where the latter was busy with his books.
“Say, boy,” he said, “I’ve just come from Miss Frink, and she had just come from a talk with your friend Ally; and I tell you she was all in.”
Hugh wheeled around in his chair and fixed a troubled look on his friend.
“Yes, Miss Frink looked old and tired. Her pep was gone. Mrs. Re—Lumbard is leaving to-day, it seems.”
“Leaving Farrandale?” asked Hugh, with an eagerness which his friend misunderstood.
“No; don’t be afraid. I think Miss Frink is worrying about her being turned loose among the Farrandale lambs; and I just want to say,[243] Hugh, that if you continue to pal with Mrs. Lumbard you’ll make a great mistake from every point of view. You owe it to Miss Frink to ease off and not encourage her. Miss Frink doesn’t want her coming here.”
Hugh continued his troubled stare. “I hope you didn’t tell her the damaging thing you told me—about the courts.”
“Of course not,” said Ogden impatiently; “but Miss Frink has the woman’s number all right. I don’t know what their good-bye talk was like, but this fine aunt of yours came out of it wounded. I tell you she was wounded; and you want to think of her and protect her, boy.”
“I’m going to, Ogden. Thank you,” replied Hugh, with a submissiveness that surprised his friend.
John Ogden stared at him for a silent moment. “Well, then,” he said, vaguely, and left the room.
CHAPTER XX A PARTING INTERVIEW
 
 
Although Miss Frink had presented herself so promptly at breakfast that morning, she had been as sleepless as Adèle. Waves of wonder and joy had passed over her in the consideration of her happiness, and kept her awake. That honest boy—honest in spite of the part he had been induced to play—admired her, loved her. He had said so, and she believed him. She had not thought her life empty before, but now she felt compassion for her past. Her brain seethed with plans and possibilities, and certain charitable institutions lost a great deal of money that night.
As she thought thus, the remembrance of Adèle clouded the radiance of her reflections. She had yet this problem to meet. If the young woman would solve it by leaving town, what a mercy it would be! Of course, she had fallen in love with Hugh, head over heels. So, thought Miss Frink, sighing, would probably every girl who met him; but Adèle had hazarded all, tried to rush the boy off his feet, and, if she had known that he was related to Miss Frink, it[234] would not have deterred her. Her sort fears neither God nor man. Miss Frink shrank into her pillow and closed her sleepless eyes as she recalled Adèle’s bitter attitude toward herself, and the young woman’s triumphant hope of wounding her.
Miss Frink was a strong woman; but her excitement as she dressed that morning was not sufficient to lift her above her sense of weariness. Explaining the situation to Leonard Grimshaw was before her. It rankled that he would believe her splendid boy to be blameworthy. Then there was John Ogden to be met, and, looming dark above all these, was Adèle to be dealt with. She had been intending to have a final talk with Adèle this morning in any case; so, when the waitress at last went up to Mrs. Lumbard’s room with her breakfast, she carried a message that Miss Frink would come in to see her at ten o’clock.
“Pleasant prospect!” thought Adèle as she sat up in bed to receive the tray. “Thank you, Janet,” she said sweetly to the maid.
“You look awful tired, Mrs. Lumbard,” said the girl, “and so does Miss Frink. There’s all sorts of doings down in the breakfast room.” Janet’s eyes were big. “What do you think! Mr. Stanwood’s name is something else and he’s[235] some sort of relation to Miss Frink all this time, and nobody knew it!”
“Are you sure, Janet?” Adèle put the cream in her coffee.
“Yes, ma’am,” returned the excited girl. “Stebbins heard Miss Frink say so herself to Mr. Grimshaw.”
“Did Miss Frink seem pleased?” Adèle broke off a piece of toast, speaking languidly.
“Oh, yes, indeed, and holding his hand.”
“Mr. Grimshaw’s?” Adèle smiled wanly.
“No, Mr. Stanwood’s; and she seemed so happy over it.”
“Who wouldn’t be happy holding Mr. Stanwood’s hand?”
Janet giggled. “Yes, ain’t he awful handsome?—and now he’ll be the biggest catch in Farrandale; but I guess there won’t any o’ the girls have a chance when you’re around, Mrs. Lumbard.”
Janet’s head fell to one side in sentimental admiration as she regarded Adèle.
The latter smiled and nodded at her: “You’d better run along, Janet.”
The maid disappeared, and Adèle again clamped down the lid on the humiliating memories of last evening. She must not be humiliated when Miss Frink came in. She remembered[236] the violence of her own attack upon that lady and regretted it as most unwise; nevertheless, her head might be “bloody,” but it should be “unbowed.” It had been quite evident for some time that Miss Frink’s hospitality was being strained; Adèle could not in any case have hoped to remain here much longer. Why should she be ashamed of loving Hugh? Why should she be ashamed of trying to get him? She was not. It was all in the game. She had lost for the present, but who could tell?
By the time Miss Frink’s knock sounded on the door, the young woman was dressed and ready to open it with an attempt at a smile.
“Good-morning, Aunt Susanna.”
“Good-morning, Adèle.” Miss Frink regarded the calm face and unfallen eyes uncomfortably; and felt her own self-possession strengthened by such control.
“Well,” she began, as they sat down in neighboring chairs, “we have come to the parting of the ways, Adèle.”
“Have we? Where are you going?” was the astonishing reply.
Miss Frink grimaced her glasses off the eyes beneath which were dark shadows, and at once replaced them.
“You certainly help me not to beat about the[237] bush,” she said. “I thought perhaps last night’s experience would make you feel you did not care to stay in Farrandale.”
“After your giving such an expensive advertisement for me?” Adèle smiled.
Miss Frink’s own deep happiness embarrassed her. Hugh’s earnest “Be kind to Ally,” rang in her ears. This adventuress, pale and defiant, seemed to her so pitiful that, in spite of the other’s audacity, she had to summon her customary directness with an effort.
“That wouldn’t be good economy, would it?” added Adèle.
There was a pause; then Miss Frink spoke again: “I must tell you that I have discovered, quite by accident, that you are not the granddaughter of my dear friend. Her son married a lady with a little girl, a little pianist.”
Color stole over Adèle’s pallor.
“Ah, Mr. Ogden is a regular god in the machine, isn’t he?” she said lightly. “Delightful man!”
“My informant was unaware that he was telling me any news,” went on Miss Frink; “but, this being the case, I feel that it would be rather foolish for us to keep up the pose of aunt and niece.”
“Especially,” returned Adèle “since you[238] have found some one with the right of blood to call you ‘Aunt Susanna.’”
Miss Frink regarded her composed companion in silence. Not with her could she exchange words concerning her heart-warming miracle.
“A few days ago,” she said, “I obtained the refusal for you of a room at the Coopers’: cousins of Leonard’s. If you decide to stay in Farrandale, he will take you over there to-day and introduce you. Mrs. Cooper is ready for you to take possession at any minute. They have a very good piano.”
“I thought,” said Adèle, with unabashed eyes, “that I should like to go to the Duanes’. I hear they have such a pleasant garden, and I believe they are poor and might like a paying guest.”
Miss Frink regarded her incredulously. Was there, then, no limit to her audacity?
“Colonel Duane was very nice to me last evening,” added Adèle. “Such a courtly old gentleman.”
“They keep no maid and would not take any one,” said Miss Frink briefly.
“I shouldn’t be any trouble, for I would help Miss Duane like one of the family.”
Miss Frink felt a sort of horror of the smooth, fair speaker. She had been prepared to be very[239] kind to the poor woman who had blundered so pitifully, but her own assurances to Hugh came back to her: the occurrence was no tragedy to Mrs. Lumbard, evidently to her while there was life, there was hope. To suggest going to the Duanes’! The image of Millicent rose before Miss Frink as the antithesis of all that Adèle represented.
The latter smiled now, wan, but still unembarrassed.
“If you are thinking that it will be awkward for me to meet Hugh, you are mistaken. He hasn’t lived all his life in a small town. He knows his way about. No man ever thought less of a woman for caring a lot for him, and Hugh and I will always be pals. I don’t think any the less of him for coming into your house under false colors. He carried his point.”
Miss Frink’s cheeks flushed. “Why, indeed, should you criticize him? You did the same.”
“Only I didn’t carry my point. You never liked me.”
“Nor were you really my niece,” said Miss Frink briefly. “Adèle,” she added—and there was appeal in her voice—“in this nine days’ wonder that is coming upon Farrandale I wish that, for the sake of such hospitality as I have shown you, you would help to give the true[240] explanation of Hugh’s manner of introducing himself here. It was Mr. Ogden’s idea entirely, inasmuch as I had not been friendly to Hugh’s family. The sequel you know.”
Adèle’s stolid expression did not change, and she did not speak.
Miss Frink sat, looking at her and waiting.
“The truth generally comes out about everything,” said the young woman at last.
“Adèle, Adèle,” said Miss Frink solemnly. “Why won’t you try to make your life measure up to the beauty of your art? What I heard last evening will be buried forever, as you know, unless you yourself force a remembrance of it.” She looked at her watch. “Leonard will take you over to Mrs. Cooper’s as soon as you are ready.”
Miss Frink went out and closed the door. For the first time in her life she quivered with feeling. Her cheeks were flushed.
At the foot of the stairway she met John Ogden.
“Just the lady I want to see!” he cried cheerfully.
“Very well—my benefactor,” she said slowly.
“Do my ears deceive me? How good that sounds!” He seized both her hands for a quick[241] moment. Her flushed face and subdued tone impressed him.
“I’m afraid you’re very tired, Miss Frink. Too much excitement, perhaps.”
“Yes; in this world we must accept the bitter with the sweet, but—nothing is any matter. What did you want of me?”
“Why, I’m leaving for New York to-night, and I wish to ask a privilege before I go. I’ve no doubt there are numbers of gentle-folk in Farrandale, but I happen to have made the acquaintance of only two: Colonel Duane and his granddaughter. Tongues are going to buzz for a while now, and I would like to beat the gossips to it with those fine people. I should like to tell them my own part in what has taken place.”
“Very well; I have no objection. Open confession is good for the soul.” Miss Frink smiled wearily.
“Now you go to bed, Miss Frink. Please do. Let Grimshaw run the city of Farrandale to-day.”
“He is very soon going to escort Mrs. Lumbard to her new abiding-place at Mrs. Cooper’s.”
“That will rest you, eh?” asked Ogden appreciatively. “She really intends to stay here and teach the young idea?”
[242]
“I don’t know. Perhaps I ought not to let her,” returned Miss Frink, and her companion saw her hold her lip under her teeth to still its quivering. “I seem to be sponsoring her, you see.”
“My dear Miss Frink, don’t you worry,” returned Ogden, speaking low but emphatically, for they were still standing at the foot of the stairs. “Don’t worry a minute. She won’t stick to that teaching a month.”
Miss Frink gave him a rather tremulous smile of gratitude; and, before Ogden took his hat to run out on his errand, he went up to Hugh’s room where the latter was busy with his books.
“Say, boy,” he said, “I’ve just come from Miss Frink, and she had just come from a talk with your friend Ally; and I tell you she was all in.”
Hugh wheeled around in his chair and fixed a troubled look on his friend.
“Yes, Miss Frink looked old and tired. Her pep was gone. Mrs. Re—Lumbard is leaving to-day, it seems.”
“Leaving Farrandale?” asked Hugh, with an eagerness which his friend misunderstood.
“No; don’t be afraid. I think Miss Frink is worrying about her being turned loose among the Farrandale lambs; and I just want to say,[243] Hugh, that if you continue to pal with Mrs. Lumbard you’ll make a great mistake from every point of view. You owe it to Miss Frink to ease off and not encourage her. Miss Frink doesn’t want her coming here.”
Hugh continued his troubled stare. “I hope you didn’t tell her the damaging thing you told me—about the courts.”
“Of course not,” said Ogden impatiently; “but Miss Frink has the woman’s number all right. I don’t know what their good-bye talk was like, but this fine aunt of yours came out of it wounded. I tell you she was wounded; and you want to think of her and protect her, boy.”
“I’m going to, Ogden. Thank you,” replied Hugh, with a submissiveness that surprised his friend.
John Ogden stared at him for a silent moment. “Well, then,” he said, vaguely, and left the room.
CHAPTER XXI PAVING THE WAY
 Ogden went on thinking about the unusual docility with which Hugh had received his exhortation. Also there was the devotion to his studies at a moment when Ally was about to depart from the house. How about that?
As he swung along he began to smile, his retrospective reflection visualizing that slipping away into the moonlight which he had witnessed and worried over last evening. After a minute in a rush of thought his smile broadened. It seemed probable that the siren, in the excited reaction from her performance, might have thrown a scare into the heir apparent. At what juncture had she slipped away from Hugh’s arm and Miss Frink slipped into it? Something had gone on, to flush Miss Frink’s cheeks and weary her eyes this morning. All the time that he himself was reading and fretting in his room last evening, things had been happening downstairs. Anyway, the net result had been a joyous one, as transpired unmistakably, later.
As Ogden tramped along, he was roused from[245] his reverie to realize that many persons he met greeted him. Realizing that they remembered him as the busy master of ceremonies on the night before, he responded cordially, and at last a short man in a checked suit forced him to a standstill by his effusive manner.
“Goldstein, Mr. Ogden. I. K. Goldstein. We had but a minute’s talk last night—”
“Ah, good-morning, Mr. Goldstein.” Ogden endeavored to edge away from the plump hand with the diamond ring, after yielding to its determined grasp.
“I cannot let you go without speaking again of that won-derful evening. Such an artist you have there, that Mrs. Lumbard; she is amazing. In a town the size of Farrandale we are all one family. You put us all under obligation bringing such an artist here!”
“Oh, not I at all; Miss Frink—”
“Miss Frink! Oh, she is the genius of our city!” Mr. Goldstein made known by gestures and upturned eyes that Miss Frink’s glories were indescribable. “You come any time to see me, Mr. Ogden, and I wish you would bring Miss Frink, and I show you both all over the Koh-i-noor, our theater—”
“Thank you, Mr. Goldstein, but I am leaving town to-night—”
[246]
“But can’t you spare a little time, a half an hour this afternoon?—it is a palace equal to any in the country. An organ—oh, such an organ I have installed!—we open in less than a month; you would be happy to see those velvet furniture in the lobby.”
“No doubt I should; but I have—”
“That young man at your house, the one who saved our wonderful Miss Frink’s life, he should be in the pictures, you must see that. There’s the story right there, too. I give him introductions; you send him to me.”
John Ogden disengaged the clinging hand from his lapel as best he could, and, mindfully thanking the manager of the Koh-i-noor, contrived to escape with an apology for his pressing business.
Mr. Goldstein called after him cordially as long as he could hear.
Millicent Duane, enveloped in an apron, had brought out some vegetables to prepare for the noon dinner and was sitting on the porch with a large tin pan in her lap.
Her grandfather, who had been as usual working about the garden, finally came slowly up the steps and sank restfully into his favorite chair with the calico cushion.
“I can’t get that last piece she played out of my head,” he said. “Mrs. Lumbard said it was[247] a Marche Militaire. I should say so.” The speaker drummed the rhythm on the arms of his chair.
“It was splendid,” agreed Millicent. She had been hearing all the morning about the recital, and the English “fed up” but faintly described her satiation.
The morning was so beautiful, the birds so tuneful, everything that had not unfolded was so busy unfolding, and the air so full of sweetness, Millicent could not understand why she felt at odds with a world that was so amiably putting its best foot forward. She forced herself to respond with ardor to her grandfather’s comments. She was glad he had had such an unusual treat. He had seen nothing but charm in Mrs. Lumbard’s manner; while Millicent still felt the perfunctoriness of the star’s response to her own effort to express her appreciation. Hugh had been beside her at the time, and as usual Mrs. Lumbard had implied, or at least Millicent felt the implication, that she was negligible, and the sooner she effaced herself the sooner could life really go on. And it had gone on. The stinging remembrance was that, before the Duanes left, Millicent had seen Hugh and the star disappear together. The girl’s annoyance, and resentment that she could feel it, made her an extra[248] lively and agreeable companion to her grandfather on the way home. He remarked affectionately on the good the evening had done her, and how she needed such outings; and she laughed and hugged him, then went to bed, strains of music flowing through her hot head, while her wet eyes buried in the pillow still saw the moonlight sifting through the great trees with their black shadows, shadows through which they were walking. She wanted—she knew now how desperately she wanted—to walk in the moonlight with Hugh herself, and her feeling that it was a contemptible wish did not help the situation in the least.
Now, this morning, she sat there, enveloped in her pink checked apron, the bright tin pan in her lap and her hands busy, while her grandfather watched her fleeting smiles.
“Seems to me you look sort of pale this morning, honey,” he said.
“Dissipation,” she returned. “You know I’m a country girl.”
“It wasn’t late,” he returned reminiscently, still evidently enjoying his memories. “How she did play the ‘Spring Song’! Simplest things are the best, aren’t they, Milly? I think you look sweeter in that pink apron than in your party dress,” he added.
[249]
“Didn’t I look nice last night?” asked the girl with unexpected gravity.
“I should say so. Quite the up-to-date girl, standing there with Miss Frink in her august dignity.”
“Grandpa, here comes Mr. Ogden.”
Colonel Duane rose as the caller opened the gate, and came to the head of the steps to meet him.
“Don’t you move now, Miss Millicent,” said Ogden as the girl started to put aside the big pan. “You make the most charming domestic picture.”
“I can’t shake hands,” she returned, as he approached, and her cheeks matched the gay hue of her apron while her eyes welcomed him.
“This is my P.P.C.” he remarked, taking the chair Colonel Duane offered.
“Oh, are you leaving us?” asked the old gentleman, returning to his calico cushion. “I don’t know what they’ll do without you at Miss Frink’s. That was a great treat she gave us last night. We haven’t talked about anything else this morning; and your announcements, and the general pleasant informality with which you managed the occasion, gave it the last touch of charm. How is that delightful, bright particular star, this morning?”
[250]
“Mrs. Lumbard? I haven’t seen her. She didn’t come down to breakfast.”
“Well, she certainly earned that luxury,” responded the Colonel, while Millicent’s gaze fell demurely to her busy hands. “I’d like to have Milly take some lessons of her,” he added.
The girl flashed a quick glance up at the caller. “But I’m not going to,” she said. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
The men laughed.
“What makes you go away, Mr. Ogden?” she added.
“Oh, life can’t be all Farrandale, you know. There’s business waiting for me over there in the suburb of New York. I only came to see Hugh because he was ill.”
“Hugh seemed quite proud of his brilliant friend last night,” remarked the Colonel.
“Oh!” thought Millicent, “will he ever get through talking about her!”
“I shouldn’t blame him if he lost his heart—so handsome and so talented she is.”
Down went the young girl’s gaze again to the contents of her pan.
John Ogden saw the compression of her soft lips.
“Mrs. Lumbard is leaving Miss Frink to-day also,” he said.
[251]
Millicent looked up quickly again.
“Why is that? Not leaving Farrandale, I hope,” said the Colonel.
“No. I heard some one say something about the Coopers’. Of course, Mrs. Lumbard has only been visiting Miss Frink.”
“The Coopers’!” echoed Millicent. “Is Mrs. Lumbard going to live at the Coopers’?”
Ogden shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t quote me. I may be all off, but I understood that.”
“Of course, they are Mr. Grimshaw’s cousins,” said the girl reflectively.
“Another one of her satellites,” remarked the old gentleman, smiling. “It was easy to see last evening that Grimshaw’s steady head was all off its balance. I don’t believe you attractive bachelors are going to let that charmer teach very long. One of you will snatch her up.”
“I had to leave her to my rivals last night,” said Ogden. “I probably lost out for good.”
Millicent’s grave large gaze was upon him, trying to discover whether he was serious. She liked Mr. Ogden, but she would have been perfectly willing he should snatch up Mrs. Lumbard.
“You’re quite a matchmaker, Colonel,” he went on. “I don’t know how that rosebud over[252] there behind the tin pan escapes your machinations.”
Millicent threw a glance over her shoulder in evident search for the rosebud, and Ogden laughed.
“Oh, she,” returned the old man regarding the girl with eyes of placid love; “she has a heart like a flint. We have a lot of the nicest boys you’d ever care to know, in Farrandale. She used to like them, Milly did. When she was in the store, I used to have to complain of the way she let them bother around and keep her up late; but now she has left the store, and could sleep in the morning if she wanted to, she won’t have a thing to do with them. They can’t do anything right. One laughs too loud, one brings his mandolin and she hates it, one parts his hair in the middle, and they all varnish their locks—”
“Grandpa!” Millicent interrupted him with rather unnecessary severity, Ogden thought. “I don’t like to be discussed.”
Her grandfather laughed toward her affectionately, and raised his eyebrows. “Gracious!” he exclaimed. “What a grown-up baby I have.”
“Well, I must get at my business,” said the visitor. “I came this morning, not only to say[253] good-bye, but to let you nice people be the first to know something concerning our friend Hugh.”
Millicent’s collection of knives hit the tin pan and clattered to the floor. The pan so nearly fell after it that Ogden, springing forward, caught it just in time. The girl’s hands trembled as she grasped it, and murmured some inarticulate thanks.
“Ah, many a true word spoken in jest,” said the Colonel. “That is why the lovely pianist is leaving Miss Frink’s; but conventionality can be carried too far, I think.”
John Ogden was busy restoring Millicent’s goods, wares, and chattels to her lap, and he camouflaged her tremor by laughing allusion to Uncle Remus, and Brer Rabbit’s clatter with his seben tin plates, and seben tin cups.
“No, nothing of that kind, Colonel Duane,” he said as he took his chair again. “This is a story that I will make brief. Long ago there was a feud in Miss Frink’s small family.”
Millicent tried to moisten her dry lips, and ceased attempting to use the knife which seemed determined to beat a rat-a-plan against the side of the pan.
“She had a nephew, Philip Sinclair, whom she loved; but his opposition to her plans for[254] him angered her to such a degree that it made a complete break. She never met his wife or children, and refused to know them. I was a friend of that family, and Hugh was one of the children. When he returned from the war, I hunted him up.”
Ogden glanced at Millicent. She was leaning back in her chair, her lips parted, her face very pale, and her eyes full upon him. He looked back at once to Colonel Duane, who was giving him similar fixed attention.
“When I met Hugh, whom I had last seen as a child, you can understand what an impression he made on me, and how I thought of his lonely great-aunt whom I had come to know well in the way of business. Hugh was alone, and drifting, like so many of the returned boys, and a scheme came into my head which I suggested to him. It was to come here with a letter of introduction from me, and, using only his first two names, Hugh Stanwood, apply to Miss Frink for a job in Ross Graham Company. I knew there was no hope of her receiving him if she knew he was the son of the man who had so bitterly disappointed and offended her, and I trusted to his winning her esteem before the truth came out. I had a lot of difficulty in getting Hugh’s consent to this, but at last I succeeded.[255] I fitted him out for the experiment, which, of course, put him under some obligation to me: an obligation which was my weapon to hold him to our compact. He has had times of hating me, because Hugh is essentially honest; and the remarkable coincidence which threw him into his aunt’s house as a guest, instead of allowing him to be an employe in her store, gave him many a weary hour of thought which he used mostly for condemnation of me and himself. I came on as soon as I learned of his illness, and found that Miss Frink had become very fond of the boy. When she at last experienced the shock of discovering who he was, she suspected me at once as being the instigator of the plan, and for a time she was torn: undecided as to whether I should be cannonaded or canonized. I judge she has decided on the latter course, for this morning she called me her benefactor.”
Ogden paused.
“Extraordinary!” said Colonel Duane. “I’ll warrant the old lady is happy.”
Millicent said nothing; just gazed.
“My reason for coming to tell you this”—Ogden addressed Millicent now—“is that, as the affair is known and discussed, Hugh is going to be misunderstood and condemned. Thoroughly[256] disagreeable things are going to be said about him. He is going to be called a fortune-hunter.”
“He was, wasn’t he?” broke in Millicent suddenly.
“I was. It was I. Please remember that. I exacted from him at the time a promise that he would not reveal their relationship to Miss Frink until I gave him permission; so, chafe as he might and did, he kept that promise. He’s a fine youngster; and to my relief and pleasure his aunt realizes it, and they understand each other.”
Colonel Duane nodded and smiled. “A story that ends well. Eh, Milly?”
She assented with another of the fleeting smiles. This change in Hugh’s fortunes put him still farther away. No one could tell to what lengths Miss Frink’s pride and joy would go, and what advantages now awaited him.
“What did you say Hugh’s name is?” asked the Colonel.
“Sinclair. Hugh Stanwood Sinclair, and one of the finest,” returned Ogden. “I hope I have set him right in your eyes and that you will defend him as occasion arises.”
“We’re fond of Hugh,” returned the old gentleman quietly, “and I don’t think you need[257] dread unkind comments on him. You know the way of the world, and Miss Frink’s handsome heir is going to be persona grata to everybody, except, perhaps”—Colonel Duane laughed—“Leonard Grimshaw.”
Ogden smiled. “The nephew was introduced to him this morning at breakfast; and, except for a look which endangered the sweetness of the cream, he took it very calmly.”
After the caller had departed, Colonel Duane came back to his chair.
“Well, well,” he said. “So the hero wasn’t called Prince Charming for nothing, was he? A story that ends well. Eh, Milly? He’ll grace the position, eh? I like the idea. Indeed, I do. Isn’t it fine?”
And Millicent said it was, and gathered up her paraphernalia and went into the house.
CHAPTER XXII ADJUSTMENTS
 As soon as she had parted from John Ogden, Miss Frink went to her study. Her secretary was in his place. Could this possibly be the world of the barren yesterdays? The same world in which she and Leonard Grimshaw had sat at their adjoining desks in this room and opened mail, dictated letters, and considered investments, for so many years? Her welling sense of gratitude gave her a novel attitude of sympathetic comprehension. If her secretary, so long the sole partner and confidant of her days, were suffering now from being to a degree usurped, it would not be surprising. She felt a sort of yearning toward him.
He rose at her entrance, grave and businesslike as usual. She took her customary place beside him, and he seated himself, drawing toward him the morning’s mail.
“Never mind that now, Grim. We will attend to it this afternoon, if I can keep awake.” She gave a little laugh.
He glanced around at her. Miss Frink, flushed and laughing, unmindful of the mail! From bad to worse!
[259]
“The gayety of last evening too much for you?” he responded, with a gravity so portentous as to be a rebuke.
“I suppose so. Say, Grim, how did Goldstein get in here?”
“I asked him. I knew your desire not to have anybody overlooked.”
“But we have never had any contact with him.”
Grimshaw cleared his throat, and drew forward a bunch of pencils and put them back again.
“He is one of our stirring citizens,” he said.
“I know he stirs me,” remarked Miss Frink.
“He enjoyed the evening greatly,” declared Grimshaw.
“All right; but, if he ever comes to make his party call, remember he is your guest.”
“Very well, Miss Frink.”
“Now, my dear boy,” she went on, and she laid a hand on her secretary’s arm. He regarded it under dropped lids. “I feel I want to say a few things to you in this great change that has come into my life.”
“I have anticipated it,” he returned. “You wish to dispense with my services?”
Miss Frink withdrew her hand. “What could put such a wild idea into your head,[260] Grim? So far from dispensing with you, I feel it an occasion to speak of my appreciation of your faithful service. In the great joy that has come to me I long to give happiness. If it pleases you to know that your efficient work is not taken for granted, but that it is given its full value, I want you to realize that I thank you.” She paused and the secretary bowed silently.
“In the changes that will result from the discovery of my nephew, I want you to know also that none will affect you. You are mentioned in my will, and nothing regarding you in that will be changed.”
Grimshaw did not alter his position, but some pulse leaped to his throat. It was not a leap of gladness. If that were the case, then his employer’s plans for him had fallen below expectations.
“In short,” said Miss Frink, “since this great blessing that has come to me should make me a better woman, I hope to be a better friend to you and to all.” As her companion did not break the pause that followed this, she added: “I hope you don’t begrudge it to me, Grim?”
“By no means, Miss Frink,” he responded, without looking up. “Pardon me for a moment, I am much moved.”
Miss Frink was touched. “The good boy!”[261] she thought. “Probably constant contact with me has made it impossible for him to express any feeling that does not regard dollars and cents.”
“My narrow life could not fail to narrow you,” she said humbly. “I hope we may both expand after this.”
Neither spoke for a minute. Grimshaw continued to look down, one hand toying with a paper-cutter.
At last she spoke: “I told Adèle you would take her over to Mrs. Cooper’s as soon as she was ready.”
“I shall be glad to,” he returned. “Adèle made a great impression last night.”
“Indeed, she did. There is no doubt that she can teach here if she wishes to. I have just been saying to her that I hope, when the subject comes up, she will aid in letting it be known what a passive part Hugh played in the camouflaged way he came to Farrandale. Mr. Ogden was the motive power of it all, and you must help, too, Grim, in giving the right impression.”
The secretary turned to her with a strange smile. “Do you think that your nephew and heir will need any apologies?” he asked slowly. Miss Frink felt uncomfortably the inimical attitude[262] back of the words. “If he does, he will never know it, and you will never know it. That is the advantage of being the Queen of Farrandale.”
“The boy is jealous!” she thought.
“I hope,” he continued, “that your absorption is not so great that you cannot use your influence to help Adèle, even though she is leaving your house.”
Miss Frink felt the criticism in this. She was silent for a space.
“Adèle came here camouflaged also, Grim,” she said quietly. “She will tell you about it.”
The secretary flashed a quick look around at her. “Perfectly innocent in one case, I suppose,” he said, “and unpardonable in the other.”
Miss Frink was too deeply troubled about Adèle’s future in Farrandale to be ruffled by this. “It was her own idea,” she said. “That makes some difference. I am glad she has a friend in a truly upright man like you, Grim. Help her to be a good woman.”
The secretary frowned in surprise at the earnestness of this appeal; but, before he could speak, Adèle entered the room dressed for driving, smiling, and with head held high.
Her departure with Grimshaw a few minutes later was decorous. Miss Frink was at the door.
[263]
“Hugh will want to say good-bye to you,” she said. “Won’t you call him, Grim?”
“Oh, no,” interrupted Adèle. “He is at his studies. Don’t disturb him. We shall always be meeting.”
Miss Frink stood on the veranda and watched the motor drive away. She drew a long breath of the sweet air. Whatever should come now, Adèle was gone from the house. The relief of it!
In the motor, the two, sitting side by side, exchanged a mutual regard.
“It was very, very sweet of you to write me that note,” said Grimshaw.
“I thought it would help.”
“There has been some trouble between you and Miss Frink,” he pursued.
Adèle lifted her eyebrows and gave a little laugh. “Yes. Mr. Ogden kindly tipped her off that I was merely the step-grandchild of her beloved chum.”
“Step-grandchild?” repeated Grimshaw.
“Yes. Complicated, isn’t it?—and not worth while trying to understand. It served her as well as anything else as an excuse to get rid of me.”
Grimshaw frowned. He was angry with his employer for sending this lovely creature away from the luxurious home, the Steinway grand,[264] and himself; but Miss Frink’s novel gentleness in their interview chained his always cautious tongue; then, if Adèle had really deliberately misrepresented facts, he knew how that must have offended Miss Frink’s rigorous principles.
“You will find the change to the simplicity of the Cooper home rather hard, Adèle.”
“No harder than your discovery that henceforward you are second-best in your home,” she returned; but her voice was sympathetic, even tender. “Perhaps you will have to go away.”
“No; she doesn’t want me to leave,” he answered dispiritedly. He turned again suddenly to his companion: “You must tell me, Adèle, how I can help you. How about this teaching business?”
She smiled at him, her sweetest. “Leonard, can you see me trudging around in all weathers and teaching youngsters how to play scales?”
He shook his head.
“Hu—somebody said it was like harnessing a blooded horse to a coal wagon to make me teach.”
Color rushed to Grimshaw’s face. “Adèle, it can’t be! You know I—”
She interrupted him with a laugh. “Look out![265] You nearly ran into that Mr. and Mrs. Rube in their light wagon. Now, I’ll talk to the motor man if he doesn’t look at me.” Grimshaw kept eyes ahead, and she continued. “I never had the dimmest idea of teaching. I knew something would turn up, and it has. Did you notice Mr. Goldstein draw me aside for a few minutes last night?”
“Yes; confound his impudence, keeping everybody else waiting.”
“Not at all. Mr. Goldstein is a highly important friend. He wants me to take charge of the music at the Koh-i-noor. He’s mad about the new organ, and he says I’m just the person they have been looking for.”
“Can you play the organ?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve played one; and I have three weeks before they open. He wants to add an orchestra later, and he wants me to take full charge of the musical end of the theater.”
“Pretty fine—but Miss Frink—”
“Who is Miss Frink?” asked Adèle saucily. “Leonard”—she leaned toward him, and her pressure thrilled him—“you and I have our own lives to live.”
“That arrangement would make you very independent, Adèle.”
“I can never be independent of the people[266] I’m fond of,” she answered softly, and withdrew from him.
“Strange that Goldstein should be the one to approach you just now. I have had some business dealings with him, and he is all right; he has big, generous ideas. There is nothing small about Goldstein. He is after me now to put through a deal for him, but I don’t know. He makes it very tempting for me, but I’m afraid Miss Frink—”
“Oh, don’t be tied to her apron-string. What is the deal?”
“Well, then, mum’s the word,” said Grimshaw, smiling.
“Oh, yes, mum as an oyster,” she returned.
“He wants to buy that place where the Duanes live.”
Adèle’s heart leaped. “What does he want of that little shanty?”
“He wants to tear it down and put up a flat building to cover the whole lot.”
“Splendid idea,” responded Adèle. “It’s high time Farrandale had something handsome in the way of an apartment building, and Mr. Goldstein would do something with class.”
“But Colonel Duane’s garden. He is wrapped up in the place, and they haven’t any money[267] for another. It just happened that the cottage fitted their needs and was cheap.”
Color brightened Adèle’s pale face. Lady Luck was coming her way. To get rid of Millicent Duane was a rosier prospect than even the music at the Koh-i-noor.
“They could find a place in the country,” she said. “It would be something new if Miss Frink wanted to throw over such a chance to turn a few honest thousands. You ought not to let her. You ought to look after her better than that.”
“I told Goldstein that there was a probability that sentiment might enter into this matter; and he has offered to make it very much worth my while to put the sale through. It is the biggest temptation I ever received.” The speaker’s eyes shone.
“I’ll give you another,” said Adèle, leaning toward him again. “If you will put through the sale of the Duane place, I will—forget that there is another man in the world but you.”
Grimshaw flushed, and the road being clear just then, he met her soft gaze.
“Is that a promise, Adèle?” he asked.
“A solemn promise,” she answered.
John Ogden returned to his hostess in time[268] for luncheon. Leonard Grimshaw had remained for lunch at his cousin’s, for Adèle wanted him to go with her afterward to see Mr. Goldstein and talk over her contract. So it was that the three who felt very close to one another to-day sat at the table alone. Stebbins was dismissed, to his regret, for he had found breakfast very interesting and he wished to continue gathering data.
Ogden noted that the flush on Miss Frink’s cheeks, and Hugh’s subdued manner, persisted.
“I had a delightful call this morning,” he said in his usual cheerful tone. “I dropped my little bomb on the Duanes’ piazza with great effect.”
Hugh glanced up at him sharply.
“I do like those people. They have a distinctly pleasant atmosphere. Colonel Duane, always looking like somebody in particular, and so hospitable, and Miss Millicent more like a rosebud than ever this morning in a pink apron, delving in a big tin pan.”
“He went to tell them what a happy woman I am,” explained Miss Frink, looking across at Hugh. He met her eyes, and smiled acknowledgment, the more gently for the mutiny within. At last he was honest, but he was more than ever conspicuous and discussed. He hated it. His ears burned now.
[269]
“I suppose they nearly fainted,” he remarked. “I’m sure you told them that I was a puppet and you pulled the wires.”
“Don’t put it that way, Hugh,” pleaded Miss Frink.
“I can’t help it, Aunt Susanna! It’s a mess!”
“Don’t say so, dear boy.” Hugh met her bright, speaking eyes. “I have always been a successful woman, that’s what the world calls it; but I never was a happy one until last night.”
“I’m not much to make you happy,” said the boy restively. “Just a pawn in a game, not a penny in the world of my own, in debt to Ogden, and a sneak in the eyes of your town—”
“Oh, my boy! Oh, Hugh!” There was such pain and longing in Miss Frink’s tone that it checked him. Beside all that he expressed was the constant irritation and humiliation that remained from the scene with Adèle.
“Hugh, you told me last night that you—” Miss Frink stopped because something rose in her throat. No one broke the silence. “I know how your young pride is hurt,” she went on at last, “but it will be restored.”
“Colonel Duane said,” put in Ogden, “that there would be very little talk: that wherever you went, Miss Frink’s nephew would be always welcome.”
[270]
“That is true,” she agreed; “and, Hugh, if you can be so unselfish, don’t spoil this great joy of mine—a child belonging to me; but take it as if we had known all along that you were mine. In perfect frankness let me do for you what it is my right to do. In the presence of Mr. Ogden, who has accomplished such wonders for us, let me say that he and I shall together settle such of our obligation to him as can be paid, and then you, Hugh, until you are admitted to the bar, will accept from me your education, and your allowance, without a thought of dependence—”
Hugh regarded the earnest speaker with a mixture of resistance and appreciation.
“Ross Graham Company—” he began—
“Can take care of itself,” said Miss Frink with a return of her brisk, curt manner. “You can always get competent managers.” John Ogden’s mind took a leap back to the day when he told Hugh that the department store might belong to him. “Now I know,” went on Miss Frink, “that you’re a bit afraid of your old aunt, a little afraid that in my pride I may want to put you into a velvet suit and lace collar à la Fauntleroy, or its equivalent; but you needn’t be afraid. I haven’t lived seventy-two years for nothing, and I didn’t make a mess of my treatment[271] of your father for nothing. Neither am I in my second childhood. I have all my faculties, and, with so much now to live for, I expect to keep them until I’m one hundred. I don’t want to make an idol of you. I want you to be a man among men, and stand on your own feet; but it’s my right to give you a start, and I like to believe that you have enough common sense to accept it in the spirit in which it is offered, without any fuss or foolish hair-splitting.”
Hugh looked around at Ogden, who nodded at him.
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” remarked Ogden.
Hugh, pushing back his chair, rose and came around to Miss Frink.
“There’s only one answer a fellow can make to all that, Aunt Susanna,” he said, and, stooping, he kissed her.
“Now, then,” she, too, rose, “please go on the veranda and watch for Millicent. I want to see Mr. Ogden a few minutes in the study, and I’ll let her know when I’m ready for her.”
Hugh wandered through the hall, pausing between the portières of the drawing-room and looking at the piano. Was it only last evening that Ally had done her brilliant work? He shook his head, went out to the piazza, and[272] started to take the swinging seat, but changed his mind, and, throwing himself on a wicker divan, lighted a cigarette. He was conscious of a deep soreness in the thought of Adèle. What a series of foolish moves her life had been! He shrank in distaste from it all.
What a different specimen of girlhood was Millicent Duane! Of course, she was nothing but a child, with her ready tears and blushes; still, it was better to be crude, and sweet, and pure, than sophisticated and audacious. He wished he could have seen her face when Ogden told them his news. A certain looking up to himself which the girl had evinced in their daily meetings, he suddenly found was valuable to him. Colonel Duane had said Miss Frink’s nephew was always sure of a welcome. He knew what that meant, and the implication again stirred his rebellion. He would know when he saw Millicent to-day if he had much to live down in her transparent soul.
CHAPTER XXIII MILLICENT
 Very soon Millicent’s familiar figure appeared at the iron gate. Before she started from home she had talked with her grandfather.
“You’re sending a message to Hugh by me that it will be more convenient for you to see him in the morning after this,” she said.
“But it wouldn’t.” Colonel Duane looked surprised.
“Yes, it will be,” returned Millicent firmly.
The old gentleman blinked. “What’s this? Tired of the walks over here together?”
“Never mind details, dear.”
“You’re a funny child, Milly. Hugh will feel something unfriendly in the change, just at the present time.”
Millicent seized her grandfather’s arm. “Dearest, everything wonderful is going to come to Hugh, now,” she said earnestly, “and I would like to be out of it. I don’t want to hear him talk about it. Hugh Sinclair isn’t Hugh Stanwood. He won’t be anything to us; not even a friend except at long intervals and—can’t you understand? I’d rather be the one to do the dropping.”
[274]
She released him suddenly and ran out of the house. Her grandfather stood in the same spot for some minutes, considering.
“It’s the most natural thing in the world,” he said to himself at last. “I don’t see how she could help it; but Milly has plenty of spirit, and I’ll take the hint till he goes away. Of course, he’ll be going away to law school.”
Now, as Millicent entered Miss Frink’s grounds and discerned Hugh on the porch, she saw him rise and throw away his cigarette. He came down the steps to meet her, looking unusually grave. His eyes studied her as if he must know her attitude before she spoke. She put her hand in the one he offered.
“How now that the cat is out of the bag?” he asked.
“What difference can it make to me?” she returned with a coolness that did not satisfy him.
“I’m glad if it doesn’t make any. I thought perhaps there wouldn’t be any route sufficiently roundabout for you to take me home this afternoon.”
His gaze continued to study her as they ascended the steps.
“Oh, I was to tell you that Grandpa can’t have you to-day. He will be glad to see you to-morrow[275] morning if you can come—and always in the morning hereafter.”
Hugh nodded. Millicent started to go into the house.
“Sit down a few minutes,” he said. “Aunt Susanna and Mr. Ogden are busy in the study. He is leaving to-night. She said she would call you as soon as she was ready.”
Millicent seated herself in the swinging couch and Hugh promptly took the place beside her.
“So our walks are over, are they?” he asked, still grave.
“Yes. Life is just like chapters in a story, isn’t it?” she replied hurriedly. “One closes and another begins. This swing makes me think of Mrs. Lumbard. Grandpa is perfectly wild about her ever since last night. Mr. Ogden said she was going to live at the Coopers’, and on my way over here I met a friend who said he had heard that the manager of the Koh-i-noor is going to try to get her to provide their music.”
Hugh nodded. “That would solve a problem for her,” he said.
There was nothing natural about Millicent to-day, and he had seen her shrink when he took the place beside her in the swing.
She went on: “Something big like that would seem more fitted to Mrs. Lumbard than teaching.[276] I wonder if she will take the position. You’ll miss her here, won’t you?”
“Yes, another of those chapters that close while another begins. If only the story grows more interesting as life goes on.”
“I’m sure it will for you.” That was too personal. She hurried headlong. “And I think it does for all of us. You talked to that cute girl Damaris Cooper last night. She will be delirious with Mrs. Lumbard living there, and playing at the Koh-i-noor. Who said Farrandale was dull!” Millicent laughed.
Hugh had not smiled since she came, and she was so uncomfortable under his questioning eyes that she welcomed the opening of the door and the appearance of John Ogden who took in the deceptively intimate appearance of the swing.
“Your sleepy lady awaits you, Miss Duane,” he announced, “and you certainly will do a missionary act to make her rest. She needs it.” Millicent sprang up. “So I’ll say good-bye once more.” He held out his hand, and the girl gave him hers.
“Farrandale will be very glad to see you back some day, Mr. Ogden.” She vanished into the house.
“It’s just as I expected,” said Hugh gloomily.[277] “Millicent is entirely changed, and Colonel Duane can see me only in the mornings after this. It’s significant of the whole spirit that I shall have to meet.”
John Ogden viewed the downcast gaze.
“You crazy—” he began—“I’ll say I hate to leave you. You’ll be deserting Miss Frink between two days, as likely as not.”
“No, I won’t,” returned Hugh decidedly. “I’ve made up my mind to stay with her.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that.”
“But it makes me—if Millicent had cried or done anything natural, I could stand it; or if she would say right out that she is disgusted, I could stand it; but to have her feel that it is too bad to talk about; that gets me because what she feels is what everybody worth caring about will feel.”
John Ogden regarded the boy as he sat there in the swing, dejected, and his own lips twitched.
Hugh looked up suddenly. “Don’t you think she’s a fine girl, Ogden?”
“I do. Pure as a drop of dew; fine as a rose-leaf, softly iridescent as a bird’s wing, transparent as crystal—”
Hugh frowned in displeased surprise.
“I wish you could do anything but chaff,” he said.
[278]
“I’m not chaffing,” replied Ogden; “but I must modify that a little, I should have said, sometimes as transparent as crystal.”
“Are you in love with her?” blurted out Hugh.
“Perhaps I should be if I hadn’t known Carol. The man that she loves will be in luck, for though tender as a flower she’s as stanch as an oak tree.”
“You should write poetry,” said Hugh dryly. “After all that, you can’t blame me for preferring that that sort of person should approve of me.”
Ogden, sitting in a hammock and swinging his foot, regarded the other quizzically for a silent moment.
“Your lions in the way are going to turn into kittens, boy,” he said at last. “And if they didn’t, isn’t it worth something to have transformed the life of another human as you have Miss Frink’s? Isn’t it worth meeting with some annoyance?”
Hugh shrugged his shoulders in silence.
When Millicent entered her employer’s room, the lady was not lying down as usual. She met the girl with a sort of smiling exaltation.
“Do I look any different to-day?” she asked.
“You do look different. You have such pink[279] cheeks. I suppose you are still excited from last night.”
“Perhaps so.” As she spoke, Miss Frink drew the girl down beside her on the divan and looked blissfully into her face. “What a comment it is on me, Millicent, that you are the only woman friend I have to pour out to at a time like this—and you not a woman yet, just a little girl who can’t appreciate happiness, because you’ve never had anything else.”
“Oh, I have, Miss Frink, I’ve been terribly unhappy—is it because you’re happy that you look so rosy?” Millicent’s heart beat under the full, bright gaze bent upon her.
“Yes, all at once. The last time you saw me I was nobody. I was grubbing along the way I have all my life, nobody caring about me except to get the better of me in a business deal, and now to-day—do you wonder my cheeks are pink? I’m a grandmother, Millicent.”
“You are!” The girl’s lips were parted.
“You know it’s even nicer than being a mother. Everybody knows that grandmothers have the best of it. Mr. Ogden has told you that Hugh belongs to me, and at midnight last night we, Hugh and I, were alone together, and—and we talked of it. He seemed to be glad.[280] He kissed me like a real grandchild. Millicent, it seemed too wonderful for words that I should be really happy! Those young arms around me made me feel richer than—doubling my money on a corner lot.”
Millicent began to swallow fast.
“I’m so—so gl-glad,” she said. “I’ll try—not to cry.”
“You’re very sweet to care, child. You and Hugh are so well acquainted I feel you will always take an interest.”
“It was wonderful!” said Millicent. The eagerness in the bright eyes impelled her on. “Hugh is—my grandfather thinks he is an unusual fellow. He has always seemed so frank, and kind, and simple. He takes an interest in Grandpa’s garden and is so nice about it. He often says he wishes he owned a little place just like ours.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” returned Miss Frink dryly. “Well, you’re ahead of me. I have never heard him express a wish for anything.”
“Now, Miss Frink, you must lie down,” said the girl. “Mr. Ogden told me to be sure to make you rest.” She arranged the pillows just as her employer liked them, persuaded her to change her dress for a negligée, and soon the happy woman was settled on the couch.
[281]
“You’ll guarantee I won’t wake up and find it all a dream?”
“I promise it,” she said.
Hugh was still on the piazza and alone when she went out. He rose at sight of her. She had never seen him look so serious. He did not advance, just looked at her in silence. She went to him, her hands outstretched.
“I’ve been talking with her,” she said. Her own repressed feelings, the remembrance of Miss Frink’s exaltation, and the wonder of Hugh, himself, overcame her. She could not speak; but her smile and her suddenly flooded eyes made his gravity break into sunshine.
“It’s all right, then, is it, Millicent?” he asked eagerly.
She tried to pull a hand away to get her handkerchief, but he held it fast and, seeing the corner of linen protruding from the low neck of her dress, he took it out and dried her eyes himself.
“I’m not going to cry—much,” she said, smiling, “but she is so happy.”
“I’m a lucky dog, Millicent—if you think I am,” he answered. “It hasn’t been easy.” His eyes clouded.
“I know it, Hugh. I can see it all, now.”
“And I mustn’t walk home with you?”
She hesitated. “I suppose you shouldn’t[282] leave Mr. Ogden alone. He goes so soon and Miss Frink is asleep.”
Hugh smiled down at her. She wished he wouldn’t. She could hardly bear it. “A good excuse for you not to have to try to hide me,” he returned.
“No; I shall never wish to hide you again,” she said.
“You think I’m all right, then, eh, Millicent?”
“I know you are,” she answered, and, releasing herself and giving him an April smile, she ran down the steps.
It was no small undertaking for Miss Frink, in the days that followed, to keep her word about not idolizing her grand-nephew. What she did for him she tried to clothe in such a matter-of-fact manner as to disarm him. Almost at once invitations began to come to Hugh from the young people of Farrandale for tennis parties, dances, picnics, and so on. Miss Frink saw that he was declining them all. She went to his room one morning with another envelope in her hand.
“This has just come from the Tarrants,” she said, “and I suppose it is another invitation. I hope you will accept, Hugh, for they are among our best people.”
[283]
“I don’t know much about society, Aunt Susanna. I’d rather keep off the grass if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, I do mind,” she answered pleasantly. “People will misunderstand if you refuse to mix. They will think that either you don’t know how, or else that you feel superior.”
“Both of them correct,” replied Hugh, laughing.
“Neither of them correct,” returned Miss Frink. “The first thing for you to do is to get suitable clothes for the different sorts of things. Sports clothes, evening duds, and so on.”
“Remember, Aunt Susanna. It was agreed. No Lord Fauntleroy.”
“Exactly,” she returned briskly. “Don’t get a velvet suit. I forbid it; but please order the other things at once. Then, if you want to decline an invitation, it won’t be because you haven’t the proper things to wear.”
“I didn’t know you were so vain.”
“I am, very. Now here is your bank book.” She laid the little leather book on the table. “And here is your check book.” Hugh stepped toward her. “Now, not a word,” she warned. “You know that was agreed upon. The first of every month I shall deposit your allowance to your account.”
[284]
Hugh had reached her now. He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek.
“And this afternoon I want you to go on an errand with me. I’ve waked up lately to what a hidebound person I’ve always been: unwilling to move with the world. I’ve decided that I want an automobile.”
Hugh raised his eyebrows. “Well, I can’t see Rex and Regina thrown into the discard.”
“No, neither can I; but there are times when the convenience of a motor cannot be gainsaid. I borrow Leonard’s occasionally, and it is absurd, when you come to think of it, to let a foolish prejudice deprive one of a convenience. A motor is a great convenience.”
“It can’t be denied,” said Hugh, restraining himself from claiming to smell a large and obvious mouse. She was having such a good time.
He hugged her once more, and she left the room as one whom business is driving. He looked at the record in his bank book and gave a low whistle.
When the rumor of Adèle’s new position reached Miss Frink, she did not have to assume approval in speaking to her secretary about it. The fact that the young woman was going to play to the young people of Farrandale from a distance, instead of standing toward them in[285] the intimate relation of a teacher, was a distinct relief. She still felt that new kindness toward Grimshaw which came from the belief that he felt usurped, and, perceiving in him a champion of Adèle, she took pains to express herself pleasantly, as they sat together at their desks.
“I suppose the Koh-i-noor engagement will be a good arrangement for Adèle,” she said. “It comes as a surprise.”
“Yes. I don’t think she is fitted for the drudgery of teaching,” he returned.
“No one is who considers it drudgery,” declared Miss Frink. “When is the theater to open?”
“A week from to-night.”
“Well, they have secured a real musician.”
“Adèle will be glad to hear that she has your approval,” said Grimshaw. He took from his pocket an envelope. “Mr. Goldstein asked me to give you these tickets for the opening. He hopes you will honor him with your presence.”
Miss Frink took the offered envelope. Across it was written: “For the Queen of Farrandale.”
“You know I don’t go to the movies, Grim. Why didn’t you tell him so?”
“Because this is different. He intends to give only artistic entertainment. Everybody will go.”
[286]
“I—I don’t expect to be in town a week from to-night.”
“Ah? I didn’t know you were planning to leave. Is Mr. Sinclair accompanying you?”
The secretary always clung to the formal title.
“No, he isn’t. You and he can divide these tickets and take your best girls. Perhaps he will have one by that time.”
She put the envelope back on Grimshaw’s desk.
CHAPTER XXIV A SHOCK
 Miss Frink had instinctively felt that during the first weeks of his new status in the town Hugh would not wish to be seen driving with her in her well-known equipage, and she had desisted from asking him; but to-day he was beside her as the handsome bays jingled toward that large salesroom where reposed their hitherto unsuccessful rivals.
“Now I have picked out a car,” said Miss Frink as they neared their goal, “but I didn’t want to buy it without your approval because, of course, I hope you would like to drive me a good deal.”
“I understand,” replied Hugh. “I certainly should like to.”
As they entered the salesroom, a man came forward to welcome them eagerly.
“Mr. Godfrey, this is my nephew, Mr. Sinclair, and I want him to see that roadster I was looking at.”
“Yes, Miss Frink, I’ve been watching for you.”
He led the way to where a low, rakish, canary-colored machine shone gayly.
[288]
Hugh stared at it.
“Is this the one, Aunt Susanna?”
“Yes,” she replied, rather defiantly. “You know I don’t do things by halves. If I’m going to have a motor, I want to go the whole figure. I told Mr. Godfrey I wanted a snappy, classy car: even if it was extreme: even if it was to cars what jazz is to music.”
Hugh looked at the salesman, but no sense of humor could be discerned in his earnest countenance. Hugh struggled with his own risibles and also with a desire to hug his aunt in public. It seemed the only way to deal with her.
“How were you going to get into it, Aunt Susanna?” he asked.
She gazed at the machine, observing for the first time that it had no doors.
“I—why—” she began.
“You wouldn’t want to turn a somersault every time you went for an outing, would you?”
She looked at him helplessly. “Don’t you like it, Hugh?” she asked faintly.
He looked again at the salesman to see if he was human. Apparently the depth of Miss Frink’s pocketbook was the only feature of the transaction which he was taking in.
“Let’s find something a little less sporty,” he continued. “You’ve a fine assortment here.”
[289]
“That’s right, Hugh, you choose,” said Miss Frink, her spirits rising, “and don’t think too much about me. One that you would like to drive is what I want.”
They chose one at last. It was very dark blue, and very shiny, and low hung, and very expensive, and it had embryo doors, and could be delivered promptly, and Hugh’s eyes shone at the prospect of being its chauffeur. Miss Frink was tremulous with happiness at seeing his pleasure, and they returned home to dinner, her hand in his.
“I don’t know what to do with you, Aunt Susanna,” he said.
“Now, Hugh, you’re doing me injustice,” she returned firmly. “I do want to drive in an auto. I want to progress, and not be a clam. Besides, I’m going away, and I thought you could learn all about the machine while I am gone.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Waveland Beach. It is only a few hours from here. I guess I’m tired. At any rate, I’m not sleeping very well, and I’ll get down there and not hear a word about business for a few weeks.”
“I’m sorry you’re not feeling all right. Can’t I do something? Don’t you want me to go with you?”
[290]
Of course, she did, but she denied it. “No, you stay here and go on with Colonel Duane. Shan’t you choose Columbia in the fall? I’ve been writing to Carol and telling her we are going to have a full-fledged lawyer of our own pretty soon.”
So a few days later Miss Frink departed to her resort, and it fitted in so well with Leonard Grimshaw’s plans that she should go away, that he was quite affable about the new automobile, and in his first tête-à-tête dinner with Hugh was less taciturn than usual.
He talked of the cleverness with which Adèle handled the Koh-i-noor organ. He gave him the tickets for the opening of the Cinema Palace, and Hugh took Millicent and her grandfather and Damaris Cooper, and they had a delightful party. They talked with Adèle afterward. She was in the highest spirits, and Leonard Grimshaw stood beside her with an air of proprietorship which Hugh discerned with satisfaction.
The secretary had not yet qualified for that reward of hers, promised when he should have evicted the Duanes; and seeing Millicent with Hugh to-night created in Adèle a tigerish eagerness for its fulfillment.
“Have patience,” Leonard told her when the others had gone. “Everything is working[291] toward the desired end; but why are you so interested?” he added.
“Can you ask?” she returned with one of the looks he dreamed about. “Is it nothing to—to us that Goldstein wishes to be so generous?”
Grimshaw smiled. “We may be living in that apartment house ourselves, Adèle. Who knows?”
One afternoon there appeared in Colonel Duane’s garden an alien growth in the shape of the manager of the Koh-i-noor. The owner saw him walking along the garden paths and in surprise went out to meet him.
Mr. Goldstein held out his hand. “It looks like intrusion, I’m sure, Colonel Duane, but you excuse me if I look this ground over; I have a strong personal interest.”
Colonel Duane mechanically shook hands.
“Yes; I am about to buy this property.” The visitor smiled into the old gentleman’s startled face.
“I’ve heard nothing of this,” said the Colonel, and his voice was not steady. “Miss Frink is away.”
“Ah, who so progressive as Miss Frink!” said Goldstein devoutly. “This property is too valuable for its present use. I will put an apartment[292] building here that you will be proud to live in—proud, Colonel Duane.”
“I—I can’t realize that what you say is true.”
“Oh, there is nothing to worry you,” said Goldstein soothingly. “You will not be required to leave before the autumn. I’m sure we would not do anything to disturb or annoy so respected a citizen.” The speaker’s eyes wandered afield. “I wanted to see what the chances would be of retaining that old elm in the corner there. You know, Colonel Duane, to me a fine tree is an asset. There is something money cannot buy. It is worth a sacrifice to retain it. It is a thing that the years only can produce. It is—” He turned to face his companion, but the old gentleman had gone.
Colonel Duane entered the room where his granddaughter was, and Millicent started up in alarm.
“What is it Grandpa? Are you ill?”
“I’ve had a shock, Milly. Miss Frink is going to sell our place.”
“Oh, I can’t believe it! Not without any warning.”
“Mr. Goldstein, of the Koh-i-noor, is going to buy it. He is out there now, looking the ground over.”
[293]
Millicent ran to the window. She could see the purchaser, his hands folded behind him looking up at the fine old tree. She turned back to her grandfather with eyes that flashed. Her soft lips set in a hard line.
“How can she do it with all her money! How can she take your garden away, Grandpa?”
“He is going to put up a flat building.” Colonel Duane sank into a chair. “We can’t expect the world to stand still for us, Milly. Business is business. Mr. Goldstein says this land is too valuable to be left for an old man to go puttering about in.” He smiled pitifully.
“That is why she has gone away,” said Millicent acutely. “She was ashamed to do this to you, Grandpa.”
“Being ashamed is not in Miss Frink’s line,” he answered, and his pale, still face gave the girl the heartache. “It is the habit of her life to take advantage of business opportunities. Here came along a man with the money, and the plan. I suppose it was the natural move for her to make.”
“But she knows you, Grandpa. She knows what it will mean to you. I tell you she went away because she was ashamed to own it. There he goes, the mean thing.” Millicent watched the future owner’s departure up the[294] street, and at once from the other direction appeared Hugh Sinclair driving the very new, very blue, very shiny roadster.
“Oh, there is Hugh!” she exclaimed, her hands clasping together. “He has come to take me driving, Grandpa. Your news put it out of my head.”
The horn of the motor sounded, and the girl waved her hand toward Hugh’s blowing hair.
“Now be very careful, Milly,” said Colonel Duane. “You’re excited, and you’re liable to say the wrong thing to Hugh. This property is Miss Frink’s, and she has a right to do just what she pleases with it. Don’t make Hugh unhappy over a matter he can’t do anything about.”
The girl caught the speaker in her strong young arms and kissed him.
“Promise me, Milly.”
“Yes, dear, yes,” she said breathlessly, and ran out to the waiting motor.
“My word, you’re all lit up, Millicent,” laughed Hugh at sight of her sparkling eyes. “You must like this little gas buggy as much as I do.”
They were off before she answered. “Yes, I love it; but I wanted, I needed, so much to see you, Hugh.”
[295]
“I like that all right. What do you want of little Johnny-on-the-spot?”
“Just to talk to you. Of course I know you can’t do anything, and Grandpa told me to be very careful and not make you unhappy—”
“It can’t be done, Millicent. An afternoon like this, and the car, and you. What’s going to make me unhappy?”
“Perhaps it won’t, but—we’re going to lose our home, and Grandpa’s garden.”
Hugh met her bright, dry eyes. Tears wouldn’t do this subject justice.
“How are you going to lose it?”
“Miss Frink is selling it to Mr. Goldstein. He has just been in the garden looking it over. He told Grandpa, and when Grandpa came in to me he looked old. I never saw Grandpa look old before.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“No. Mr. Goldstein is going to put up a flat building.”
Hugh’s brow was puckered in a puzzled frown. “Aunt Susanna would have spoken of it to me.”
“Oh, think what a wonderful business woman she is. She wouldn’t talk of her business deals to any one, would she?”
“Perhaps not,” returned Hugh.
[296]
“But Miss Frink likes Grandpa. I believe she would be sorry for us, and I think, Hugh, it really makes me more sure that she is selling us out, that she has gone away.”
“Oh, pshaw, Millicent. Aunt Susanna isn’t any coward.”
“No,” agreed the girl ruefully, “the Queen of Farrandale doesn’t have to be; but she seemed to like us, and I feel she would be sorry and perhaps would rather be away.”
“My opinion is that Goldstein was talking through his hat. He probably wants the place—but so do I.” Hugh turned with the Prince Charming smile to his companion. “Not for his purpose, though. I want it always to stay full of apple blossoms and nice girls in blue gowns.”
“Oh, Hugh, it’s like a bad dream.”
“Let us pretend it is a nightmare until I see Grimshaw at dinner. He will know the inside facts, and I will run over this evening and tell you all about it.”
There had been a humorous side, to Hugh, to the tête-à-tête meals he and the secretary had been obliged to take in Miss Frink’s absence. They seldom met at breakfast or luncheon, but at the formally correct dinners Hugh comported himself with care not to be irritating.
[297]
To-night he approached the subject on his mind with circumspection.
“I heard to-day that Mr. Goldstein wants to purchase the Duane place,” he said.
Grimshaw nodded. “Yes; it will be a very advantageous move for Miss Frink. The ground is too central to be used any longer in the present fashion.”
“You have charge of the transaction?” ventured Hugh.
Grimshaw did not lift his eyes from his plate. “Naturally. I have charge of all Miss Frink’s business moves. I am always watching her interests.”
“That sale would work something of a hardship,” remarked Hugh.
“Yes,” agreed Grimshaw, with a nonchalant rising inflection; “but there would be nothing sudden or violent about it. There are plenty of places farther out where the Duanes can go, and it is my duty to think only of Miss Frink.”
“You have her full authority?”
“Certainly. I have her full authority.”
“It is a little strange,” said Hugh, “that she never mentioned the proposition of this sale to me.”
“You think it strange?” returned Grimshaw, and there was a scarcely veiled sneer in the retort.[298] “I believe Miss Frink has not considered you on the business side as yet.”
Hugh said no more; but less than an hour later he ran up on the Duanes’ piazza. The evening was warm, and they were sitting out.
Millicent jumped up eagerly at sight of him and he grasped her outstretched hand and held it.
“I am not satisfied, Colonel Duane, with my talk with Grimshaw,” he said.
The old gentleman looked up, patiently.
“Shall you wire Miss Frink?” asked Millicent eagerly.
“Of course not,” said Colonel Duane. “Hugh shouldn’t interfere.”
“Yes, I shall, to the extent of finding out what’s what.”
Millicent released her hand and sat down.
“The thing to do is for Millicent and me to motor down to Waveland to-morrow. I learn that we can do it in four hours. We’ll talk with Aunt Susanna, and, if we find that she is content to let Grimshaw do his darndest, we’ll motor back again; but if it turns out that she is from Missouri, we three will come back on the train.”
“That’s fair enough, Grandpa?” asked Millicent anxiously.
[299]
“I don’t know that it is. Miss Frink has gone away to rest and probably left instructions with her secretary, and for you to go, Milly, and throw yourself on her sympathy—”
“She shan’t throw herself on anything, Colonel Duane. I promise it; but it will be so much more satisfactory for Millicent to see Aunt Susanna face to face, and hear just what she says—”
Colonel Duane was thoughtful. “If Miss Frink does not return with you, I don’t like the idea of your motoring back here late in the evening. It would be midnight, probably.”
“I’ll see to that,” returned Hugh. “If Aunt Susanna doesn’t return with us, she has two rooms down there, and Millicent will spend the night with her; and I’ll wire you. We’ll motor back the next morning.”
“You wish to do it, Milly?” asked Colonel Duane.
“It seems as if I should fly out of my skin if I couldn’t.”
“If we come back on the train with Aunt Susanna, it will be late, and Millicent will spend the night at our house.”
“No!” exclaimed the old man. “Bring her home, whatever hour it is.”
CHAPTER XXV JOURNEY’S END
 Miss Frink was sitting on the porch of the Sea View Hotel, rocking as all good Americans do, and thinking, as usual, of Hugh.
The expanse of ocean lay before her, and, as she watched the sailboats careening, she wondered if her nephew cared for sailing and if he was a good swimmer. She thought of the desirable girls in Farrandale. Some of them had had European educations. She hoped Hugh would accept the Tarrant invitation. As Miss Frink passed in review the young people she had seen grow up without noticing them, Inez Tarrant stood out in her mind as the most attractive. She shook her head as a memory of Hugh’s father struck athwart her thought.
“I won’t,” she reflected. “I won’t interfere this time, whatever the boy does. He shall never think of his old aunt as a wet blanket. Never!”
She was in a blissful dream when suddenly a car drew up before the hotel porch directly in front of her rocking-chair. She didn’t recognize it at first. All its shiny blueness was dust-laden. So were its occupants. One of them[301] saw her instantly, and waved his cap. Millicent was out as quickly as Hugh, pulling off her veil and looking up with a beating heart at Miss Frink, who started to her feet.
“We’ve come to lunch with you, Aunt Susanna.” Hugh embraced her, and she took Millicent’s timid hand.
“Well, if this isn’t fine of you children! What sights you are! Take the car to the garage, Hugh, while I help Millicent to brush up. You must have started very early,” she added to the girl when they had reached her room.
“We did, and it has been such a beautiful morning. The car runs like velvet.”
“You look tired, child. Are those shadows under your eyes, or is it all dust? Now I’ll leave you here. Make yourself at home. Don’t hurry. There’s plenty of time. Come down to the porch when you’re ready.”
Miss Frink returned to her rocking-chair, and soon Hugh joined her, washed and brushed to her heart’s desire.
“I’m your letter to-day, Aunt Susanna,” he said, pulling up a chair beside her.
“Well, I’ll take you”—she regarded the vital light in his eyes—“and read you, too.”
“The X-ray still working?” he laughed.
“Certainly. Here is a very happy boy.”
[302]
“With everything to make him happy,” he returned.
“The car pleases you?”
“Perfect. The company, too.”
“Me or Millicent?” Miss Frink’s lips twitched. “My! That girl’s hair was pretty when it tumbled down just now, upstairs.”
“Both of you,” replied Hugh.
“Have you accepted Miss Tarrant’s invitation?”
“No—yes—Oh, yes, I remember now, I did, to please you.”
“It will be to please yourself, later.”
Hugh gave her a brilliant smile in which eyes and lips co?perated with great effect.
“It won’t matter much, Aunt Susanna. There is only one perfect girl in Farrandale, and I’ve found her.”
Miss Frink grasped the arms of her chair.
“Hugh Sinclair!” she gasped. “Why, I never even thought of Millicent Duane!”
He leaned toward her and spoke low. The smile vanished under his aunt’s aghast eyeglasses.
“Set your X-ray going, Aunt Susanna. See the modesty, the honesty, the purity, the frankness, the unselfishness, the charm of total goodness—”
[303]
“Did you come down here to tell me this?”
“No. I never said a word to her until this morning on the way; and she refused me. She’s afraid of you. She believes herself too humble and obscure to suit you, and she says she’d rather die than marry me if it didn’t please you. She loves you, too, Aunt Susanna. She appreciates you.”
Miss Frink’s firm resolution of an hour ago recurred to her. Her surprise was so absolute that she leaned back in her chair, speechless.
“We just made up our minds suddenly last night to come, and it has been a most lovely drive.”
“H’m. Millicent looks as if she had been through the war.”
“She has. We’ll tell you about it, later.”
Millicent appeared from the doorway, and Miss Frink noted the expression in Hugh’s face as he started up to meet her.
“I know you are both famished,” she said. “Let us go right in to lunch.”
Poor Millicent, with her double burden of apprehension and embarrassment, made a valiant attempt to eat, and Hugh saved her from the necessity of talking by keeping up a busy conversation with his aunt. As for Miss Frink, she was constantly fighting a sense of resentment.
[304]
“Just like me,” she thought. “Just because I didn’t plan it, I suppose I can’t approve it. Just because I can’t have him all to myself, I suppose I wouldn’t like it, whoever it was. Just like you, Susanna Frink. Just like you!”
When they rose from the table, Hugh spoke.
“We did come down here on an errand, Aunt Susanna. Is there some place where we can be entirely by ourselves?”
“We will go up to my room,” she returned. What could their errand be if it was not on that rending subject?
“She didn’t eat anything,” reflected Miss Frink as they went up in the elevator. “I suppose they don’t when they’re in love.”
Her heart pleaded a little for Millicent, just then. Even if it were presumptuous for the girl to fall in love with Hugh, was it within youthful feminine human nature to help it when they had been thrown together daily for so long? What had been nearly superhuman was to refuse him, shut in with him in that very new, very blue, shiny roadster with all the early summer surroundings of romance. The girl had some strength, anyway. And how sweetly she had sympathized with herself at the exciting time of the discovery!
She sat down now, however, with an entirely[305] non-committal expression, and Millicent took a place facing her. Apparently she was the one with the message. Hugh wandered to a window overlooking the sea.
How pale the girl was! The shadows under her hazel eyes had not been dust. Those eyes had apparently started out to be brown, but thought better of it. They were surpassingly clear, and they looked now directly into Miss Frink’s.
“I don’t know even yet if it was right for me to come,” she began. “Grandpa thought it wasn’t, for we haven’t the least right to trouble you in your affairs; but it means so much to Grandpa I couldn’t content myself without knowing from your own lips if you are selling our home.”
Miss Frink’s face continued set. A little frown came in her forehead.
“Not that we wouldn’t get used to the thought, but—just at first, it—he made Grandpa look so old—”
“Who did?”
“Mr. Goldstein. He wants to put up an apartment house and he was looking the ground over to see if he could save the elm.”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Goldstein. He is Adèle’s—Mrs. Lumbard’s employer, I believe.”
[306]
“Yes, Miss Frink”—the hazel eyes searched the bright eyeglasses—“did Mrs. Lumbard ask you to sell the place?”
“Certainly not. Why do you ask such a question?”
“Because—I’m ashamed to say so, but I’ve thought so much about it. Mrs. Lumbard hates me. I can’t imagine why. I’ve met her on the street. Nobody ever looked at me the way she does.”
Miss Frink threw a quick glance over her shoulder at Hugh, who came back from the window, and stood near Millicent.
“This only came to light yesterday,” he said. “Of course, if you are selling the place, it is all right; but I talked with Grimshaw last night at dinner, and I was not satisfied with his replies, although he claimed to have your authority. If there was anything for you to look into, I thought it best for us to come in person; but, if everything is being done by your order, there is nothing for us to do but kiss you and leave you.”
“I suppose,” Millicent’s voice wavered, “I suppose it would be dreadful to ask you to change your mind, but Grandpa—I don’t know what he will do. He loves every little sprout, and—and there isn’t any other place—”
“Your grandfather seems to be your whole[307] thought,” said Miss Frink. She was definitely frowning now, and her expression was severe.
“He is. I’d do anything—I’m doing something almost disgraceful now in begging you—” The voice stopped, and color came up in the pale cheeks.
Hugh watched his aunt, but there was no change in her expression.
“We thought if there was any question in your mind,” he said, “that we would leave the car here, and you would return with us on the train.”
Miss Frink looked at her watch. “The train went while we were eating,” she said. “There isn’t another until evening, but I think I will go back with you. Meanwhile”—her set face lightened—“I suggest that this girl lie down and rest while you take me for a drive.”
“That’ll be bully!” agreed Hugh.
Millicent tried to control her trembling lips as she followed Miss Frink’s movement and rose. The latter went into the next room to put on her hat.
Hugh took the young girl’s hands, and she drew them away gently. “Don’t you see,” he said softly, “that that is hopeful?”
“I don’t know. Oh, she looked so hard. I’m afraid of her when she is the Queen of Farrandale.”
[308]
“But she wouldn’t go with us if it were settled. You see that?”
“Then, why couldn’t she say one encouraging word?”
“Because she doesn’t know how far Grimshaw has gone. He said he had full authority. Perhaps now she wishes she hadn’t given it to him.”
Miss Frink came back. “Think how many times you’ve put me to sleep, Millicent. Now you let the ocean do the same for you. Go right into that room and make yourself comfortable. Lie down on my bed and don’t think about anything but the waves.”
They left her, and Miss Frink looked at the car admiringly as Hugh drove it around to the hotel steps. It had been cleaned into new blueness again, and she sank into the low seat and breathed a sigh of satisfaction as it rolled smoothly away.
“Poor Millicent,” said Hugh. He meant it as a gentle hint that now they were alone his aunt might confide in him on the affair that had brought them. Evidently nothing was further from her intention.
“Yes, I hope she gets to sleep,” she returned. “Could anything run smoother than this, Hugh?”
[309]
The brisk ocean breeze swept past them. Hugh accepted the dismissal of his little love. He glanced around at his companion’s strong features, set now in perfect contentment.
“I’m the lover she never had,” he reflected, “and the husband she never had, and the son she never had, and the grandson she thought she had, but he comes right away and tells her he loves somebody else. Tough, I’ll say.”
They were speeding along the road near the sea, and passing summer homes set far apart.
“You will like to have the car in New York this fall, Hugh.”
“It sure would be a big luxury.”
“You and Mr. Ogden would enjoy it—when I wasn’t there.”
Miss Frink looked around at her chauffeur and smiled, and he smiled back, valiantly, though he was thinking that Millicent was probably not asleep, but staring at the sea with dry, troubled eyes.
“You will come, of course, Aunt Susanna, if I go to law school there?”
“Yes, I think I should cultivate quite an intimacy with New York under those circumstances. I’d bring her with me sometimes, too.” Again she met Hugh’s eyes, and the sudden light in them rewarded her.
[310]
There was no other reference to Millicent during the long drive, and they returned to find the girl sitting on the porch. Her white face pulled on Hugh’s heartstrings.
Miss Frink asked her if she had slept, and she replied that she had had a fine rest; and she asked interested questions about the drive until Miss Frink went into the house to pack her bag.
“Did she say anything more?” asked the girl eagerly.
“Nothing—except that when I am in New York at the law school she will bring you to see me.”
Millicent’s questioning expression faded. “I shan’t be there to bring,” she said quietly; “we shall have to move away into the country somewhere.”
“But that showed that she likes you, Millicent—that all those absurd ideas about your not satisfying her don’t amount to anything. I told her. She knows what I want.”
“I understand better than you do.” Millicent smiled faintly. “She knows you haven’t met girls of your own kind yet, and what changes a year may bring; but she wants to keep you happy.”
They were able to get a chair car on the train[311] that night. Miss Frink and Hugh sat in adjoining seats, and Millicent in the third leaned back with closed eyes and thought of her grandfather, and tried to make plans for their future. She worked to exclude the radiant possibility which had dawned on her in the wonderful ride of the morning. Every joy she had ever dreamed of was embraced in the thought of a life with Hugh; but it was too sudden, he was too young to know what he wanted, and she was sure that Miss Frink’s plans and ambitions for him made the idea of little Milly Duane an absurdity. The Queen of Farrandale should see that her attitude was completely shared by Millicent herself.
The train was late in starting, and, by reason of detention along the way, it was after eleven o’clock when it pulled into Farrandale. They took a station taxicab and drove to Miss Frink’s house, intending that, after the lady had entered, Hugh, mindful of Colonel Duane’s exhortation, would take Millicent home; but as they approached, they were surprised to see the lower floor of the house brightly lighted, and an automobile parked before it.
“Come in with us, Millicent,” said Miss Frink. “We may as well see what this illumination means before you go home.”
Hugh let them into the hall with his latch-key,[312] and laughter from the end of the corridor showed that the study was occupied. Miss Frink led the way and was first to enter the room. She stood for a moment while the gay laughter died on the lips of her secretary and Adèle Lumbard as they stared at the apparition. Mr. Goldstein was standing by Miss Frink’s flat-topped desk, and apparently had just laid upon it a handful of gold pieces. Millicent would have shrunk back, but Hugh held her firmly by the arm and they followed Miss Frink as she moved into the room.
Besides herself, Mr. Goldstein was the only unembarrassed member of the company.
“In the nick of time, Miss Frink,” he said, advancing with an air of cordial welcome. He made a move toward shaking hands, but the expression on the face of the Queen of Farrandale discouraged him.
There succeeded a silent space while she walked to the desk and picked up a paper bearing her signature.
Her dark, bright gaze jumped to Grimshaw.
“I just wondered,” she said. The secretary had grown very pale, and it was difficult to face her; but he did so. Adèle stepped nearer to him. “So you did use your power of attorney,” she added.
[313]
“Certainly,” replied Grimshaw, with all the dignity he could command. “As you know, I am always looking out for advantageous business moves for you. Here was one that was extraordinary. The sale of that corner where the Duanes have been living, to be used for an apartment house, could only be made to a man of Mr. Goldstein’s means—”
“And generosity.” Miss Frink’s interruption was curt to fierceness. She grasped the gold coins and let them jingle back on the desk.
The purchaser spoke cheerfully. “Oh, it was all the same to me,” he said. “Mrs. Lumbard, she is the lady that loves the gold.” He laughed toward Adèle and wagged his head. “She likes her salary in those good little solid pieces. Isn’t it so, lovely lady?”
Miss Frink’s glance flashed at Adèle. “But this is not her salary, I judge.”
Mr. Goldstein shrugged deprecatingly. “Oh, no, Mr. Grimshaw has been very obliging.”
“Leonard, I feel that you had help in all this.” The speaker regarded her secretary with deep feeling. “You would not have done it, alone.”
Grimshaw could not speak; and Adèle saw it. She cast a defiant, angry glance at Hugh and Millicent, silent spectators of the scene. The girl’s hands were unconsciously on her heart as hope[314] sprang in it for her grandfather’s deliverance.
“Miss Frink,” cried Adèle, “you have no right to be speaking to Leonard as though he were a criminal when he never thinks of anything but your good. You were not here, and he acted for you.”
“Yes, madam,” said Mr. Goldstein, grave now that he saw the transaction was displeasing, “I certainly understood that everything was correct. I have acted in good faith.”
“I have no doubt of it,” returned Miss Frink. “Gather up that gold, if you please. My employes do not receive bribes.”
Mr. Goldstein mechanically obeyed, and his troubled gaze rested on her.
“But I have paid good money down to clinch this bargain,” he said.
Miss Frink’s genuine distress at her secretary’s sordid action lightened at some thought.
She smiled at her young people, and Grimshaw cast a baleful look at Hugh who had precipitated this scene. Anxiety again clutched at Millicent’s heart. Miss Frink had not been mercenary. She had not ignored the love of Colonel Duane for his simple, happy life, and she was powerful. The girl studied her face now for encouragement that, no matter how far matters had gone, she could save them.
[315]
“You should not withdraw from this, Miss Frink,” said Grimshaw, inspired by a fiery look from Adèle. “Indeed, it is not at all certain that you can do so, legally.”
The lady’s smile faded. “You didn’t delve into this matter quite far enough, Grim. Had you happened to examine my deposit box, you and I would both have been spared something. Mr. Goldstein”—the speaker turned to the would-be purchaser—“your money will be returned to you. Mr. Grimshaw was unaware that the Duane homestead does not belong to me any longer. I learned rather recently that some one dear to me had expressed admiration for it, and the last thing I did before leaving town was to transfer that property. I did not speak of the transaction to any one: not even to the new owner.”
The secretary’s spectacles regarded her, shining in a very white face.
Mr. Goldstein returned to the charge. “Then the property might still be for sale,” he said argumentatively.
“I think not,” returned Miss Frink. “I have reason to believe that it will be held for—well, it will not be regarded commercially. I am sorry for your disappointment, Mr. Goldstein, and I will bid you good-night.”
[316]
“Good-night, then, madam, and I shall hope for a more fruitful meeting some day,” he returned.
Hugh and Millicent were blind to the exit of the three, who moved quickly out of the room.
In that minute Hugh’s heart leaped, for the Queen of Farrandale, who never did anything by halves, drew Millicent away from him and, passing an arm around her, held her close. The girl flushed with pleasure in the loving caress, for the bright old eyes that met hers were blurred.
“Come here, Hugh.” Her free hand drew him. “He is your landlord now, Millicent. I hope he will be a good one.”
The boy threw his arms around the pair, and held them. “I don’t know what to do with you, Aunt Susanna,” he said unsteadily.
“Why, of course, I had to give you an engagement present,” she returned.
The surprise and relief of the moment seemed to center in the radiant young creature whose rosy cheek Miss Frink’s lips were pressing.
“Millicent!” cried the lover softly, and there was a wealth of joy present, and joy to come, in the exclamation. “Millicent!”

The End