II
It was long before she slept but she rose obedient to the summons of the alarm clock and assisted as usual in the preparation of breakfast. At the table her silence and preoccupation caused her mother to scrutinize her closely.
“You don’t seem quite like yourself, Grace. Don’t you feel well?”
“Oh, there’s nothing at all the matter. I had a hard day at the store yesterday.”
“Maybe you ate something for supper that didn’t agree with you.”
Grace read into this suggestion a hint that her mother and sister were not without their curiosity as to where she had dined and the manner in which she had spent the remainder of the evening. They had been accepting so meekly her silence as to her evenings away from home that it occurred to Grace that it would serve to allay suspicion if she told occasionally just what she had been doing.
“I had dinner at the Sycamore with an acquaintance—a man from out of town—and we went to the concert. The music was perfectly wonderful. And then we walked home. Nothing terribly exciting in that!”
“I thought I heard voices at the door just before you came in,” said Mrs. Durland with an effort at indifference that was only partly successful.
“Very likely you did, mamma. Mr. Trenton and I walked home; it seemed a pity to ride when the night was so fine and there was all that music still ringing in our ears.”
She was pleased with her own audacity and smiled as she saw Ethel and her mother exchange glances. But having ventured so far it would be necessary now to explain how she had met Trenton and she was prepared with a small lie with which to fortify the truth when she saw that something more was expected.
“Mr. Trenton, did you say, Grace?” inquired Mrs. Durland as though not sure she had heard aright.
“Yes, mother; Mr. Ward Trenton, of Pittsburgh. I knew his niece very well at the University, and as he comes here now and then Mabel wrote and asked him to look me up. He’s ever so nice. He’s been everywhere and talks wonderfully. He’s a mechanical engineer and rated very high, isn’t he, daddy?”
Trenton’s name had impinged upon Durland’s consciousness and he put down the morning newspaper to which he had been referring from time to time during the consumption of his breakfast.
“Ward Trenton? Yes, he’s one of the ablest engineers in the country. Did you say he’d been in town, Grace?”
“Yes, he comes here now and then. I had dinner with him last night at the Sycamore and we went to the concert. I meant to tell you about him. He knows of you; he says he’s always stumbling into you in the patent office records.”
“Did Trenton say that?” asked Durland, greatly pleased.
“Yes; he spoke of you in the kindest way, father.”
“You don’t say! I wouldn’t have thought he’d ever heard of me. He’s in touch with all the big industrial concerns of the country,” said Durland. “I guess there is hardly a man whose word is worth more than Trenton’s. I read just the other day, in one of the trade journals, an address he made somewhere on shop efficiency. His opinions are quoted a good deal; he knows what he’s talking about.”
Her father’s manifestation of interest in a man so eminent in his own field did not prevent Ethel from taking advantage of Grace’s unexpected frankness to ask:
“Was it Mr. Trenton you were with at the theatre a few nights ago? One of the girls in the office said she saw you there with a very distinguished looking man.”
“The very same!” Grace replied promptly. “You know Mr. Trenton is awful keen about Mabel, so when she wrote him that I was at Shipley’s he came in to see me.”
Having gone so far with the imaginary niece she thought it best to endow her with a full name.
“Mabel Conwell is awfully nice, though you wouldn’t exactly call her pretty.”
“Does she live here?” asked Mrs. Durland.
“Oh, no! Her home’s in Jeffersonville or New Albany, I forget which. It’s one of those Ohio river towns.”
“It was certainly kind of her to have Mr. Trenton look you up,” said Mrs. Durland. “But I wish you’d asked him to the house. It doesn’t seem just right for you to be going out with a man your family doesn’t know. I’m not saying, dear, that there’s any impropriety; only I think it would give him a better impression of all of us if we met him.”
“Oh, I meant to bring him up but he’s so terribly busy. He works everywhere he goes right up to the last minute. And it was much simpler to meet him at the Sycamore.”
“He’s married, is he not?” asked Ethel.
“Oh, yes!” said Grace, heartily regretting now that she had opened the way for this question. “His wife is Mary Graham Trenton who write and lectures.”
“That woman,” exclaimed Mrs. Durland, plainly horrified. “She is one of the most dangerous of all the foes of decency in this country! Last spring we had a discussion of her ideas in the West End Club. I hadn’t known how utterly without shame a woman could be till one of our members wrote a paper about her.”
“I’ve heard that she’s very wealthy,” interposed Ethel in a tone which suggested that, no matter how utterly destructive of public morals Mrs. Trenton’s ideas might be, as a rich woman she was not wholly beyond the pale. “It’s all the more remarkable that she’s opposed to marriage and nearly everything else, or pretends to be, when she belongs to one of the oldest American families and inherited her wealth.”
“I don’t know that Mr. Trenton accepts her ideas,” said Grace. “He hasn’t discussed them with me. He seemed rather amused when I told him I’d read her ‘Clues to a New Social Order’.”
“You haven’t read that awful thing?” cried Mrs. Durland.
“Why, certainly, mother; I read it last winter. It’s not so awfully shocking; I suppose there are a good many people who believe as Mrs. Trenton does.”
“How can you speak so, Grace! What would become of the home and the family if such ideas prevailed? That woman’s positively opposed to marriage.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s as bad as that! I think it’s more her idea that where marriages are unhappy it’s cruel to make people live together. But, you needn’t be afraid that Mr. Trenton’s trying to convert me to his wife’s notions. I don’t believe he is terribly tickled to have her gallivanting over the country lecturing.”
“You can’t be too careful, you know, Grace, about letting a married man pay you attentions. People are bound to talk. And Mrs. Trenton, being known for her loose ideas on marriage, naturally causes people to look twice at her husband.”
“And at any woman her husband pays attention to,” Ethel added.
“Of course I’m careful what I do,” replied Grace. “Mr. Trenton is a perfect gentleman in every way and just as kind and considerate as can be. He gave me two of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent. You certainly can’t object to my knowing a man like that.”
“No, dear,” replied Mrs. Durland, “except that it seems strange for a daughter of mine to be meeting a married man and having dinner with him and going to the theatre when I don’t know him at all.”
Durland had lingered, pretending to be looking for something in the paper but really prepared to support Grace in the event that his wife and Ethel showed a disposition to carry their criticisms further.
“I suppose we have to put up with such things,” said Ethel, “but that doesn’t make them right. I hope, Grace, you won’t let your independence carry you too far.”
“Well, Mr. Trenton has passed on and I don’t know when he’ll turn up here again, so you needn’t worry.”
“It’s fine you can know a man like Trenton,” Durland ventured from the hall door.
“Here’s an idea!” cried Grace, springing after him to hold his overcoat, “the next time Mr. Trenton comes to town I’ll try to have you meet him.”
“I think some of us ought to meet him,” said Mrs. Durland, who had begun to clear the table.
“By all means,” Ethel affirmed. “I think the family dignity calls for at least that!”
“Yes, we must preserve the family dignity at any hazard,” Grace retorted.
Having buttoned her father into his coat she snatched his hat and planted it at a rakish angle on his head. He submitted good-naturedly, pleased as he always was by her attentions.
“You bring Trenton down sometime, Grace. I’ve some old junk I’d be glad to show him,” he said, glancing furtively at his wife.
“Grand! Between us we ought to be able to put something over on him.”
She flung her arm across his shoulder and walked with him to the front door.
No highly developed talent for mind reading was necessary to an understanding of the mental operations of Mrs. Durland and Ethel in matters pertaining to the father and younger daughter. When Grace entered the kitchen she knew that she had interrupted a conference bearing upon her acquaintance with Trenton. Her mother and Ethel would study the matter in all its aspects. She derived a cynical satisfaction from the knowledge that her apparent frankness was probably causing them more anxiety than an evasion or a downright lie.