Lena cast down her eyes and said, “I am a very truthful little girl.”
“Have you had a good time here?”
Then she looked up with kindling face. “Oh, so good! You can’t know how I thank you, Mr. Percival. I know I owe it to you. I feel as though I were breathing the air I belong in, at last. It’s so different from—but you know all about my life,” said Lena brokenly. “And Mrs. Lenox is so sweet and kind, I just love her!”
“And Miss Elton?”
Lena stiffened and made no reply for an instant.
“Miss Elton is quite as clever as you men, isn’t she?” Lena asked, in quite another tone of voice.
“Infinitely more so,” said Dick cordially.
“Do you like it?” she asked in a breathless way.
“Why, yes, in Madeline,” he answered. “She isn’t a bit priggish, you know, but just naturally interested in everything good. Why? Don’t you and she get on?”
Lena gave an uneasy little twist as though she did not enjoy the question, and she sighed.