"I am," returned Frank, making her the low bow her embarrassment seemed to demand.
"Then you must excuse me," said she; "I thought you were an elderly man, like our own Mr. Hamilton. I should not have sent for you if——"
"If you had known I had no more experience," he suggested, with a smile, seeing her pause in some embarrassment.
She bowed; yet he knew that was not the way she would have ended the sentence if she had spoken her thought.
"Then I am to understand," said he, with a gentleness born of his great wish to be of service to her, "that you would prefer that I should send you an older adviser. I can do it, Miss Cavanagh."
"Thank you," she said, and stood hesitating, the slight flush on her cheek showing that she was engaged in some secret struggle. "I will tell you my difficulty," she pursued at last, raising her eyes with a frank look to his face. "Will you be seated?"
Charmed with the graciousness of her manner when once relieved from embarrassment, he waited for her to sit and then took a chair himself.
"It is a wearisome affair," she declared, "but one which a New York lawyer can solve without much trouble." And with the clearness of a highly cultivated mind, she gave him the facts of a case in which she and her sister had become involved through the negligence of her man of business.
"Can you help me?" she asked.
"Very easily," he replied. "You have but to go to New York and swear to these facts before a magistrate, and the matter will be settled without difficulty."