“I didn’t reply much of anything. For if I’d said what I wanted to say, he would have been quite justified in thinking that I was no fit mate for a Christian girl! Let’s don’t talk about it.”
That night Maida went to her room, leaving Allen to have a long serious talk with her father.
She hoped much from the confab, for Jeff Allen was a man of ideas, and of good, sound judgment. He could see straight, and could advise sensibly and well. And Maida hoped, too, that something would happen or some way be devised that the secret told her by Appleby might be of no moment. Perhaps there was no heir, save in the old man’s imagination. Or perhaps it was only someone who would inherit a portion of the property, leaving enough for their own support and comfort.
At any rate, she went to bed comforted and cheered by the knowledge that Jeff was there, and that if there was anything to be done he would do it.
She had vague misgivings because she had not told him what Appleby had threatened. But, she argued, if she decided to suppress that bit of news, she must not breathe it to anybody—not even Jeff.
So, encouraged at the outlook, and exhausted by her day of worriment, she slept soundly till well into the night.
Then she was awakened by a strange sound. It gave her, at first, a strange impression of being on an ocean steamer. She couldn’t think why, for her half-awake senses responded only to the vague sense of familiarity with such a sound.
But wide awake in a moment, she heard more of it, and realized that it was a bugle to which she listened—the clear, though not loud, notes of a bugle. Amazed, she jumped from her bed, and looked out of a window in the direction of the sound.
She saw nothing, and heard the last faint notes die away, as she listened.
There was no further sound, and she returned to bed, and after a time fell asleep again.