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 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—”