Ogden accepted her ignoring of the “job.” There was a change in her since yesterday. She seemed to be smothering and controlling some spite against himself. If she suspected anything, he must prepare Hugh. The sudden meeting with Ally and the plan to help her with the recital had changed the boy’s gloomy, rebellious mood; and certainly nothing had occurred since last evening, when Miss Frink had been a sufficiently complacent though passive hostess.
“I will attend to the matter,” she said after a pause, and rose. “I must go in. Grim will wonder if I am forgetting the mail.”
CHAPTER XV
APPLE BLOSSOMS
Adèle was in a porch swing, her pretty slippers and ankles very much in evidence when Miss Frink and Ogden came up on the veranda. She was singing “Madelon,” and Hugh was trying to stop her, amid much laughter and threatening.
The lady of the old school crossed to her and pulled down the skirt of the young woman’s pink dimity morning dress. It would have kept Miss Frink busy if she had performed that office for all the girls in Farrandale who needed it that morning, and all the mornings; although Farrandale was no more lax than any other town.
Adèle rose quickly from the swinging seat, and Miss Frink turned to Hugh. “Well, what’s this I hear about our young lawyer?”
“Oh, has Mr. Ogden told you of my wish to read with Colonel Duane? I’m keen for it, Miss Frink.”
That lady looked up into his eager face with a lingering regard. What would he say if she told him here and now that she knew him to be hers; her own flesh and blood; she who but a few weeks ago had believed herself alone in the world? This splendid specimen of young manhood was hers, hers to assist or to renounce. Her habitual shrewdness and forethought warned her that she did not know him: that he must show the stuff he was made of before she could discover whether she cared to own him. He was deceiving her, at the present moment. He was only watching for opportunities to use her. No wonder his conscience had revolted at the succession of favors pressed upon him by the woman he was hoodwinking. Miss Frink’s X-ray mentality told her that here was an honest thought manipulated by the man of the world with whom she had just been tête-à-tête. Nevertheless, Hugh was at fault. He should have spurned such a plan—“And let you lie under the simple granite monument provided for in your will?” added some small inner voice.