“What you don’t know,” he continued, “is how I admire you. You’re the finest woman I’ve ever known, and the finer you were, and the more frank, and the more generous, the more miserable I was. Oh”—shaking his broad shoulders restlessly—“I’m so glad it’s over. I want to go away.”
“You want to leave me, Hugh?”
“To pick up my own self-respect somewhere. I feel as if you couldn’t really trust me!”
“My child”—Miss Frink spoke tenderly—“what is my boasted X-ray for if I don’t know, positively, that I can trust you? To lose you, to have you go away, would leave my life the same dry husk it was before you came.”
A line grew in Hugh’s forehead, his eyes dimmed as the two stood looking at each other. Then he put his arms around her again, and this time he kissed her.
“Thank you, Prince Charming. How little I ever expected to have a child to kiss me. Starving, famished, I was when you came, Hugh, and didn’t know it.” She pushed him away again with gentle, firm hands. “Now I want to do a little explaining, myself. To-night I heard Stebbins stumbling up the servants’ stairs after everything was quiet, and I felt something was wrong. I came into the hall and saw that the lights below were still on. I came down, heard voices in here, and the rest followed. You mustn’t feel too unhappy about what happened to-night. Believe in my X-ray enough to know that her life has been made up of similar incidents; not just the same, of course, but the pursuit of excitement of some sort. I have a problem now unless she elects to leave Farrandale.”
“Be kind to her, Aunt Susanna!”
“I will, you soft-hearted boy. I imagine a man finds it the hardest of tasks to turn down a woman.”
“She said I had fooled her. I don’t know what she meant.”
“She doesn’t either. At that moment it was a necessity with her to sting, and she stung, that’s all.”