CHAPTER XIX
JOHN OGDEN
John Ogden’s eagle eye had been on Adèle and Hugh when they slipped out of the house this evening, and he was well aware that they had not come in when he persuaded Miss Frink to seek her couch and leave the disposition of affairs below-stairs to him. At last, when Stebbins alone was prowling sleepily about, Ogden decided that Hugh might become unmanageable if he found his guardian up and waiting for him and his lady, as if with rebuke; so he decided to go to his room. It was scarcely past eleven o’clock, but, in this household of early hours, it was late.
Arrived in his room, Ogden opened a window, turned on the reading-lamp, and taking a book set himself to listen for his mutinous young friend. It was not long before he heard the murmur of voices beneath his window and then the muffled closing of the house door. He set his own ajar in order to hear the pair come upstairs. They did not come. He scowled at his book and said something between his teeth which was an aspiration concerning Adèle Reece. Long minutes passed. He fumed. The clock on the stairs chimed the half-hour.
By the time the solemn midnight bell fell upon the quiet house, Ogden had made up his mind to have nothing more to do with his protégé. He would leave for New York the next day, after making a few straight-from-the-shoulder remarks to Hugh, releasing him from their partnership. Scowling at his book, he heard the clock chime another quarter, and, starting up, went to the door and pulled it open. The lights were still on. He set his teeth. He felt his ears burn. It was indecent. He was humiliated before the chaste image of Miss Frink. He would wait until the clock chimed again and then he would go downstairs, no matter what he came upon. He was determined to quarrel with Hugh, anyway. It might as well be to-night as in the morning.
He went back to his book. At the first stroke of the half-hour, he bounded to the door and opened it once more. All was dark below. Hugh’s room was near his. He went to it. The brilliantly lighted transom was open. He knocked softly on the door and opened it. Hugh, turning about, faced a gentleman in his shirt-sleeves with a scarlet face, rumpled hair, and a generally wild and angry appearance.
“Anything wrong, Mr. Ogden?” he asked.
“Anything wrong!” John Ogden was speechless. He had never seen Hugh look like this. The boy’s face was alive with—was it hope? It was certainly gladness, satisfaction.