“I’ve been frank with you, Hugh,” he said in a lowered voice; then to be more certain that there was no eavesdropping, Ogden turned and closed the transom. “I told you she was a person of no principle, knowing no law but her own will, and, to say nothing of the bad taste and danger of playing with such a woman, you risk outraging Miss Frink’s strict ideas of decorum by staying down there alone all this time. I’m thoroughly disgusted. I must be honest. Right at the time when you are wanting to disclose yourself, to have you play the fool like this, it’s painfully disappointing. That’s what it is, painfully disappointing. I shall leave for New York to-morrow, and you can conduct your affairs to suit yourself.”
The effect of this intense speech on his listener surprised Ogden even while he was delivering it. Was Hugh so fatuous, so impervious?
The boy, smiling and looking exasperatingly handsome and happy, seized the smaller man and pulled him down beside him on the couch at the foot of the bed.
“It is true,” he said. “I’ve been party of the second part in a love-scene downstairs, and I owe it all to you, Ogden.” Hugh threw an arm around his companion’s shoulders. “I’ll never, never forget it.”
Ogden with open mouth stared into the violet eyes.
“It’s Aunt Susanna. I’ve been hugging Aunt Susanna.”
Ogden went limp. He still stared. He brushed his hand across his eyes.
Hugh laughed low. “Yes; she’s known it ever since Ally held that letter of Carol’s in her lap; and she forgives us, and she understands.”
“What—where—when did you exchange Ally for Miss Frink?”