“I’m going to, Ogden. Thank you,” replied Hugh, with a submissiveness that surprised his friend.
John Ogden stared at him for a silent moment. “Well, then,” he said, vaguely, and left the room.
CHAPTER XXI
PAVING THE WAY
Ogden went on thinking about the unusual docility with which Hugh had received his exhortation. Also there was the devotion to his studies at a moment when Ally was about to depart from the house. How about that?
As he swung along he began to smile, his retrospective reflection visualizing that slipping away into the moonlight which he had witnessed and worried over last evening. After a minute in a rush of thought his smile broadened. It seemed probable that the siren, in the excited reaction from her performance, might have thrown a scare into the heir apparent. At what juncture had she slipped away from Hugh’s arm and Miss Frink slipped into it? Something had gone on, to flush Miss Frink’s cheeks and weary her eyes this morning. All the time that he himself was reading and fretting in his room last evening, things had been happening downstairs. Anyway, the net result had been a joyous one, as transpired unmistakably, later.
As Ogden tramped along, he was roused from his reverie to realize that many persons he met greeted him. Realizing that they remembered him as the busy master of ceremonies on the night before, he responded cordially, and at last a short man in a checked suit forced him to a standstill by his effusive manner.
“Goldstein, Mr. Ogden. I. K. Goldstein. We had but a minute’s talk last night—”
“Ah, good-morning, Mr. Goldstein.” Ogden endeavored to edge away from the plump hand with the diamond ring, after yielding to its determined grasp.