“No wonder. I’m glad to see you don’t paint your face or dye your hair.”
The dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. “That’s the way I was raised, Aunt Susanna,” was the meek reply.
“Well, you’d better stay on here a while,” said Miss Frink at last, “and we’ll think what it will be best for you to do. Let us see. How long ago did Alice—did your grandmother die?”
The dark eyes looked off in thought. “I was a little girl. It must be about fifteen years now.”
Miss Frink nodded.
“What an old Tartar!” thought Adèle that night as she went to bed; but she had landed, as she expressed it to herself, and possession was nine points of the law. She hugged herself for her cleverness in eschewing rosy cheeks and having nothing on her hands but the slender wedding ring.
In the careful study she had made of Miss Frink and her surroundings before coming here, she had learned about Leonard Grimshaw. The rumor was that, although Miss Frink had not really adopted him, he was the closest factor in her life; and when Adèle met him at dinner that first evening, and found that he was not a guest, but living in the house, she realized still further his importance. Realized also that he might resent her claims, and so she set herself to win his regard; while he, hearing her call Miss Frink “Aunt Susanna” unrebuked, understood that she was to be accepted.
They quickly formed a tacit alliance. Adèle’s efforts to get on intimate terms with the Queen of Farrandale were steadily repulsed, but her pride was not hurt as she observed that Miss Frink treated everybody with the same brusqueness. She discerned that the one sentiment of her hostess’s life was still a living memory. The two pictures Miss Susanna kept near her proved it, and one day, a week after Adèle’s arrival, when the lawyer came and was closeted alone with Miss Frink for an hour, Mrs. Lumbard felt jubilantly certain that the visit was for the purpose of inserting her own name in the old lady’s will.
Adèle longed to become necessary in some way to her hostess. It was absurd for Leonard’s young cousin to be coming every day to read to her. She made an excuse to read something aloud one day, but Miss Frink interrupted her.