Laura pretended that some pictures on a mantel needed straightening in order to hide her suffused eyes.
"All the same, Louise," she said, resuming her seat after a little while, "Mr. Blythe is entitled to know these things that you have told me. And you should have the benefit of his advice. He not only is your guardian, but he is a man—a regular man—and your—oh, well, I do not need to say that he is your friend, do I?" smiling.
"I meant to tell him," replied Louise, turning to gaze out of the window.
"Oh, you did, dear?" said Laura, teasingly. "Then my advising you to tell him was superfluous, wasn't it? I wonder why you decided to tell him, Louise?"
"Because——" Louise started to reply. But she did not finish, for at that instant John Blythe, in riding dress, walked into the room.
CHAPTER VIII
Laura glanced wistfully at Blythe's riding clothes.
"I suppose you come here in that apparel to tantalize me, knowing that my odious, ogreish medical man has absolutely forbidden me to ride for the present," she said to him in mock reproach. "There is nothing in the least subtle about that doctor man. He wants to buy my horse. That's why he has forbidden me to ride. But I am going to thwart him by turning Scamp over to Louise. You ride, of course, dear?"
Louise smiled her gratitude. She had become a finished rider as a young girl during the periods when her mother would abandon her improvident life in the city and retire to the country to enable her income partially to catch up with her expenditures.