Louise's flush shone through her amused smile.
"That is true, isn't it?" she said simply. "Of course I must ask him."
"I am in a frenzy of fear, though," went on Laura, affecting an exaggerated solemnity, "that the ogre will flatly put his foot down and refuse to let you go. I know that I should if I were he."
"Why, Laura?" asked Louise with such genuine wide-eyed innocence that Laura laughed outright.
"Why?" she repeated in Louise's tone. "Well, I haven't the least doubt that I should be a great deal more selfish about it than he will be. Just because a man has to be such a horridly legal, dry-as-dust creature as a guardian, is that any particular reason why he should become incapable of experiencing the entirely human misery called lonesomeness?"
Louise had no reply for that except a little gesture of deprecation that quite failed to convince.
"How could we possibly get ready to go abroad in a week, Laura?" she covered her confusion by asking.
"My dear," replied Laura, convincingly, "I could and would start for the Straits of Sunda inside of twenty minutes if there were any possible reason why I should want to go there—if, for example, there happened to be a dressmaker or milliner there whose creations I particularly fancied. The voyage to Europe is now a mere ferry trip. You speak as if we were still living in the Victorian period. In those days folks 'made preparations' to go abroad—the dear, fussy, old-fashioned creatures! Now it is like riding to Staten Island, with the exception of the sleeps and meals in between. One of the most delightful men I know goes to Europe every year with no other impedimenta than a walking stick—he is so used to a cane that he must have it for his constitutionals on deck—and a toothbrush; he gets his changes of linen from the head steward—I believe he knows every head steward afloat; and he is such a cheerful steamer companion, because he is unhampered by luggage, that it is a delight to be his fellow voyager. Once, when I was a young woman ("You are so aged and decrepit now, aren't you?" murmured Louise.) I went on board a steamer to wish some friends bon voyage. It was rather a cheerless day in New York, with overcast skies. I thought of sunny Italy. And so I went along with them, in the clothes I was standing in, and I had the most enjoyable voyage of my life."
Thus Laura chattered on, eager to take Louise's mind off the previous night's experience which, even without having heard any of the details, she well knew must have been a trying one. During the night Laura had decided to start within the week on the trip to Europe which she made every year. The climactic turn in Louise's affairs, which had by no means been unexpected by Laura, had prodded her to this decision. She had meant to take Louise abroad with her early in May at any rate; now, however, that her young friend, whom she had come to regard with an encompassing affection, was in obvious distressing straits, an almost immediate withdrawal of her from painful scenes would, Laura felt, be at least an attempt at a solution. A few months abroad would enable Louise to shake off the bravely-borne but none the less wearing depression which had taken possession of her when she found herself so unexpectedly thrust into a horribly difficult situation—a situation which Laura now blamed herself for not having actively sought to terminate before the interposition of the incident, whatever had been its nature, which had caused the girl to leave the house on the Drive in the middle of the night. And Laura, meditating these things as she lay awake, declared in her heart that Louise should never again be subjected to a renewal of that ordeal.
Without any questioning, Louise, after a little actual planning with Laura for the early trip abroad, told the older woman what had happened at the house on the Drive on the previous night. She went over the details calmly enough, grouping Judd's brutal utterances into a few phrases which presented the picture almost as plainly to Laura's mental vision as if she had been actually present at what she knew must have been a scene sufficiently searing in its effect upon a girl yet under twenty and fresh from school. It was only when she came to her mother's flaccid, vacillating part in the affair that Louise's voice weakened a little.