He urged persuading her father, and she promised to try. He saw her the next day, and the next, both afternoons and evenings. On the third day he did not see her until late in the afternoon—her father had come from Washington, and had spent the morning with her. And while they were talking Frothingham was reading a letter from Honoria which had been languidly pursuing him for a week. Part of it was:
I think you met Cecilia Allerton in Boston. Had you heard of her bolting with Frank Mortimer?
“Frank Mortimer!” he exclaimed, sitting upright in bed in his astonishment. “That brute with the big teeth and the empty head!”
Her father was angry with her for something or other and treated her cruelly. Everyone was pitying her. Frank fell in love with her out of sympathy, and she was so miserable that, when her father wouldn’t consent, she ran off with him. Mr. Allerton has changed his will, they say, leaving everything to colleges and charities. But Frank has an income and will have more when his uncle dies, and she has a rich aunt who loathes her father, and so may leave her something.
Cecilia’s quite mad about Frank, now that they’re married. Willie Kennefick was dining with us last night. He says she was in love with Stanley Huddiford, who died a year or so ago. He says she believes Stanley’s soul has entered into Frank! She’s a clever girl, they say, but a bit eccentric, like so many of them down Boston way——
Frothingham looked on this news as a direct, providential warning to him. “I’ll take no risks with Pope,” he said. “It would be sheer madness.”
And before he left his rooms he wrote to Barney, fixing the next day but one for his arrival at Chicago. He felt that there was no hope of winning Pope—at least not at present. “If she by chance succeeds after I’m gone—and I’ll leave her in a good humour—I can easily return. But I know there’s nothing in it.”
Failure was mourning in her eyes when he called at five o’clock. They went for a walk, and in reluctant words she told him that her father was immovable, that their only choice was between disobeying him and breaking the engagement. She listened coldly while he explained his position again; when he had finished she sneered. “You are—unanswerable,” she said bitterly.
“No doubt I do lack ‘temperament,’” he drawled, an ironic gleam on his eyeglass.
She was humble at once. “Oh—I understand,” she answered.