“You are quick at faces, Gracie,” she said to her aide. To Dolores: “I am sorry, Miss—ah—Trent, but I doubt your sincerity in asking our sort of help. Already you have violated our first rule—absolute frankness. This journal explains better than you have done why you need cover in a respectable place. I’m afraid you would not feel at home here.”
“Not in them clothes,” contributed Gracie.
“My dear!” Then again to Dolores: “We do not wish to seem unresponsive to the needs of any unfortunate, but there is a great deal behind my decision. Good morning, Miss Trent.”
“Good morning.”
Dolores accepted the matron’s decision quietly, as she had the previous rebuffs of her life, and started toward the door.
“Are you leaving, my child?”
The voice was strong yet mellifluous. Dolores saw surveying them from the dark background of the hall a man in clerical clothes. He looked to be middle-aged; was of medium height, medium weight, medium coloring. From him, however, flowed an extraordinary personality. No smile showed beneath his brown mustache or in his agate-colored eyes, yet he beamed with beneficence.
“Yes, Dr. Willard,” the matron answered. “The young lady deliberately deceived me as to her identity. Possibly you have not run through the morning papers. This picture will tell you more quickly than I can explain why I——”
Dolores’ impulse was to continue into the hall, but she as well as the matron stopped at the clergyman’s gesture.
“I haven’t seen this one, no,” he admitted, studying the sketch interestedly, then the girl herself. “There are photographs of her, however, in three of the other papers. She is sketchable—very sketchable.”