"Well, you're an odd girl, Caroline. You experiment with men's hearts like an old alchemist, who puts all sorts of substances into his crucible in the hope of finding something that will enrich him."
"And probably, like the old alchemist, I shall never find anything except what, to me, is dross."
Under Mrs. Robertson's wing Ella appeared, and met with a very kindly reception. She had not Miss Ainsley's admirable ease, but she possessed something far better. There was a sweet girlish bloom in addition to her innately refined manner and ingenuous loveliness of face, which made even the experienced belle sigh that she had passed by that phase forever. Yet shrewd Ella's eyes were as busy as they were intelligent. She wondered at Miss Ainsley with mingled admiration and distrust, but she had received a sufficient number of hints from Mrs. Bodine to understand her hostess quite well. She saw Clancy enter, and Miss Ainsley's welcome, and quickly observed that there was a sort of free-masonry between them. Then some one appeared who almost took away her breath. It was the stranger to whom she had spoken so unexpectedly, even to herself. She saw that Mr. Clancy, Miss Ainsley, and Mrs. Willoughby greeted him cordially, but that many others appeared surprised and displeased. Little time was given to note more, for the stranger's eyes fell upon her. He instantly turned to his hostess, and evidently asked for an introduction. With a slight sparkle of mischief in her eyes, Mrs. Willoughby complied, and Ella saw the stranger coming toward her as straight and prompt as if he meant to carry her off bodily. He seemed to ignore every one and everything else in the room, but she was too high-spirited to fall into a panic, or even to be confused. Indeed she found herself growing angry, and was resolving to give him a lesson, when his name was mentioned. Then she was startled, and for an instant confused. This was no other than the son of "that old—Mr. Houghton," as Mrs. Bodine always mentioned him, with a little cough of self-recovery as if she had been on the perilous edge of saying something very unconventional. His father was her father's employer, and the instinctive desire to save her father from trouble led to hesitation in her plan of rebuke and retaliation. Her petty resentment should not lead to any unpleasant complications, and she therefore merely bowed civilly.
Houghton repeated her name as if a victim of momentary surprise himself, and then said with his direct gaze, "I wish to ask ten thousand pardons."
"That is a great many. I shall have to think about granting one."
"If I were you I wouldn't do it," was his next rather brusque remark.
"That is your advice, then?"
"No, indeed. I'm not my own worst enemy. Miss Bodine, circumlocution is not my forte. I had not walked a block away from you the other day before I charged myself with being a fool and a brute. It took just that long for me to get it into my thick head what your manner and words meant, and I've been in a rage with myself ever since."
"Well," she asked, looking down demurely, "what did they mean?"
"They meant you were a brave girl—that from a chivalric impulse you had drawn near when even men stood a little aloof, as if fearing that if the affair came to blows, they might get a chance one themselves. Your face had the frank expression of a child—how often in fancy I've seen it since!—the words came from your lips almost as a child would speak them. Now that I see you again I know how true my second thoughts were of you and of myself. I deserve a whipping instead of your pardon."