“I won’t!” she cried. “I’ll send that girl away! I’ll never let her come here again!”
That was stupid. She couldn’t keep Frank in a glass case. Even if this girl were gone, there were plenty of others in the world, pretty, cajoling, flattering young creatures.
“I’m not young any more,” she thought. “I’m old—old and selfish and dull—a hundred years older in heart than Frank. He’s still a boy. He always will be. If he likes to be flattered, it’s because he’s young enough to believe in people.”
Mechanically, moved by a blind impulse to hurry to Frank, she had mounted the stairs again, and had come to the door of the drawing-room.
“You’re so understanding!” Stella’s daughter was saying.
Mrs. Holland stopped in the dimly lit hall and looked into the room. The girl was sitting on the piano stool, her hands clasped in her lap, her pretty head bent. Frank stood beside her.
“Must be pretty hard for you,” he said gravely.
The girl looked up at him, and her eyes were filled with tears.
“You’re just the k-kindest man!” she murmured uncertainly.
Flattery? Why need it be that? Wasn’t it possible that she really liked Frank, and that he liked her? Oh, how young she was, and how pretty!