“I would like you to be very friendly with that girl, Alice,” Mr Cheney repeated as they seated themselves in the carriage. “She has a rare face, a rare face, and she is highly gifted. She reminds me of someone I have known, yet I can’t think who it is. What do you know about her, Baroness?”
The Baroness gave an expressive shrug. “Since you admire her so much,” she said, “I rather hesitate telling you. But the girl is of common origin—a grocer’s daughter, and her mother quite an inferior person. I hardly think it a suitable companionship for Alice.”
“I am sure I don’t care to know her,” chimed in Alice. “I thought her quite bold and forward in her manner.”
“Decidedly so! She seemed to hang on to your father’s hand as if she would never let go,” added Mabel, in her most acid tone. “I must say, I should have been horrified to see you act in such a familiar manner toward any stranger.” A quick colour shot into Preston Cheney’s cheek and a spark into his eye.
“The girl was perfectly modest in her deportment to me,” he said. “She is a lady through and through, however humble her birth may be. But I ought to have known better than to ask my wife and daughter to like anyone whom I chanced to admire. I learned long ago how futile such an idea was.”
“Oh, well, I don’t see why you need get so angry over a perfect stranger whom you never laid eyes on until to-day,” pouted Alice. “I am sure she’s nothing to any of us that we need quarrel over her.”
“A man never gets so old that he is not likely to make a fool of himself over a pretty face,” supplemented Mabel, “and there is no fool like an old fool.”
The uncomfortable drive home came to an end at this juncture, and Preston Cheney retired to his own room, with the disagreeable words of his wife and daughter ringing in his ears, and the beautiful face of the young organist floating before his eyes.
“I wish she were my daughter,” he said to himself; “what a comfort and delight a girl like that would be to me!”
And while these thoughts filled the man’s heart the Baroness paced her room with all the jealous passions of her still ungoverned nature roused into new life and violence at the remembrance of Joy Irving’s fresh young beauty and Preston Cheney’s admiring looks and words.