"Oh, thank you," Flora panted.
She knew so well the voice she had expected at the other end of the wire that the husky, boyish note which reached her, attenuated by distance, struck her with dismay and disappointment.
"Ella, oh, yes; yes; Ella." What was she saying? Ella was using the telephone as if it were a cabinet for secrets.
"Clara told me you were down there," she was explaining. "I saw her this morning, yes. Well,"—and she could hear Ella draw in her breath—"I'm so relieved! I thought you'd be, too, to know. I was perfectly right. She was after him."
Flora faltered, "After whom?" There flashed through her mind more than one person that, by this time, Clara might possibly be after.
"Why, after papa, of course!" Ella's injured surprise brought her back to the romance of Judge Buller. Her voice rose in sheer bewilderment. "Well?"
Ella's voice rose triumphantly. "I got it out of her myself. I just came right out to her at last. She seemed awfully surprised that I knew; but she owned up to it, and what do you think? I bought her off!"
"Bought her off?" Flora cried. Each fact that Ella brought forth seemed to her more preposterous than the last.
"Why, yes, it's too ridiculous; what do you think she wanted?"
At that question Flora's heart seemed fairly to stand still. That was the very question she had been asking herself for days, and asking in vain.