“Your grandmother would have told me if I had let her. And Elsie herself acts as though I knew. She has accused me several times. I’ve wired to my mother to come. I am frightened about Elsie. She is in danger of doing—oh, something that would be dreadful for Aunt Katherine, and for herself, too. Aunt Katherine is away for the day. The more I know the more I can help. Please tell me just everything you can.”
“I hate doing that. But if it helps you to help—— Anyway, it’s only fair to you. You ought to know what everybody else knows. Elsie’s father, Nick Frazier, is a thief. He stole some securities, or something, from Miss Frazier.”
Kate did not even exclaim. She had slowed her steps for the great revelation and was now gazing straight ahead. It took some seconds for her to react at all to what Jack had said.
Jack paced on beside her, protecting her from the gusty rain by dexterous manipulations of the green silk umbrella.
“That wouldn’t have been enough in itself to make them so rabid, though,” he went on, worriedly. “You see they blame your aunt some. She adopted him, you know—anyway, let him call her ‘aunt’—and took him into her home and prepared him herself for Harvard. He wasn’t even in school. He was working in some mill in spite of being just a kid, fourteen or something like that, when she discovered him. He hadn’t any family—didn’t even know who his family were, had been brought up in some institution or other. Well, Miss Frazier treated him just as though he belonged to her, gave him her name and everything. This is all an old story in this village. Rose and I were brought up on it. Then when he was in college Miss Frazier expected him to be asked everywhere to holiday affairs here, and she gave parties in her house. She acted just as though he were a Frazier really. The young people liked him, though it seems he was something of a diamond in the rough, you know, ’spite of Harvard and all. But the parents grumbled. That was our grandmothers, you see. They only let it go on because your aunt was a Frazier and could do almost anything, they being such a fine old New England family. The parents always said no good would come of it, though. ‘Blood would tell.’”
“Yes, yes,” Kate agreed, tremulously. “That’s what your grandmother said last night.”
“What! Still mumbling over that? Talk about fixed ideas! When he stole those securities—he did it while your aunt was abroad or somewhere—and she let him go to prison for it, everybody said, ‘Now Katherine Frazier’s learned her lesson, I guess.’ That was two years ago or more. But then right away his wife died, and Elsie came to live here with Miss Frazier, and Miss Frazier expected us all to treat her just as we always had when she visited before, just as though she were Miss Frazier’s regular niece and not the daughter of a convict who doesn’t even know his own name. That got the old folks’ goat right enough. They said they’d tried that once on their own children. But would they let it be perpetrated on their grandchildren? You can bet, no. And there was a great to-do. And, well, we haven’t been exactly cordial to Elsie.”
Kate said nothing when he stopped. Jack wondered what she was thinking. He felt very hot and ashamed. “But that’s all past now,” he said. “Elsie isn’t to blame. Why should she suffer?”
“Now I’ll keep my mouth shut until she speaks,” he told himself.
But Kate did not break the silence until they came to the foot of the steps leading up to Miss Frazier’s front door. Then she looked up at Jack as she took her bundles from him. “Thanks for telling me everything like that,” she said, gravely. “I think it’s all pretty hard on Aunt Katherine and just simply awful for Elsie. No wonder she thought I was a beast. Why, I called her a ‘thief’ herself, and said we were being followed by that detective as though we were thieves. Now I understand a lot of things! I’ve—I’ve—just wallowed in breaks. I hope my mother gets here to-night.”