“It’s between Melville and Octave. One is as deep in it as the other. And I have a suspicion, but I don’t know what gave it to me, either.”
“A suspicion of what?”
“I think that he has thought of something, or invented something that she went away to see about. And that old gentleman who came home with her is in the plot, too. I wonder who he was! Not much of anybody, though, I fancy; he was so very plain and quiet.”
Meanwhile, behind the closed door of Melville’s room, Octave was undergoing a cross-examination which tried her ardent soul to the uttermost. Time and time again she was on the point of giving out and divulging the “Mystery”; but as often was she restrained by the thought of the brilliant climax she hoped to achieve. She had promptly dried her tears, and looked up bravely into the kind, questioning face above her, and Aunt Ruth thought she had never seen anything sweeter than the frank young countenance into which she looked back.
“You see, Aunt Ruthy, it’s just this way. People can hold their tongues even if they do want to tell things, if they think that some good is to be gained by it. Some great good is to be gained by my keeping still.”
“Good to whom, Octave?” The aunt had found a deeper perplexity, even, than she had imagined.
“For Melville first, and afterward for all of us. Wouldn’t you be proud of him, if you should suddenly find him the most famous boy of his age, of this age, I mean?”
“Thee knows very well that I should be proud of him or of any one who does a noble thing. Fame is not always nobility; nor is notoriety fame. I should not want either thee or him to do anything for the mere sake of making peoples’ tongues wag.”
“Aunt Ruth, we’re all in a ‘mix-up,’ as Fritzy says. In the first place, I am going to tell tales for once, so as to clear up that about the ‘tantrum.’ Or, will you, Melville? It isn’t fair that you should think it was Paula.”
“But it was Paula, to begin with,” answered Melville, angrily. “She has such a terrible weight of care on her shoulders, that she must needs come in here and go to upsetting my things ‘to straighten them,’ she says. She hasn’t the least idea of what value they are; and she turned out some of my papers that will cost me hours to do over again; and they must be done, because I promised the professor—”