But no one was to be seen. Gwen was still in her room, while the other girls had not returned from the Settlement House.
“Well, there’s another time coming.” Bobs flashed a smile at her companion, then led the way to the wide fireplace, where comfortable chairs awaited them, and they seated themselves facing the still burning embers.
“I say, Miss Vandergrift,” Ralph began, “you’re a girl and you ought to know better than I just what another girl, even though she lived seventy-five years ago, would do under the circumstances with which we are both familiar. If you loved a man, of whom your mother did not approve, would you really drown yourself, or would you marry him and permit your parents to believe that you were dead?”
Bobs sat so long gazing into the fire that the lad, earnestly watching her, wondered at her deep thought.
At last she spoke. “I couldn’t have hurt my mother that way,” she said, and there were tears in the hazel eyes that were lifted to her companion. “I would have known that her dearest desire would be for my ultimate happiness.”
“But mothers are different, we will have to confess,” the lad declared. “Marilyn’s may have thought only of social fitness.” Then, as he glanced about the old salon and up at the huge crystal chandeliers, he added: “I judge that the Pensingers were people of great wealth in those early days and probably leaders in society.”
“I believe that they were,” Roberta agreed, “but my mother had a different standard. She believed that mental and soul companionship should be the big thing in marriage, and for that matter, so do I.”
Ralph felt awed. This was a very different girl from the hoidenish young would-be detective with whom he had so brief an acquaintance.
“Miss Vandergrift,” he said impulsively, “I wish I had a sister like you, and wouldn’t my mother be pleased, though, if you were her daughter. A girl, I am sure, would have been more of a comfort and companion to her when my brother Desmond died.” Then he added, after a moment of silence: “I can get your point of view, all right. I wouldn’t break my mother’s heart by pretending to drown myself, not even if the heavens fell.”
“I’d like to know your mother,” Roberta said. “She must be a wonderful woman.”