She turned the reading-lamp higher and drew the curtains. As she pulled the heavy folds together they swept from its place a heavy brass bowl filled with Marechal Niel roses, and it fell with a crash onto a frail Italian desk of dark rosewood quaintly inlaid with designs in lighter colour, which sat in a corner.
She sprang to catch it with a cry. "I'm as bad as Uncle Nelson!" she exclaimed. "How lucky it didn't spill!" She set the bowl back and passed a hand along the polished desk-top, frowning. "It has made a terrific dent in the poor old thing!" she said, remorsefully. "It must have jarred it frightfully. I'm so sorry!" She looked at her father, who had half risen at her cry. "You were always fond of the little old desk, though you never used it. I used to love it when I was a child. It was so mysterious, with its tiny cubby-holes and carvings. Some one told me once that such foreign desks always had secret drawers and I used to spend hours trying to find one. Where did it come from? Did it belong to grandfather?"
"No. It was willed to me many years ago by—a friend. It was when you were a baby."
"How curious," she said, "for a man to choose a piece of furniture like that! Why, it's as feminine as a toilet-table!" She came and perched one small toe on the fender, as he asked: "Where's Nancy!"
"I haven't seen her since luncheon. She was going to tea at Cora Spottiswoode's."
"Her father has written me she must come home at the end of the week," said the Judge. "He says if she doesn't he'll start an action against somebody for kidnapping—says nobody can fix his coffee just right but her."
She smiled. The two families were life-long friends and since their boarding-school days she and Nancy Langham had exchanged annual visits. "I'll tell her," she said. "I wish she could stay longer, though it's lonely for her father, no doubt. I love to have her here. She's—fond of Chilly, and I've been hoping it—might have an influence over him."
The Judge sighed. The name of Chisholm Allen, Echo's twin-brother, was a synonym in the city for debonair devil-may-care. With the likeliness that kept him popular even among those staid members of society who did not countenance his peccadillos, he combined a negligence and dissipation that from his boyhood had made him a thorn-in-the-flesh to his father.
"Yes," he said, "she's fond of him. That's why I think she shouldn't stay too long."
There was silence for a moment. Then he said in a lighter tone, "I wonder how Sevier's case came out. It was expected to finish to-day, wasn't it?"