"It's Miss Kent, isn't it?" Forbes looked boyishly pleased over having guessed correctly. "I am beginning to enjoy some of the perquisites of blindness. I can recognize the footsteps of all of you. Do you know you walk with wonderful lightness for a woman of your age?"
Agatha immediately resolved to begin wearing a pair of Howard's slippers, which could be kept on only by dragging her feet.
"I've been wanting to see you all the morning," continued Forbes light-heartedly. "I've great news for you. We're going to have company."
"Company!" Had Forbes' sense of hearing reached the stage of acuteness he fondly imagined, he would have recognized instantly a note of wildness in Agatha's exclamation.
"Had a letter this morning from a pal of mine, fellow I knew in college. He's coming to-morrow to spend Sunday with me."
"To spend Sunday!" Even though Forbes was unable to perceive the frozen horror of Agatha's countenance, her appalled tone convinced him that something was wrong. His smile gave way to an expression of anxiety.
"It won't inconvenience you to put him up, will it, Miss Kent?"
Agatha found herself unable to reply. Her castle in the air was about to topple. A friend of Forbes was coming, and his would be as eyes to the blind. Through him Forbes would learn that the house was in need of painting and shingling and papering, that the furniture was in all stages of dilapidation, and that she herself was not an elderly lady with a motherly interest in youth, but a mere girl with a surprising facility in falsehood. And while these agonized forebodings flitted through her brain, Forbes was offering dismayed apologies.
"I beg your pardon a thousand times. I should have realized—Of course, this isn't a boarding-house, but the fact that you advertised for boarders, misled me, don't you see? If Warren's coming is going to put you out at all, I'll have Howard telegraph him at once."
Agatha came to herself. There was risk, of course, in granting permission for his friend's visit, yet anything was better, even discovery, than that she should appear inhospitable. Her cheeks grew hot as she recalled his generosity and saw him confused and apologetic over having asked a friend to solace his loneliness for a week-end.