Fran looked back at him, from over the lowered top. He saw her hand go to her bosom, then something fluttered in the air and fell in the grassy road. He darted after it as if it were a clue, showing the way to the princess' castle.
Perhaps it was. He pounced upon it—it was the Queen of Hearts.
CHAPTER XVI
A TAMER OF LIONS
The life of a household progresses, usually by insensible gradations, toward some great event, some climax, for the building of which each day has furnished its grain of sand. To-day, Hamilton Gregory and Grace Noir were in the library, with nothing to indicate the approach of the great moment in their lives. It was Grace's impatience to drive Fran away even before Robert Clinton should bring the secret from Springfield, that precipitated matters.
Grace might have been prompted in part by personal antipathy, but she believed herself acting from a pure sense of duty. Those who absented themselves from the house of worship were goats; those who came were sheep. In vain might you delude yourself that you were a camel, horse, or bird of plumage; to Grace's thinking, there were no such animals in the religious world—her clear eye made nothing of hump, flowing mane, or gaudy feathers; that eye looked dispassionately for the wool upon your back—or the beard under your chin.
"May I speak to you, Mr. Gregory?" She rose from the typewriter, slightly pale from sudden resolution. He noted the pallor, and it seemed to him that in that spiritual face his faith became visible. One hand rested upon the keys of the typewriter as if to show how little she needed substantial support.
Gregory never missed a movement of his secretary, but now he lifted his head ostensibly, to make his observation official.
"It's about Mr. Clinton," said Grace in a low voice, feeling her way to "that Fran".
He laid down his pen with a frown. Suddenly his missions in New York and Chicago became dead weights. Why Grace's "Mr. Clinton" instead of her customary "Brother Clinton"? It seemed to equip the school- director with formidable powers. Gregory hastened to put him where he belonged.