Abbott looked blankly at Fran, who was singing with all her might. She caught his look, and closed her eyes. Abbott asked weakly, "What did she say?"
Grace answered, "She denied it, of course—said she hadn't been playing cards with anybody, hadn't dropped the card I found, and wouldn't even admit that she'd been with a man. If I tell Mr. Gregory about her playing cards with a man at that hour, I don't believe he will think he ought to keep her longer, even if she does claim to be his friend's daughter."
"But you tell us," Mrs. Gregory interposed swiftly, "that she said she hadn't been playing cards."
"She said!" Grace echoed unpleasantly, "she said!"
"That card you found," began Abbott guiltily, "was it the King of Hearts?" Possibly he had dropped it from his pocket when leaning over the gate to—But why had he leaned over the gate?
Grace coldly answered, "I do not know one card from another."
"Let me try to describe it."
"I hope you can not describe the card I found," said Grace, the presentiment that she was on the eve of discoveries giving her eyes a starlike directness. Abbott felt himself squirming under the heel of a higher order of being.
"I suspect I dropped that card over the fence," he confessed, "for I had the King of Hearts, and last night, about that time I was standing at the gate—"
"Oh," Grace exclaimed, disagreeably surprised. "I did not know that you play cards, Professor Ashton. Do you also attend the dances? I had always thought of you as one of the most faithful members of the Walnut Street church—one who is always there, when you can come—not like some members whose names are on the book. Surely you haven't been dancing and playing cards very long?"