"You ought to keep your promise," Abbott retorted hotly.
"Sitting on that bridge at midnight, alone, telling people's fortunes by cards….Professor Ashton—Mrs. Gregory!" Grace exclaimed, with one of those flashes of inspiration peculiar to her sex, "that Fran is a show-girl!"
Abbott started, but said nothing.
Mrs. Gregory rose, and spoke through her mother's ear-trumpet, "Shall we go home, now?"
"That Fran," repeated Grace, "is a show-girl! She is eighteen or nineteen years old, and she is a show-girl!"
"Wouldn't it be best for you to ask her?"
"Ask her? Her? No, I ask you!"
"Let me push the chair," said Abbott, stepping to Mrs. Gregory's side.
He read in the troubled face that she had known this secret, also.
The secretary gazed at him with a far-away look, hardly conscious that he was beating retreat, so absorbed was she in this revelation. Now, indeed, it was certain that Fran, the girl of eighteen or nineteen, Fran, the show-girl, was an impostor! Her age proved that Mr. Gregory must have known her "father" when he was attending college in Springfield, whereas, believing her much younger, it had all the time been taken for granted that they had been companions in New York.
It would be necessary for some one to go to Springfield to make investigations. Grace had for ever alienated Abbott Ashton, but there was always Robert Clinton. He would obey her every wish; Robert Clinton should go. And when Robert had returned with a full history of Hamilton Gregory's school-days at Springfield, and those of Gregory's intimate friend, Fran, with the proofs of her conspiracy spread before her, should be driven forth, never again to darken the home of the philanthropist.