Jasper Penny found Miss Brundon in a small, bare, immaculate office. She was sitting at a table; and, as he entered, with Eunice dragging desperately at his hand, she half rose, with a quick, faint blush.
"Mr. Penny," she exclaimed, in a low, charming surprise. "I didn't expect, so soon, to have the pleasure ... here, at my school." He firmly moved Eunice from her position at his back. "An unexpected pleasure for me," he replied. "I came to consult with you about this little girl—the daughter of a friend of mine. A friend, I may add, in difficult circumstances, and for whom I am prepared to do a great deal. I had hoped—Stephen Jannan told me about your exceptional establishment—that you could take her. She needs just the supervision that I am certain you offer."
"Of course," she replied immediately, "I'd be glad to have any one recommended by you. I do think my school is unusual. You see, there is almost no provision for the supervision of such young ladies. And I have been very fortunate in my girls; I try not to be snobbish, Mr. Penny; but, indeed, if a place like this is to be useful, some care is required. Probably you would like an assurance of their studies and deportment."
"No," he stopped her hastily; "it is quite enough to have seen you." A deeper, painful colour suffused her cheeks. He had, he thought, been inexcusably clumsy. He had unconsciously given voice to the conviction that Miss Brundon, like her establishment, was exceptional. She was, ordinarily, too pale for beauty; her countenance, with high, cheek bones, was irregular; yet her eyes, tranquil blue, held a steady quality almost the radiance of an inward light. Her diffidence, it was clear, co-existed with a firm, inviolable spirit. He said, later:
"You will discover that there are many things Eunice requires, and I would be obliged if you would procure them without stint, and send the accounts to my Philadelphia office. The child has been in circumstances of considerable poverty; but I wish to give her whatever advantages money can bring. Yes—Eunice Scofield. And—" he hesitated, "in view of this...."
"I understand, oh, completely," Susan Brundon interrupted him warmly. "You don't wish your charity exposed; and not only on your own account, but from consideration for the susceptibilities of the parents, parent—a mother, I gather."
It had been, he thought, leaving, ridiculously simple. His meeting with Miss Brundon was a fortunate chance. A fine, delicate, unworldly woman; a fineness different from Phebe's, submerged in the pursuit of her own salvation. The former, he realized, was close to forty. If she had been sympathetic with a strange child such as Eunice how admirably she would attend any of her own. Unmarried. The blindness of men, their fatuous choice, suddenly surprised him.
He determined to proceed directly to Stephen Jannan, and put into motion at once the solving of his daughter's future. Never, he repeated, should Eunice fall again into the lax hands of Essie Scofield. Stephen would advise him shrewdly, taking advantage of the law, or skilfully overcoming its obstacles. He had unbounded faith in the power of money where Essie was concerned; at the same time he had no intention of laying himself open to endless extortion, threats, almost inevitable, ultimate scandal. What a bog he had strayed into, a quagmire reaching about him in every direction. He must discover firmer ground ahead, release from the act of that other man, his youth. The memory of the serene purity of Miss Brundon's office recurred to him like a breath from the open spaces where he had first known the deep pleasure of an utter freedom of spirit.
Jasper Penny, revolving the complications of his position, made his way directly over the uneven sidewalk of Spruce Street to Fourth; there, passing the high, narrow residences of Society Hill, he proceeded to Stephen's office, beyond Chestnut. It was in a square brick edifice of an earlier period, with a broad marble step and door and wide windows coped in scoured white stone. The lawyer's private chamber was bare, with snowy panelling and mahogany, the high sombre shelves of a calf-bound law library, a ponderous cabriolet table, sturdy, rush-seated Dutch chairs, and a Franklin stove with slender brass capitols and shining hod.
"A chair, Jasper," Stephen Jannan directed. "You ought to know them, they came out of Myrtle Forge—some of old Gilbert's. Your mother gave them to me when she did over the house in this new French fancy." Jasper Penny was momentarily at a loss for an adequate opening of the subject that had brought him there. Finally he plunged directly into his purpose. "You must know, Stephen," he said, "that I am decidedly obligated to a Mrs. Scofield." Jannan nodded shortly. "The thing dragged on for a number of years, but is quite dead now; in fact, it has been for a considerable number of months. That, in itself, doesn't bother me; it is comparatively simple; but there is a child, a girl, Stephen."