"How funny!" she exclaimed, knitting her brows. "I can't remember any prisoner at the villa. Perhaps it was the cat. It would be just like Silvio to consider the release of a cat a important event."
She replaced the letter in the book and after selecting another novel forgot Silvio's epistle entirely.
Another time, when Alora happened to be at home for their noon-day luncheon and her father did not appear, Jane Gladys quietly remarked in answer to her query that "th' ol' man was prob'ly over to the flyin'- machine works."
"Does he go there often?" she asked in surprise.
"Why, he mostly lives there," asserted the maid.
Alora laughed, and afterward told Mary Louise, as a bit of humorous gossip, that the man who had heretofore failed to find any interest in life had at last succumbed to the fascination of the aeroplane.
"Well, I'm glad of it," said Mary Louise. "I've often wondered, Lory, how your father could be so infatuated with novel-reading, absorbing stories of human interest, if they have any interest at all, with such avidity, while the real people all around him failed to interest him at all. I have thought perhaps he read to keep his mind from—from other things that it would make him unhappy to dwell upon."
"I have thought so, too," replied Alora, musingly. "And this queer fancy of his for a new and unusual invention may serve the same purpose. But I, too, am glad he has found a diversion that will keep him away from home. That barn of a cottage will become more homelike without his eternal presence."
Peter Conant, the lawyer, had paid little heed to Jason Jones since the latter's arrival in Dorfield. He had heard his wife and Irene gossip about the girl and her father and state that Alora was an heiress and Mr. Jones merely the guardian of her fortune until she came of age, but his legal mind decided that the girl's "fortune" must be a modest one, since they lived so economically and dressed so plainly. Colonel Hathaway, who might have undeceived him in this regard, seldom spoke to the lawyer of anything but his own affairs and had forborne to mention Mr. Jones and his personal affairs in any way.
Therefore Mr. Conant was somewhat surprised when one morning Jason Jones called at his office and asked for an interview. The lawyer was busy that day, and attaching little importance to his caller he demanded brusquely: