Mrs. Cole laughed cynically.
"Nonsense!" she declared. "You might do worse than accept his attentions. He's over head and heels in love with you. I could have told you that a week ago."
"He is a bold, bad man!" cried Ida May. "And yet you would counsel me to encourage him wouldn't you?"
The elder woman shrugged her shoulders.
"Any one could easily see that you are a country girl," she said, with a harsh laugh that grated on the girl who listened with amazement.
With this parting shot the woman turned on her heel and left Ida May staring after her.
To Ida's intense anxiety, her landlady was unusually cool at the tea-table. She did not come up to Ida May's room that evening to chat, but announced that she had a headache, needed quiet, and would stay in her own room. Her presence during the long evenings had done much toward making the girl forget her sorrow, and she felt her absence keenly enough on this night when she had so much need of sympathy.
Feeling too restless to commune with her own thoughts, she concluded to read a book to fill in the time that hung so heavily on her hands.
Ida May descended to the sitting-room, where, she remembered, she had left the book on the table. She went down the carpeted stairs quietly, passing Mrs. Cole's door with noiseless feet, that she might not disturb her.
As she stood before the door of the sitting-room, with her hand on the knob, she was suddenly attracted by the sound of voices from within, her own name falling distinctly upon her ears. She stood still with astonishment, for the voice that uttered her name was that of Frank Garrick.