The maid at her back gave a little cry. Ellen stood staring. So this was the person Jim Dodge had gone to fetch from somewhere!
“But it isn’t too warm for me to be walking out to take the air,” she heard, in the heavy mumble of the man’s voice. “I don’t like being watched, Lydia; and I won’t stand it, either. I might as well be—”
Lydia interrupted him with a sharp exclamation. She had caught sight of Ellen Dix standing under the deep portico, the scared face of the maid looking over her shoulder.
Ellen’s face crimsoned slowly. All at once she felt unaccountably sorry and ashamed. She wished she had not come. She felt that she wanted nothing so much as to hurry swiftly away.
But Lydia Orr, still holding the strange old man by the arm, was already coming up the steps.
“I’ll not go in the automobile, child,” he repeated, with an obstinate flourish of his stick. “I don’t like to ride so fast. I want to see things. I want—”
He stopped short, his mouth gaping, his eyes staring at Ellen.
“That girl!” he almost shouted. “She told me—I don’t want her here.... Go away, girl, you make my head hurt!”
Lydia flashed a beseeching look at Ellen, as she led the old man past.
“Please come in,” she said; “I shall be at liberty in just a moment.... Come, father!”