“I have a carriage waiting on the other side of the ferry. We shall ask Mr. Lenvale to put your belongings into that, and then we shall not trouble him further,” said Gwendolyn, in her soft, articulate voice. Poor Lenvale, although she smiled kindly, saw that his doom was sealed.
“He’s a fright, isn’t he?” said heartless Cecily as they drove away uptown. “I’m really tired to death of him; but it wouldn’t do exactly to let him know. When I saw you holding that blue handkerchief my heart was in my mouth with surprise. You look about as old as I am, or a very little older. ‘Thank goodness she’s young and pretty, and how well her clothes fit!’ I said to Mr. Lenvale. When papa told me about you I cried for twenty-four hours without stopping, and all the girls came round to sympathize. I supposed you were a prim old party, with a whalebone back. Look here, now. Would you mind my kissing you?”
A week later they sailed for Genoa. Gwendolyn had engaged to attend them a courier-maid, certified against sea-sickness, and as possessing phenomenal accomplishments in the science of hotel bills and tips.
Senator Mordaunt, just then held in the vise of an important committee of inquiry over which he presided, had agreed to run over on a night train, breakfast with his daughter, see her off on the steamer, then hurry back to Washington. But at breakfast time arrived, instead of the Senator, a telegram, at sight of which Cecily first stamped her foot, then cried.
“I knew it! I have always had telegrams when I wanted my father most,” she said between her sobs. “He can’t get off, so sends me his blessing, and his compliments to you. Who wants to be blessed by telegraph?”
She was such a big, healthy, buoyant, fun-making being it was impossible to think of her as one who could suffer seriously or long, but Mrs. West saw that she loved her father, and that during a day or two of the voyage she lamented for him in silence.
It was rough off the coast, the skies dull, the company depressed. Gwendolyn lay most of this time in her berth, committing Cecily to the care of the courier-maid, and feeling too reckless of outer things even to read the letter from Washington marked “private and confidential” that had come aboard by special delivery as the ship was about to leave the dock. She had seen that it was from Mordaunt, and was full of injunctions about his daughter. It would keep.
On the afternoon of the third day out, the skies had cleared, sunshine fell warm and bright across the decks, there was a faint, sweet, far-away promise of spring in the light and steady breeze. The cabin passengers, to a man, woman, and child, felt its reviving influence. Creeping up on deck, Gwendolyn nestled into her chair, looked lazily across the rail, and bethought her of her letter.
After she had finished it she sat wondering. For the first time she realized the magnitude of her task. This was the cry of a strong man’s heart for the right guidance and protection of his only child. Too late had come to him consciousness of the fact that Cecily had been left to environments that had done her mischief. She had been on the verge of running away to marry a Mr. Parker Moffat, a crack baseball player, a young man encouraged by her silly, sentimental aunt.
The one worth talking about among her admirers—who made her the acknowledged sovereign of hearts in East Ephesus—had been flouted by her so successfully that it was hardly likely Angus McCrea would ever present himself to Mrs. West’s notice. Should he do so, he was the sole representative of her ‘home guard’ whom Mordaunt would be willing for Cecily to receive. Any overture from Moffat Mrs. West must incontinently quash.