CHAPTER XIV.
AN ACCOMMODATING POSTMAN.
“Annie, my child, don’t you think you had better give up this vain chase? You are looking ill and worried. The case makes no real progress, in spite of all our exertions, and you are wearing your life away for nothing.”
“For nothing, auntie? Is Harley’s rescue nothing? I’m ashamed to hear you speak like that. It’s a good thing Mrs. Riddell has not come downstairs yet. She would be astonished to find you turning traitor.”
“I have heard some people say, my dear, that you have a real nasty temper when you like, and I am bound to admit that they are not far wrong, for your last sentence was thoroughly ill-natured. As you know, however, I am quite ready to make allowances, and I repeat that you are not reaping an equivalent success for all your exertions.”
“And what would you have me do? Leave Harley to his fate, without another effort to save him?”
“By no means. I am as anxious as ever that he should be helped. But I think you will work more efficiently if you take things quietly for a while, and resume operations after your inactivity has lulled all suspicion.”
“You mean well, auntie; but I should die if I didn’t work in some way or other for Harley’s benefit. So far all my efforts have failed, but I don’t mean to give up hope, for Fate cannot always set her signals dead against us.”
The above conversation between Miss Cory and her niece will serve to show that poor Harley Riddell, while possessing friends who were as firmly convinced of his innocence as ever, was in danger of having his prospects jeopardised by the paralysing influence of baffled efforts. Annie was the only one whom disappointment did not seem to daunt, and, with her, failure was but a stimulus to renewed effort. The long-drawn-out agony of her lover’s unjustified incarceration was ever before her eyes, and she would have deemed herself guilty of a crime had she resigned herself to the passive inactivity which to others seemed the only course left her.
“Are you going out this morning?” questioned Miss Margaret, as she carefully examined a hole in the damask tablecloth she was about to darn.