“By the way what is the penalty for kidnapping?” Page [16]
He pushed the idea away; or, rather, his own problems pushed it out of his mind, which went back to his ward and his single living brother. Melville had no children, only his wife’s daughters, who were both married—Melville having married a widow with a family, an estate and a mind of her own. Melville was a professor in a state university, a mild, learned man whom nature intended for science but whom his wife was determined to make into the president of the university.
“Even money which will win,” chuckled Rupert Winter to himself. “Millicent hasn’t much tact; but she has the perseverance of the saints. She married Mel; he doesn’t know, but she surely did. And she bosses him now. Well, I suppose Mel likes to be bossed; he never had any strenuous opinions except about the canals of Mars—Valgame dios!”
With a gasp the colonel sprang to his feet. There before him, in the flesh, was his sister-in-law. Her stately figure, her Roman profile, her gracefully gesticulating hand, which indicated the colonel’s position to her heavily laden attendant, a lad in blue—these he knew by heart just as he knew that her toilet for the journey would be in the latest mode, and that she would have the latest fashion of gait and mien. Millicent studied such things.
She waved her luggage into place—an excellent place—in the same breath dismissing the porter and instructing him when he must return. Then, but not until then, did she turn graciously to her brother-in-law.
“I hoped that I should find you, Bertie,” she said in a voice of such creamy richness that it was hard to credit the speaker with only three short trips to England. “Melville said you were to take this train; and I was so delighted, so relieved! I am in a most harassing predicament, my dear Bertie.”
“That’s bad,” murmured the colonel with sympathetic solicitude: “what’s the trouble? Couldn’t you get a section?”
“I have my reservations, but I don’t know whether I shall go to-night.”
“Maybe I’m stupid, Millicent, but I confess I don’t know what you mean.”
“Really, there’s no reason why you should, Bertie. That’s why I was so anxious to see you—in time, so that I might explain to you—might put you on your guard.”