"Oh, Frank!" I cried, "please call me Helen," for the music of it was refreshing; "come away—come, and go home with me and Gordon."
I believe Gordon enjoyed that evening with Frank quite as much as I, which is saying a good deal. He said afterwards that I reminded him of a child running hither and thither through a flower-strewn glade, plucking whatever her hands could reach. Thus did I gather news from Frank. My questions rained in on him from every point of the compass, leaping from one subject to another like a peewee on the shore. (That's a kind of witches' dance in metaphors, I know, but they all mean the same thing anyhow.) I cross-questioned Frank about everything and everybody, while Gordon sat listening with an amused expression on his face. Particularly did I put him through his facings about my old schoolgirl friends. The first question, without exception, was as to how many children they had—till this became so chronic that Frank would begin with this himself, not waiting to be asked. It saddened me some to learn that several of them had twice as many as I. One old friend, Sadie Henderson, had exactly three times as many—but two of them came at once, so that they didn't really count. Others, moreover, had none at all, which brought Gordon and me pretty well up on the average.
Frank had little to say about Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes except that they were getting older, which I would have surmised myself. Besides, Frank had a sensitive nature; and I suppose he remembered the stormy scene when Gordon left my uncle's house. I fancied, in a woman's instinctive way, that there was something he wanted to say to me alone. And I was right enough. For when I walked with him as far as the hotel piazza, while we were gazing out over the shimmering sea Frank told me something that proved to be a word of destiny.
"You all are going back by New York, you said?" he began, looking up significantly. The idiom sounded sweet—you all—how long since I had heard that brace of words before!
"Yes," I answered; "why?"
"Well, I'll tell you something interesting; I didn't care to say it before your husband, for fear it might affect his plans—I know how matters stand between him and your uncle, you know—but I think you ought to be told. Your uncle's in New York."
"What?" I gasped, and I felt the colour leave my cheek; "uncle's what?—he's where?"
"He's in New York," Frank repeated calmly. "I've just come from there—we were staying at the same hotel."
"And Aunt Agnes?" I asked swiftly, my eyes fixed on him in the gloom.
"No, Mrs. Lundy's at home—your uncle went up on some business, I believe. Mighty successful too, as far as I could judge," Frank added.