In the great house on Belleair Avenue, which the man who was gone had called home, a tall, slender young girl sat listlessly conversing with a pompous little man, whose clerical garb proclaimed the reason for his coming. The girl’s sable garments pathetically betrayed her youth, and in her soft eyes was the pained and wounded look of a child face to face with its first comprehended sorrow.
The Rev. Dr. Franklin laid an obsequious hand upon her arm.
“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Anita Lawton shivered slightly, and raised a trembling, protesting hand.
“Please,” she said, softly, “I know––I heard you say that at St. James’ two days ago. I try to believe, to think, that in some inscrutable way, God meant it for the best when he took my father so ruthlessly from me, with no premonition, no sign of warning. It is hard, Dr. Franklin. I cannot coordinate my thoughts just yet. You must give me a little time.”
The minister bent his short body still lower before her.
“My dear child, do you remember, also, a later prayer in the same service?”––unconsciously he assumed the full rich, rounded, pulpit tones, which were habitual with him. “‘Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another; before the mountains were brought forth or ever the earth and world were made––’”
A low knocking upon the door interrupted him, and the butler appeared.
“Mr. Rockamore and Mr. Mallowe,” Anita Lawton 4 read aloud from the cards he presented. “Oh, I can’t see them now. Tell them, Wilkes, that my minister is with me, and they must forgive me for denying myself to them.”
The butler retired, and the Rev. Dr. Franklin, at the mention of two of the most prominent and influential men in the city since the death of Lawton, turned bulging, inquiring eyes upon the girl.