CHAPTER XIX[ToC]
Henrietta had no great difficulty in doing it. She made a good beginning before Charlie went back to college, although she had only a little more than a fortnight, and she continued her attentions at frequent intervals thereafter. There was nothing crude about either Henrietta or her methods. She did not let him suspect her object or, indeed, that she had an object, and Charlie did not look for one. His own attractions were enough, goodness knows, to account for any attentions that might be lavished upon him, and he accepted those attentions almost as a matter of course. But as attentions and he had become, to a certain extent, strangers,—always excepting Patty's attentions, which did not count,—Charlie was very grateful in his inmost soul and he made the most of them. He came down to Whitby more often than he had been in the habit of doing and he invariably went to the Torringtons' at the first possible moment and spent as much time there as he could. He even developed a certain shyness which was very becoming. But he avoided Dick. He had a grudge against Dick and he was resolved not to forget it. Dick had done him an injury.
He did find himself forgetting that injury, in time. Who, in the face of Dick's leisurely cordiality and general good nature, could remember not to forget it? And in time—not so very long a time either—he perceived that Henrietta had a secret sorrow which gnawed like a worm at her heart. He set himself the task of pursuing this sorrow and plucking it out; and—marvel of marvels!—he succeeded in dragging from the unwilling Henrietta some information as to its nature. We can, perhaps, imagine the reluctance with which this information was given.
Charlie, although he may have been secretly disappointed that Henrietta's sorrow was not more serious,—he may have thought that it was of no less import than that she had found, too late, that she loved another man better than she did her husband,—Charlie, I say, although he may have been disappointed, managed to conceal whatever of disappointment he felt.
"Oh," he said magnanimously and with sufficient indifference, "don't you worry about that. I can fix that. I'll just speak to Patty about it the very next time I go out there."
He did; and he reported to Henrietta that he had prevailed upon Patty to consent to any arrangement she liked. He had also prevailed upon Patty—not reported to Henrietta—to scrape together as many dollars as she could conveniently manage to scrape—conveniently or inconveniently, it was all one to Charlie—and to hand them over to him for some purpose. It really does not matter what the purpose was. Charlie was very fertile in invention, and if it was not one thing it was another. Any excuse was good enough. But the strain was telling upon Patty. Charlie should have been more careful.
Henrietta was so pleased with the report that she redoubled her attentions. This may not have been wise, but there seems to be no doubt that it was good for Charlie, on the whole. He went in to number seven but once before Christmas, and there might have been some ground for hope that, between Henrietta's attentions and his devotion to automobiles, he might be induced to give it up altogether. Harry Carling, who was keeping as close a watch upon Charlie as he could, hoped so, at all events.