THE LADY OF THE DAGUERREOTYPE
"Daniel doesn't seem to be coming," remarked Mrs. Owen. "He hardly ever
misses a Sunday afternoon."
"He's working hard. I had no idea legislators had to work so hard," said
Sylvia.
They sat in Mrs. Owen's office, which was cosier than the sitting-room,
and the place where she seemed most comfortable. Since we looked at her
desk last a file-hook has been added to its furniture, and on it hang
impaled a few cuttings from agricultural newspapers. The content of
these clippings will ultimately reach the "Courier's" readers,--there is
no doubt of that, as Mrs. Owen and Mr. Atwill now understand each other
perfectly. It was the first Sunday in March and a blustery day, with
rain and sleet alternating at the windows and an impudent wind whistling
in the chimneys. Hickory logs snapped pleasantly in the small fireplace
that was a feature of the room. Sylvia had dined with her friend, and
the day being of the sort that encourages confidences, they had
prolonged their talk.
"When did you see Daniel last?" asked Mrs. Owen casually.
"Last night," replied Sylvia, meeting her friend's eyes easily. "He
dropped in for a little while. He wanted to talk about his stand on
that corporation bill."
"Well, he and Morton have broken up housekeeping. Daniel has climbed on
to the other side of the breastworks."
Sylvia smiled. "Yes, that's about it. But I think he has acted quite
finely about it."
"You mean he didn't jump on Morton as he might have done--didn't make a
grand stand play of it?"
"Yes; he might have made capital for himself out of the corporation
bill, but he didn't. He made his report without bringing personalities
into it."
"And the bill was passed over the governor's veto! That was Morton's way
of showing that he didn't need Daniel."
"Very likely. I'm rather glad it happened that way."
"Glad Daniel got a licking?"
"Oh, not just that; but it shows him that if he's going to be the
people's champion he will have to be unhorsed pretty often. If all these
things could be accomplished easily, there wouldn't be any glory in
success. It's not an easy thing to drive a man like Mr. Bassett out of
politics, or even to defeat the dangerous measures he introduces in the
legislature. If it were easy to get rid of them, such men wouldn't last
long. Besides, I'm a little afraid it wasn't half so much Dan's
patriotism that was involved as it was his vanity. He was bitter because
he found that Mr. Bassett had deceived him and was trying to use him.
But in view of Mr. Bassett's many kindnesses to him he wouldn't make a
personal matter of it in the House. Dan's opposition was based on legal
defects in that bill,--points that were over the heads of most of the
legislators,--but he is now determined to keep up the fight. He finds
that Mr. Bassett is quite able to do as he pleases even without his
services. He felt that he dealt with him magnanimously in keeping his
antagonism to the corporation bill on the high plane of its legal
unsoundness. Mr. Bassett ignored this, and merely secured the passage of
the bill by marshaling all the votes he needed in both parties."
"That's a new scheme they say Morton has introduced into Indiana--this
getting men on both sides to vote for one of these bad bills. That shuts
up the party newspapers, and neither side can use that particular thing
as ammunition at the next election. Instead of talking about House Bill
Ninety-five in the next campaign, they will howl about the tariff on
champagne, or pensions for veterans of the Black Hawk War. They're all
tarred with the same stick and don't dare call attention to the other
fellow. Daniel had better get out of politics," she ended leadingly.
"Please, no! He'd better stay in and learn how to make himself count. So
far as Mr. Bassett is concerned, I think that for some reason he had
gone as far with Dan as he cared to. I think he was prepared for the
break."
Mrs. Owen was wiping her spectacles on a piece of chamois skin she kept
in her desk for the purpose, and she concluded this rite with unusual
deliberation.
"How do you figure that out, Sylvia?"
"This must be confidential, Aunt Sally; I have said nothing to Dan about
it; but the night of your party Mr. Bassett was in a curious frame of
mind."
"It seemed to me he was particularly cheerful. I thought Morton had as
good a time as anybody."
"Superficially, yes; but I had a long talk with him--in the hall, after
the dancing had begun. I think in spite of his apparent indifference to
the constant fire of his enemies, it has had an effect on him. He's
hardened--or, if he was always hard, he doesn't care any longer whether
he wears the velvet glove or not. That attack on Mr. Thatcher in the
convention illustrates what I mean. His self-control isn't as complete
as most people seem to think it is; he lets go of himself like a
petulant child. That must be a new development in him. It doesn't chime
with the other things you hear of him as a shrewd, calculating manager,
who strikes his enemies in the dark. He was in an evil humor that night
or he wouldn't have talked to me as he did. He was ugly and vindictive.
He was not only glad he had put Dan in the way of temptation, but he
wanted me to know that he had done it. He seemed to be setting his back
to the wall and daring the world."
"Well, well," said Mrs. Owen. "Morton has seemed a little uneasy lately.
But there don't seem to be any reason why he should have picked you out
to jump on. You never did anything to Morton."
"Yes," said Sylvia, smiling; "I laughed at him once! I laughed at him
about the way he had treated Mr. Thatcher. We stopped right there, with
the laugh; he laughed too, you know. And he took that up again at the
party--and I had to explain what my laugh meant."
"Oh, you explained it, did you?"
And Sylvia recounted the interview.
"I guess Morton hasn't been laughed at much, and that was why he
remembered it and wanted to talk to you again. I suspect that Hallie
scolds him when she doesn't pet him. Most folks are afraid of Morton;
that's why he could take care of that corporation bill with the
'Advertiser' jumping him the way it did. Well, well! That must have been
quite a day for Morton. You laughed at him, and when the rest of you
went off in Allen's automobile that night I ran the harrow over him a
few times myself. Well, well!"
Mrs. Owen smiled as though recalling an agreeable experience. "As long
as there are old stumps in a field that you must plough around I haven't
got much use for the land. When the corn comes up you don't see the
stumps, just sitting on the fence and looking over the scenery; but when
you go to put the plow through again, your same old stumps loom up
again, solider than ever. I guess Daniel will come out all right; he was
raised on a farm and ought to know how to drive a straight furrow. By
the way, they telephoned me from Elizabeth House last night that there's
a vacant room there. Who's moved out?"
Mrs. Owen always prolonged the E of Elizabeth, and never referred to the
House except by its full title.
"Rose Farrell has left. Went unexpectedly, I think. I didn't know she
was going."
"Let me see. She's that girl that worked for Morton and Daniel. What's
she leaving for?"
"I'm going to see if I can't get her back," replied Sylvia evasively.
"Why Rose has been at Elizabeth House for two years and under the rules
she can stay a year longer. She ain't getting married, is she?"
"I think not," replied Sylvia. "I'm going to look her up and get her
back if possible."
"You do that, Sylvia. It ain't just your place, but I'll be glad if
you'll see what's the matter. We don't want to lose a girl if we can
help it."
Mrs. Owen rose and transferred a pile of paperbound books from a shelf
to her desk. Sylvia recognized these as college catalogues and noted
bits of paper thrust into the leaves as markers.
"I've been looking into this business some since we went down to
college. I had a lot of these schools send me their catalogues and
they're mighty interesting, though a good deal of it I don't understand.
Sylvia" (Sylvia never heard her name drawled as Mrs. Owen spoke it
without a thrill of expectancy)--"Sylvia, there's a lot of books being
written, and pieces in the magazines all the time, about women and what
we have done or can't do. What do you suppose it's all leading up to?"
"That question is bigger than I am, Aunt Sally. But I think the
conditions that have thrown women out into the world as wage-earners are
forcing one thing--just one thing, that is more important now than any
other--it's all summed up in the word efficiency."
"Efficiency?"
Mrs. Owen reached for the poker and readjusted the logs; she watched the
resulting sparks for a moment, then settled herself back in her chair
and repeated Sylvia's word again.
"You mean that a woman has got to learn how to make her jelly jell? Is
that your notion?"
"Exactly that. She must learn not to waste her strokes. Any scheme of
education for woman that leaves that out works an injury. If women are
to be a permanent part of the army of wage-earning Americans they must
learn to get full value from their minds or hands--either one, it's the
same. The trouble with us women is that there's a lot of the old
mediæval taint in us."
"Mediæval? Say that some other way, Sylvia."
"I mean that we're still crippled--we women--by the long years in which
nothing was expected of us but to sit in ivy-mantled casements and work
embroidery while our lords went out to fight, or thrummed the lute under
our windows."
"Well, there was Joan of Arc: she delivered the goods."
"To be sure; she does rather light up her time, doesn't she?" laughed
Sylvia.
"Sylvia, the day I first saw a woman hammer a typewriter in a man's
office, I thought the end had come. It seemed, as the saying is, 'agin
nater'; and I reckon it was. Nowadays these buildings downtown are full
of women. At noontime Washington Street is crowded with girls who work
in offices and shops. They don't get much pay for it either. Most of
those girls would a lot rather work in an office or stand behind a
counter than stay at home and help their mothers bake and scrub and wash
and iron. These same girls used to do just that,--help their
mothers,--coming downtown about once a month, or when there was a circus
procession, and having for company some young engine-wiper who took them
to church or to a Thanksgiving matinée and who probably married them
some day. A girl who didn't marry took in sewing for the neighbors, and
as like as not went to live with her married sister and looked after her
babies. I've seen all these things change. Nowadays girls have got to
have excitement. They like spending their days in the big buildings; the
men in the offices jolly them, the men bookkeepers and clerks seem a lot
nicer than the mechanics that live out in their neighborhood. When they
ain't busy they loaf in the halls of the buildings flirting, or reading
novels and talking to their bosses' callers. They don't have to soil
their hands, and you can dress a girl up in a skirt and shirt-waist so
she looks pretty decent for about two weeks of her wages. They don't
care much about getting married unless they can strike some fellow with
an automobile who can buy them better clothes than they can buy
themselves. What they hanker for is a flat or boarding-house where they
won't have any housekeeping to do. Housekeeping! Their notions of
housekeeping don't go beyond boiling an egg on a gas range and opening
up a sofa to sleep on. You're an educated woman, Sylvia; what's going
to come of all this?"
"It isn't just the fault of the girls that they do this, is it? Near my
school-house there are girls who stay at home with their mothers, and
many of them are without any ambition of any kind. I'm a good deal for
the girl who wants to strike out for herself. The household arts as you
knew them in your youth can't be practised in the home any more on the
income of the average man. Most women of the kind we're talking about
wear ready-made clothes--not because they're lazy, but because the
tailor-made suits which life in a city demands can't be made by any
amateur sempstress. They're turned out by the carload in great factories
from designs of experts. There's no bread to bake in the modern
mechanic's home, for better bread and cake are made more cheaply in the
modern bakeshop. Wasn't there really a good deal of nonsense about the
pies that mother used to make--I wonder? There were perhaps in every
community women who were natural cooks, but our Mary used to drive
grandfather crazy with her saleratus biscuits and greasy doughnuts. A
good cook in the old times was famous all over the community because the
general level of cooking was so low. Women used to take great pride in
their preservings and jellyings, but at the present prices of fruit and
sugar a city woman would lose money making such things. It's largely
because this work can't be done at home that girls such as we have at
Elizabeth House have no sort of manual dexterity and have to earn a poor
living doing something badly that they're not interested in or fitted
for. Women have one terrible handicap in going out into the world to
earn their living; it's the eternal romance that's in all of us," said
Sylvia a little dreamily. "I don't believe any woman ever gets beyond
that." It was a note she rarely struck and Mrs. Owen looked at her
quickly. "I mean, the man who may be always waiting just around the
corner."
"You mean every girl has that chance before her? Well, a happy marriage
is a great thing--the greatest thing that can happen to a woman. My
married life was a happy one--very happy; but it didn't last long. It
was my misfortune to lose my husband and the little girl when I was
still young. They think I'm hard--yes, a good many people do--because
I've been making money. But I had to do something; I couldn't sit with
my hands folded; and what I've done I've tried to do right. I hope you
won't leave love and marriage out of your life, Sylvia. In this new
condition of things that we've talked about there's no reason why a
woman shouldn't work--do things, climb up high, and be a woman, too.
He'll be a lucky man who gets you to stand by him and work for him and
with him."
"Oh," sighed Sylvia, "there are so many things to do! I want to know so
much and do so much!"
"You'll know them and do them; but I don't want you to have a one-sided
life. Dear Sylvia," and Mrs. Owen bent toward the girl and touched her
hand gently, "I don't want you to leave love out of your life."
There was an interval of silence and then Mrs. Owen opened a drawer and
drew out a faded morocco case. "Here's a daguerreotype of my mother and
me, when I was about four years old. Notice how cute I look in those
pantalets--ever see those things before? Well, I've been thinking that
I'm a kind of left-over from daguerreotype times, and you belong to the
day of the kodak. I'm a dingy old shadow in a daguerreotype picture, in
pantalets, cuddled up against my mother's hoopskirt. You, Sylvia, can
take a suit-case and a kodak and travel alone to Siam; and you can teach
in a college alongside of men and do any number of things my mother
would have dropped dead to think about. And," she added quizzically, "it
gives me heart failure myself sometimes, just thinking about it all. I
can't make you throw your kodak away, and I wouldn't if I could, any
more than I'd want you to sit up all night sewing clothes to wear to
your school-teaching when you can buy better ones already made that have
real style. It tickles me that some women have learned that it's
weak-minded to massage and paraffine their wrinkles out--those things,
Sylvia, strike me as downright immoral. What I've been wondering is
whether I can do anything for the kind of girls we have at Elizabeth
House beyond giving them a place to sleep, and I guess you've struck the
idea with that word efficiency. No girl born to-day, particularly in a
town like this, is going back to make her own soap out of grease and lye
in her back yard. But she's got to learn to do something well or she'll
starve or go to the bad; or if she doesn't have to work she'll fool her
life away doing nothing. Now you poke a few holes in my ideas, Sylvia."
"Please, Aunt Sally, don't think that because I've been to college I can
answer all those questions! I'm just beginning to study them. But the
lady of the daguerreotype in hoops marks one era, and the kodak girl in
a short skirt and shirt-waist another. Women had to spend a good deal of
time proving that their brains could stand the strain of higher
education--that they could take the college courses prescribed for men.
That's all been settled now, but we can't stop there. A college
education for women is all right, but we must help the girl who can't go
to college to do her work well in the office and department store and
factory."
"Or to feed a baby so it won't die of colic, and to keep ptomaine poison
out of her ice box!" added Mrs. Owen.
"Exactly," replied Sylvia.
"Suppose a girl like Marian had gone to college just as you did, what
would it have done for her?"
"A good deal, undoubtedly. It would have given her wider interests and
sobered her, and broadened her chances of happiness."
"Maybe so," remarked Mrs. Owen; and then a smile stole over her face. "I
reckon you can hardly call Marian a kodak girl. She's more like one of
these flashlight things they set off with a big explosion. Only time I
ever got caught in one of those pictures was at a meeting of the
Short-Horn Breeders' Association last week. They fired off that
photograph machine to get a picture for the 'Courier'--I've been
prodding them for not printing more farm and stock news--and a man
sitting next to me jumped clean out of his boots and yelled fire. I had
to go over to the 'Courier' office and see the editor--that Atwill is a
pretty good fellow when you get used to him--to make sure they didn't
guy us farmers for not being city broke. As for Marian, folks like her!"
"No one can help liking her. She's a girl of impulses and her impulses
are all healthy and sound. And her good fellowship and good feeling are
inexhaustible. She came over to see me at Elizabeth House the other
evening--had Allen bring her in his machine and leave her. The girls
were singing songs and amusing themselves in the parlor, and Marian took
off her hat and made herself at home with them. She sang several songs,
and then got to 'cutting up' and did some of those dances she's picked
up somewhere--did them well too. But with all her nonsense she has a lot
of good common sense, and she will find a place for herself. She will
get married one of these days and settle down beautifully."
"Allen?"
"Possibly. The Bassetts don't seem troubled by Allen's attentions to
Marian; but the real fight between Mr. Thatcher and Mr. Bassett hasn't
come yet."
"Who says so?"
"Oh, it's in the air; every one says so. Dan says so."
"I've warned Morton to let Edward Thatcher alone. The United States
Senate wouldn't be ornamented by having either one of them down there.
I met Colonel Ramsay--guess he's got the senatorial bee in his hat,
too--coming up on the train from Louisville the other day. There's only
one qualification I can think of that the Colonel has for going to the
Senate--he would wring tears out of the galleries when he made obituary
speeches about the dead members. When my brother Blackford was senator,
it seemed to me he spent most of his time acting as pallbearer for the
dead ones. But what were we talking about, Sylvia? Oh, yes. I'm going to
send those catalogues over to your room, and as you get time I want you
to study out a scheme for a little school to teach what you call
efficiency to girls that have to earn their living. I don't mean
school-teaching, but a whole lot of things women ought to be doing but
ain't because they don't know how. Do you get the idea?"
"A school?" asked Sylvia wonderingly.
"A kind of school."
"It's a splendid, a beautiful idea, but you need better advice than I
can give you. They talk a good deal now about vocational training, and
it's going to mean a great deal to women."
"Well, we must get hold of all the latest ideas, and if there's any good
in us old daguerreotypes, we'll keep it, and graft it on to the kodak."
"Oh, I hope there will always be ladies of the daguerreotype! One thing
we women have to pray to be saved from is intolerance toward our
sisters. You know," continued Sylvia with a dropping of her voice and a
tilting of her head that caused Mrs. Owen to laugh,--"you know we are
not awfully tolerant. And there's a breadth of view, an ability to brush
away trifles and get to the heart of things, that we're just growing up
to. And magnanimity--I think we fall short there. I'm just now trying to
cultivate a sisterly feeling toward these good women for whom Jane
Austen and Sir Roger de Coverley and the knitting of pale-blue tea
cosies are all of life--who like mild twilight with the children singing
hymns at the piano and the husband coming home to find his slippers set
up against the baseburner. That was beautiful, but even they owe
something to the million or so women to whom Jane Addams is far more
important than Jane Austen. It might be more comfortable if the world
never moved, but unfortunately it does seem to turn over occasionally."
"I notice that you can say things like that, Sylvia, without waving your
hands, or shouting like an old woman with a shawl on her head swinging a
broom at the boys in her cherry tree. We've got to learn to do that. It
was some time after I went into business, when Jackson Owen died, before
I learned that you couldn't shoo men the way you shoo hens. You got to
drop a little corn in a fence corner and then throw your apron over 'em.
It strikes me that if you could catch these girls that go to work in
stores and offices young enough you might put them in the way of doing
something better. There are schools doing this kind of thing, but I'd
like to plant one right here in Indiana for the kind of girls we've got
at Elizabeth House. They haven't much ambition, most of 'em; they're
stuck right where they are. I'd like to see what can be done toward
changing that, and see it started in my lifetime. And we must do it
right. Think it over as you get time." She glanced at the window. "You'd
better stay all night, Sylvia; it's getting dark."
"No, I must run along home. The girls expect me."
"That school idea's just between you and me for the present," Mrs. Owen
remarked as she watched Sylvia button her mackintosh. "Look here,
Sylvia, don't you need some money? I mean, of course, don't you want to
borrow some?"
"Oh, never! By the way, I didn't tell you that I expect to make some?
The publisher of one of grandfather's textbooks came to see me about the
copyright, and there were some changes in the book that grandfather
thought should be made and I'm going to make them. There's a chance of
it's being adopted in one or two states. And then, I want to make a
geometry of my own. All the textbooks make it so hard--and it really
isn't. The same publisher told me he thought well of my scheme, and I'm
going ahead with it."
"Well, don't you kill yourself writing geometries: I should think
teaching the youngsters would be a full job."
"That's not a job at all, Aunt Sally; that's just fun. And you know I'm
not going to do it always. I'm learning things now that I needed to
know. I only wish my mind were as sound as my health."
"You ought to wear heavier flannels, though; it's a perfect scandal what
girls run around in nowadays."
She rested her hands on Sylvia's shoulders lightly, smiled into her
face, and then bent forward and kissed her.
"I don't understand why you won't wear rubbers, but be sure you don't
sit around all evening in wet stockings."
A gray mist was hastening nightfall, though the street lamps were not
yet lighted. The glow of Mrs. Owen's kindness lingered with Sylvia as
she walked toward Elizabeth House. She was constantly surprised by her
friend's intensely modern spirit--her social curiosity, and the breadth
and sanity of her views. This suggestion of a vocational school for
young women had kindled Sylvia's imagination, and her thoughts were upon
it as she tramped homeward through the slush. To establish an
institution such as Mrs. Owen had indicated would require a large sum of
money, and there were always the Bassetts, the heirs apparent of their
aunt's fortune. Any feeling of guilt Sylvia may have experienced by
reason of her enforced connivance with Mrs. Owen for the expenditure of
her money was mitigated by her belief that the Bassetts were quite
beyond the need of their aunt's million, the figure at which Mrs. Owen's
fortune was commonly appraised.
She was thinking of this when a few blocks from Mrs. Owen's she met
Morton Bassett. The electric lamp overhead was just sputtering into
light as he moved toward her out of an intersecting street. His folded
umbrella was thrust awkwardly under his arm, and he walked slowly with
bent head. The hissing of the lamp caused him to lift his eyes. Sylvia
paused an instant, and he raised his hat as he recognized her.
"Good evening, Miss Garrison! I've just been out for a walk. It's a
dreary evening, isn't it?"
Sylvia explained that she had been to Mrs. Owen's and was on her way
home, and he asked if he might go with her.
"Marian usually walked with me at Fraserville, but since we've been
here, Sunday seems to be her busy day. I find that I don't know much
about the residential district; I can easily lose myself in this part of
town."
During these commonplaces she wondered just where their conversation at
Marian's ball had left them; the wet street was hardly a more favorable
place for serious talk than the crowded Propylæum. The rain began to
fall monotonously, and he raised his umbrella.
"Some things have happened since our last talk," he observed presently.
"Yes?" she replied dubiously.
"I want to talk to you of them," he answered. "Dan has left me. You know
that?"
"Yes; I know of it."
"And you think he has done quite the fine thing about it--it was what
you would have had him do?"
"Yes, certainly. You practically told me you were putting him to the
test. You weren't embarrassed by his course in any way; you were able to
show him that you didn't care; you didn't need him."
"You saw that? You read that in what followed?"
"It was written so large that no one could miss it. You are the master.
You proved it again. I suppose you found a great satisfaction in that. A
man must, or he wouldn't do such things."
"You seem to understand," he replied, turning toward her for an instant.
"But there may be one thing you don't understand."
There was a moment of silence, in which they splashed on slowly through
the slush.
"I liked Dan; I was fond of him. And yet I deliberately planned to make
him do that kind of thing for me. I pulled him out of the newspaper
office and made it possible for him to study law, just that I might put
my hand on him when he could be useful. Please understand that I'm not
saying this in the hope that you will intercede to bring him back.
Nothing can bring him back. I wouldn't let him come back to me if he
would starve without my help."
Sylvia was silent; there was nothing with which she could meet this.
"What I mean is," he continued, "that I'm glad he shook me; I had
wondered from the beginning just when it would come, and when I saw his
things going out of my office, it satisfied something in me. I wonder
whether there's some good in me after all that made me glad in spite of
myself that he had the manhood to quit."
Bassett was a complex character; his talk and manner at Marian's ball
had given her a sense of this which he was now confirming. Success had
not brought him happiness; the loss of Dan had been a blow to him, and
she felt the friendlessness and isolation of this man whom men feared.
He had spoken doggedly, gruffly, and if she had marveled at their talk
at the dance, her wonder was the greater now. It was inconceivable that
Morton Bassett should come to her with his difficulties. If his
conscience troubled him, or if he was touched with remorse for his
conduct toward Dan Harwood, she was unable to see why he should make his
confession to her. It seemed that he had read her thoughts, for he spoke
roughly, as though defending himself from an attack.
"You like him; you've known him for several years; you know him probably
better than you know any other man."
"I suppose I do, Mr. Bassett," said Sylvia; "we are good friends,
but--that's all."
He stopped short, and she felt his hand touch her arm for an instant
lightly--it was almost like a caress, there in the rain-swept street
with the maple boughs swishing overhead in the cold west wind.
He quickened his pace now, as though to mark a new current in his
thoughts.
"There's a favor I want to ask of you, Miss Garrison. Dan talked to me
once or twice about your grandfather's estate. He owned some shares in a
business I had helped to organize, the White River Canneries. The scheme
failed for many reasons; the shares are worthless. I want you to let me
pay you back the money Professor Kelton paid for them. I should have to
do it privately--it would have to be a matter between you and me."
[Illustration: A SUDDEN FIERCE ANGER BURNED IN HER HEART]
"Oh, no! Dan explained that to me; he didn't hold you responsible. He
said the company failed, that was all. You are kind to offer, but I
can't think of accepting it."
"Very well," he said quietly. And then added, as though to explain
himself more fully: "Your grandfather and Mrs. Owen were old friends. He
wasn't a business man. I promoted the canneries scheme and I was
responsible for it, no matter what Harwood says about it."
She had experienced sharp alternations of pity and apprehension in this
brief walk. He was a prominent man; almost, it might be said, a
notorious character. The instinct of self-protection was strong in her;
what might lie behind his confidences, his blunt confessions, and his
offer of help, she did not know. They had reached Elizabeth House, and
she paused on the broad steps under the shelter of the veranda. With her
back toward the door she looked down upon him as he stood on the
sidewalk, his umbrella deeply shadowing his head and shoulders. She
stood before him like a vestal guarding her temple from desecration. She
was conscious of a sharp revulsion of feeling, and a sudden fierce anger
burned in her heart. She spoke with a quick, passionate utterance.
"There is something you can do for me, Mr. Bassett. I'm going to bring
Rose Farrell back to this house. I want you to let her alone!"
He stood dumbly staring at the door as it closed upon her. He lingered a
moment, the rain beating down upon him, and then walked slowly homeward.