There were many similar items added to the account during the next
fortnight. It seemed that Mr. Ashly Crane had nothing better to do with
his European vacation than to give Miss Clark and her companions a good
time, or, as he intimated to Miss Comstock, "to get into closer touch
with the company's ward." Naturally he was a godsend to the Comstock
girls, for he could take them to places where without a man they could
not go. There was a mild orgy of motoring, dining, and theater. Pussy
Comstock, experienced campaigner that she was, made no objection to this
junketing. A fixed principle with her was to let any man spend his money
as freely as he was inclined to. Yet she skillfully so contrived that
the young banker had few opportunities of solitary communion with his
ward. At first Mr. Crane did not understand why the Glynn girl or one of
the Paul sisters was always in the way, and then he comprehended the
artful maneuver of the woman and resented it. One afternoon, when he had
taken the party up the river, he announced bluntly after tea that he and
Adelle were going out in a punt together. Leaving Miss Comstock and the
three other girls to amuse themselves as they could, he stoutly pulled
forth from the landing and around a bend in the river. Thereafter his
efforts relaxed, and he had Adelle to himself for two long hours. And
Adelle, reclining on the gaudy cushions under an enormous pink sunshade,
was not unenticing. Her air of indolent taciturnity was almost
provoking. Mr. Ashly Crane quite persuaded himself that he was really in
love with the young heiress.
Oddly enough he chose this opportunity to discuss with her her business
affairs, which was the excuse he had tossed Miss Comstock for
abstracting the ward from the rest of the party. He found that she knew
almost nothing about the source of her fortune--that lean stretch of
sandy acres known as Clark's Field. He related to her the outline of the
story of the Field as it has been told in these pages. Adelle listened
with a peculiarly blank expression on her pale face. She was in fact
trying hard to recall certain distant images of her early life--memories
that were neither pleasant nor painful, but very odd to her, so strange
that she could not realize herself as having once been the little drudge
in the rooming-house on Church Street, with the manager of the
livery-stable as the star roomer. While the banker was relating the
steps by which she had become an heiress, she was seeing the face of the
liveryman and that of the probate judge, who had first taken an active
part in her destiny and turned it into its present smooth course....
"So," Mr. Crane was saying, "the bank was finally able to make an
arrangement by which the long deadlock was broken and Clark's Field
could be sold--put on the market in small lots, you know. Owing to a
very fortunate provision, you are the beneficiary of one half of the
sales made by the Field Associates, as the corporation is
called--whenever they dispose of any of it they pay us for you half the
money!"
(He neglected to state that this "fortunate provision" was due solely to
the shrewdness and probity of Judge Orcutt; that if he and the trust
company's president had had their way she would have been obliged to
content herself with a much more modest income than she now enjoyed. But
doubtless Mr. Crane felt that was irrelevant.)
"So you see, little girl," he concluded, in a burst of unguarded
enthusiasm, "we are piling up money for you while you are playing over
here."