CHAPTER XVI
MISS FINCH FOLLOWS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE
Zaida Finchwas not ill-pleased at the prospect of a day to herself. Agatha's personality was distracting. It was next to impossible to concentrate your thoughts on your own affairs, however urgent the need, when Agatha was darting about like a bright-plumaged bird, saying things that interested you, even though you frequently found them shocking. "She's a dear girl," Miss Finch reflected, "but upsetting; and I need quiet."
She seated herself upon the broad porch, with the inevitable mending, and wearily began weighing the advantages of one suitor against those of his rival. There was the matter of health to be considered, an important factor in reaching a decision. Zaida remembered a spinster of forty married to a man considerably her senior, who had been a bride three weeks to a day when the bridegroom was smitten with paralysis.
"And poor Linda was nothing but a sick-nurse from that on," mused Miss Finch. "He must have lasted a good twenty years. I never was much of a hand in the sick-room. Nursing would wear me out in no time."
But though caution sharpened her natural acuteness, Miss Finch was unable to award to either of the gentlemen who had honored her, any advantage over the other in the matter of health. She could not remember that Deacon Wiggins had ever been ill, though sickness and death had been familiar guests in his household. James Doolittle frequently walked with a limp due to rheumatic trouble, but James came from long-lived stock, and gave a reassuring impression of toughness. As far as human judgment could play the prophet, she would not be called on to act as nurse to either aspirant, at least for a number of years.
Miss Finch's mending suffered. She found it difficult to employ her brain and her fingers in synchronous activities, and as selecting a husband naturally took precedence over stopping the holes in Howard's socks, she sat much of the morning with her hands lying idle in her lap, her countenance expressing a concentration almost tragic. By noon shewas fairly limp from the strain and she went to the kitchen to ask Phemie for a cup of tea.
The sound of wheels recalled her to the porch before her modest luncheon was disposed of. Her first apprehension that either the deacon or James Doolittle was coming to insist on an immediate answer, vanished as she caught sight of two unmistakably feminine figures on the rear seat of the rickety vehicle approaching. But her feeling of reassurance was of brief duration. Almost immediately the conviction seized her that the women were strangers.
Miss Finch stood quaking. Her constitutional shyness had been so cultivated by a lifetime of keeping herself in the background that the prospect of an interview with the unknown women presented itself as an ordeal. It was probable, Miss Finch reflected, that they were city people looking for board. In that case it was only necessary to tell them that they did not wish any additional boarders, and they would have no alternative but to go away. Nevertheless she wished with illogical heartiness that Agatha were at home to assume the responsibility of the interview.
The creaking carryall came to a halt in front ofthe house. Miss Finch saw that of the two passengers, one was young and one elderly, while both were smartly dressed and formidable. It was the older woman who addressed her, eying her disapprovingly through her lorgnette, and speaking in a tone of incredulity that somehow was offensive.
"My good woman, kindly tell me whether this is Oak Knoll."
"Yes, it is," said Miss Finch, reduced by the lorgnette to abject helplessness.
The driver growled something from the front seat. Miss Finch understood him to say, "Next time maybe you'll believe me."
"And is Mr. Forbes, Mr. Burton Forbes, spending the summer here?" The incredulity was as marked as before and as disagreeable.
"Yes'm," replied Miss Finch faintly. "He is."
The driver growled again. The substance of his remark, as far as Miss Finch could grasp it in her confusion, seemed to be, "What did I tell you?"
But it mattered little to Miss Finch what the driver had to say. A deplorable certainty absorbed her. The women were preparing to alight. There was a trifling delay, owing to the fact they seemed to expect the driver to assist them, while he assuredthem that he did not dare to leave his horses. As the dejected steeds stood with hanging heads, apparently resigned to the prospect of dying in their traces, the indignation of the two passengers was amply justified.
They were out at last, and while the elderly lady haughtily paid the driver, Miss Finch's distended eyes were taking a rapid inventory of the younger. She was extremely handsome, Miss Finch saw, tall and slender and tremendously striking in her black and white costume. She stood looking about her with an evident disdain which the little spinster might have resented, had she not been chilled by an indefinable fear.
When the beautiful stranger spoke, her remark was a complete surprise. "Miss Kent, I suppose."
Zaida Finch became aware of an inexplicable hostility in the other's manner, of an arrogance that bordered on insolence. She found she was being scrutinized contemptuously. The little drab nonentity felt in her veins an unprecedented stirring of resentment.
"No, I'm not," she said with a flatness that seemed deliberately contradictive. "I'm Miss Finch."
"Be so kind as to call Miss Kent."
"She's out, I'm sorry to say," replied Miss Finch, and her regret was heart-felt. If only Agatha were on hand to give back this presumptuous girl stare for stare, to inquire her errand, in the chilling tone of which Agatha knew the secret, and finally to send her about her business.
"Call Mr. Forbes, then."
"Mr. Forbes is out, too," Miss Finch explained, and a little chill ran down her spine. She had forgotten how imperative it was that Agatha should not encounter any of Forbes' friends. If their unwelcome guests lingered, it would be necessary for Agatha to become Hephzibah again with all the inconveniences attendant on that incarnation. "I've got to get rid of 'em somehow," thought Miss Kent distractedly.
But apparently for the younger of the two strangers, Miss Finch had ceased to exist. She turned to her companion impatiently. "It's dreadfully boring, Aunt Estelle, but Burton is out at present. We'll have to sit on the porch and wait. Fortunately it is shady."
"Yes, it seems to beshady," admitted Aunt Estelle, with an emphasis indicating that as far as theporch was concerned, she could make no further concessions. She climbed the steps looking about her with multiplying evidences of disquiet. "Ask her when Burton will be back," she enjoined, exactly as if Miss Finch had spoken a foreign tongue, and could be addressed only through an interpreter.
Miss Finch did not wait to have the inquiry translated. "I don't knowwhenhe'll be back," she said quickly. "Probably he'll be gone all day."
"He'll return for luncheon, I suppose," said Aunt Estelle, grudgingly acknowledging Miss Finch's ability to speak English, but apparently liking her no better on that account.
"No, he won't," declared Miss Finch, with unaccustomed positiveness. "They took sandwiches."
The two women exchanged glances. "Who is with Mr. Forbes?" asked the younger. Her manner implied her right to know.
"Ag—well, Miss Kent went with him." And to herself Miss Finch added wildly, "I can't have a lie on my conscience, even for Agatha."
"Who else was in the party, please?" The young woman in black and white had become a judge, and Miss Finch, the prisoner at the bar.
"There wasn't anybody else," gasped Miss Finch, with every indication of uttering a deliberate and premeditated falsehood.
"Where were they going?"
"I don't know exactly. They were going for a picnic somewhere, but I didn't hear 'em say where. I don't know as they knew themselves."
The judicial sternness became more marked as the prisoner's embarrassment increased. "You mean that Mr. Forbes and Miss Kent have gone off for the day with—sandwiches?" Something in her inflection made the mention of sandwiches the crowning insult to her intelligence.
"Yes," faltered Miss Finch guiltily. "They often take long walks, and carry a picnic lunch."
The older lady spoke with asperity. "It's a preposterous situation. I'm sorry to remind you, Julia, that I said at the start it would be better to telegraph."
Miss Finch started violently. She recalled Agatha's confidential assurance that Forbes was in love with a despicable young woman named Julia, but that the aforesaid Julia was to marry another man. Yet here she was, undeniably handsome, terrifyingly elegant, and worst of all, with no apparentdoubt as to her right to be demanding the immediate producing of Mr. Forbes.
The two women had seated themselves, Aunt Estelle ostentatiously dusting the rocker she trusted with her ample person. Miss Finch proffered a belated and reluctant hospitality.
"If you're thinking of sitting here long, I'll see about getting you something to eat."
Julia brushed the offer aside without thanks. "We shall wait for Mr. Forbes."
"It is really absurd, you know," Aunt Estelle contributed, "for us to sit waiting indefinitely. Burton must be somewhere about. A blind man and an old woman can not possibly walk very far. Why are they not sent for?"
As her inquiry was addressed to Julia, Julia passed it on to Miss Finch, her extremely frigid tone indicating that Miss Finch should have thought of that herself.
"There's nobody to send except the hired girl," Miss Finch explained despairingly. "And she never was known to find anything, even if it was right under her nose. If only Howard—"
Miss Finch checked herself abruptly. A thought had flashed across her mind so dazzling in its brilliancy she could hardly believe herself capable of originating it. Indeed, the probability is that she had not done so, but that some extravagant fancy of Agatha's, falling like seed into her subconsciousness, had lain there dormant till the emergency brought it to swift germination. Zaida Finch had never heard of Victor Hugo's saintly nun, crowning a lifetime of sanctity by a devout and holy lie, but unconsciously she was inspired to emulate her example.
With Miss Finch veracity was almost a mania. She was one of the tiresome people who are continually suspecting themselves of exaggeration or of misrepresentation of something absolutely without importance, and then bore their associates by insisting on their attention while they painstakingly correct their statements. Yet now she forgot her habitual dread of falsehood. If a lie were necessary to save Agatha, lie she must.
She resumed her interrupted sentence, pale but resolute. "If only Howard was well, he could look for 'em. He could find 'em if anybody could. But it'll be a good while before he does much running around, I guess."
The two visitors regarded her stonily. In hersimplicity she had assumed their cooperation to the extent of a question or two. They would surely ask her who Howard was, or why he was incapacitated. But apparently these matters did not interest them in the slightest degree. It was necessary for Miss Finch to continue her career of mendacity unaided by so much as the lifting of an interrogative eye-brow.
Miss Finch rose to the occasion. "He's sick, you know," she confided to the two pairs of indifferent ears. "High fever, and considerable of a rash—if you'd call it a rash."
Aunt Estelle showed a slight uneasiness. "You've consulted a physician, I suppose."
"We're trying a kind of mental cure first," replied Miss Finch as glibly as if she had practised perjury from her childhood. "And then if that don't work, Ag—Miss Kent is going to call in the doctor. But she don't like to do it till she has to, for it would be awful inconvenient to be quarantined."
"Quarantined," exclaimed Aunt Estelle with fresh evidences of perturbation. "Have you any reason to think that it may be contagious?"
"Most of these rashy diseases are," Miss Finch replied. And though there was no malice in hercomposition, she was conscious of relishing Aunt Estelle's air of agitation. "I'm hoping it's nothing worse than scarlet fever, though there's been a good many cases of smallpox around here lately. And I don't know that Howard's ever been vaccinated."
Aunt Estelle rose from her chair with a little cry. In her palpitating pallor she reminded Miss Finch irresistibly of blanc-mange.
"Smallpox, Julia," she exclaimed. "Do you hear what the woman says—smallpox! Even if we escape with our lives, one's complexion—oh, my God! Why did I ever listen to this mad idea of yours!"
Julia's composure was in refreshing contrast to her aunt's excitement. She rose, it is true, but only to advance to the older woman's side and whisper in her ear. And having whispered, she calmly resumed her seat, and looked away toward the hills, apparently intensely interested in the scenery.
Aunt Estelle stood irresolute. "Do you really think so?"
"I'm absolutely sure of it," said Julia.
"I think I noticed a little wildness in the eye myself," Aunt Estelle conceded, with a return of her earlier conviction of Miss Finch's inability to understand English.
"Unmistakable," opined Julia.
Miss Finch looked blankly from one to the other and hope was at low ebb. They were going to stay. She had thrilled with childlike pride at the discovery of her own inventiveness, culpable though it might be. Complacency had whispered that Agatha herself could not have done better. And now she realized that her effort had failed. She had sacrificed her conscience to friendship, and the sacrifice had been in vain. Though not so quick-witted as many another, she had no difficulty in recognizing the conclusion these strangers had reached. To herself she said, "They think I'm crazy."
Miss Finch was not at the end of her resources. Her lapse from the path of rectitude had proved strangely stimulating to the imagination. She meant to get rid of these women before Agatha returned. Agatha would be equal to the emergency provided she were not taken by surprise. If Julia and her aunt were not afraid of smallpox, it was possible that they might be afraid of a crazy woman who showed signs of becoming violent.
"G-r-r-r-r—" said Miss Finch menacingly. Aunt Estelle jumped and took another chair. For the first time in her life, Miss Finch felt herself at nodisadvantage because of her insignificant proportions. "G-r-r-r-r-r—" she said again.
"Julia," exclaimed Aunt Estelle nervously, "do you really think it's safe—"
The intrepidity of the modern young woman passes comprehension. "Harmless, I imagine," Julia said with nonchalance. "Otherwise Burton would hardly have remained."
"Why he should have remained in this place under any circumstances," declared Aunt Estelle, "passes my comprehension."
"There must be some reason we know nothing about. Burton will explain." Something in Julia's tone implied that Forbes would not find explanations altogether easy. She added with evident relief, "Here he comes now."
"Thank heaven!" cried Aunt Estelle piously.
Miss Finch looked wildly in the direction of Julia's steadfast gaze. All was over. Arm in arm across the grass, so absorbed in each other that the girl was as blind as the man to the audience on the porch, came Agatha and Forbes.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DAY OF JUDGMENT
Forbeswoke refreshed from his sylvan nap, and sat for a little discoursing on the invigorating effect of contact with mother earth, while Agatha, by drastic massage, restored the circulation to her temporarily paralyzed arm. The sun had dipped but little toward the western horizon when they turned their faces homeward, and they walked slowly. Agatha exulted in heat. A temperature of ninety stimulated her both physically and mentally. But Forbes found the warmth of the day relaxing, and she set the pace with that fact in mind.
Toward the last of their long leisurely walk, Forbes brought up the subject he had introduced earlier in the day. Though he made no effort to hurry her to a decision, he sketched entertainingly some of the diversions she might anticipate, if she accepted his invitation for the winter. The program was planned with due regard for the infirmities of age, but Agatha listened raptly.
They were but a few rods from their destination, Forbes talking earnestly, and Agatha hanging on his words, when some mysterious sixth sense warned her of danger. She looked ahead and instantly halted. Forbes felt her figure stiffen against his arm, and instinct told him she was frightened. "What is the matter?" he cried, sickening with a new realization of his helplessness.
Agatha did not answer, but as she stared ahead she understood that doomsday had arrived unheralded. A young woman was tripping toward them, a handsome young woman, who even without beauty would have attracted all eyes by the distinction of her dress and bearing. It could be no other than Julia. The ample lady in the background, following with a haste that empurpled her complexion, that she might not be left tête-à-tête with a maniac, failed to attract Agatha's attention. Julia's graceful figure dominated the landscape.
"Whatisthe matter?" Forbes again demanded. He laid his hand reassuringly over the fingers trembling upon his arm. And at that moment a voice subtly reproachful, suggestively tender, spoke his name. "Burton!"
"Julia!" Forbes shouted. His dear old friend,Miss Kent, and her mysterious perturbation, were instantly forgotten. He started forward, remembered that he was blind, stood irresolute, his hands outstretched. "Julia!" he cried again, this time with entreaty as well as rapture.
Agatha was ready to believe that then and there she had amply atoned for her sins, past and present. Even the certainty that the hour of her humiliation was at hand could not hurt worse than the joy ringing through his voice as he spoke another woman's name. She wondered dully at her own folly. She had been warned and had not heeded. She had known all the time of his love for Julia, and yet had foolishly assumed that since Julia's selfish decision had put her out of his reach, he would turn to her for consolation. Her pride had not rebelled over taking what Julia had thrown away. Indeed she had thought very little about herself. Her one desire was to be light to his blind eyes, balm to his wounded heart. But her castle of dreams was in ruins, as soon as he spoke the name she had hated from the first day she had heard it on his lips.
Julia approached him as swiftly as was consistent with grace, a rather insolent triumph in the glance she shot over his shoulder toward the pale girl standing in the background. "Yes, Burton," she said gently, "it is Julia," and extended both hands.
He caught them ardently and held them fast, his eager face questioning her dumbly, though he only said, "What a wonderful surprise! How good of you, how very good of you!"
"My aunt, Mrs. Knox, is with me, Burton," continued Julia, the pensiveness of her tone flatly contradicted by her air of elation. "I think you have met Mr. Forbes, Aunt Estelle."
Aunt Estelle, still panting, brought herself into hand-shaking distance and this formality helped to recall Forbes to the realization that there were other people in the world besides Julia and himself. He turned toward Agatha.
"This is a pleasure I have been promising myself," he said. "Julia, I want you to know my dear friend, Miss Kent. Miss Kent, let me present Mrs. Knox and Miss Studley."
The blankness of the silence that ensued was as definite as a blow. Forbes stood awaiting the conventional formula, but his quick ear could detect only the sound of hurried breathing. Again he turned toward Agatha, but for the first time she failed him.
"Miss Kent is still here, is she not?" queried Forbes. He remembered his ideas had been chaotic after discovering Julia's presence. His late companion might easily have withdrawn without attracting his attention.
For so simple a question, the effect was startling. "Burton," Julia cried, her voice sharp to the point of shrillness, "what are you talking about?"
Aunt Estelle caught her sleeve. "Can't you understand, Julia?" she hissed. "This place is a private asylum. That crazy old creature on the porch, and now him. It's perfectly plain. Let us go away at once."
Forbes caught most of this sibilant outburst. He turned white with anger. "Miss Kent?" he pleaded, and Agatha pulled herself together. Her voice was steady if slightly unnatural, as she answered, "Yes, I am here."
Forbes tried to laugh. The consciousness of being enveloped in baffling mystery made his blindness doubly intolerable. There was a bewilderment in his voice that wrung Agatha's heart.
"This is what I have been hoping for all summer. You know how often I've wished you and Miss Studley might know each other."
"Burton," Julia screamed, "who and what is this person?"
The contempt in her tone, even more than her disdainful phrasing, brought the blood racing to his forehead. "Julia!" He seemed to defy her to go on. "If you have read my letters at all," he said in a vibrant voice, "you know both who Miss Kent is and how much I am in her debt."
"Miss Kent! Your father's friend!"
"And mine as well, Julia." There was no ecstatic tenderness now in his use of her name, but indignant sternness.
"Burton, either you are insane or the woman is an impostor. She is not old. She is young, hardly more than a girl."
Forbes attempted to reply, but for a moment no words came. He put his hand to his forehead with a confused gesture. "I have been off in the woods with Miss Kent all day," he stammered. "I supposed—I had not noticed—" Again he turned in Agatha's direction. "Who are you, please?"
There was no trace of emotion in her composed answer. "I am Agatha Kent."
"Do you dare to say," shrieked Julia, "that you were the friend of Mr. Forbes' father?"
"I never saw Mr. Forbes' father."
Forbes took a step ahead, then halted, and stood with his feet a little apart, like one who balances himself on the deck of a heaving ship in a high sea. "But where," he stammered, "where is the other Miss Kent?"
"There is no other. My Great-aunt Agatha, for whom I was named, died twelve years ago."
There was a momentary palpitating silence which Julia was the first to break.
"And you mean," she arraigned her, "that all this summer you have been a deliberate impostor, palming yourself off on Mr. Forbes as an old woman, allowing him to think—oh, it's too shameful. I can't believe any girl would be so base."
"It is quite true, nevertheless," Agatha assured her gently. Her steady eyes met Julia's, and even that intrepid young woman drew back a step. Her momentary shrinking was not unreasonable for could concentrated hate smite like a lightning bolt, her life would have been measured by seconds.
Instinct taught Julia how to repay that level look by the deadliest hurt. She turned on Forbes furiously. "Do you mean to tell me that you have been the victim of a hoax all summer, that this girl haspassed herself off on you for an old woman? But, no, it isn't possible. You've contrived this outrageous story between you to cover up something disgraceful. You couldn't have been such a dupe as you pretend. It's incredible!"
Forbes' color came and went during this attack. "It seems incredible," he owned when she gave him opportunity. "I don't blame you for questioning the truth of such a story. I can only remind you that it is easy to deceive a blind man."
Something in Agatha's stony whiteness convinced Julia that she had made no mistake in her choice of retribution. She gave the screws another turn.
"You mean for me to believe, Burton, that you've been only the gullible victim of a swindle, that this impostor has tricked you successfully all these months?"
There was a rather long silence. "Yes," said Forbes tonelessly, "that is what I mean."
Julia's first sense of being at a disadvantage had passed. She was thoroughly enjoying herself.
"I begin to understand your strange letter," she said, addressing Agatha. "Your letter of congratulation, you know. I suppose you are the young woman to whom you referred, the one with whomMr. Forbes had spent so much time, you no doubt remember."
There was such malicious satisfaction in her tone that Forbes turned as if to interfere. Then his uplifted arm dropped rather heavily to his side.
"You'll laugh when I tell you, Burton," exclaimed Julia, setting him the example by laughing herself, most unpleasantly. "But she insinuated in this letter that you might marry her. That is at the bottom of this outrageous plot. She actually thought she could compromise you in some dreadful way and force you to marry her. Shocking as it is, one can't help being amused."
Forbes' only answer was again to lift his hand to his head. It was Agatha who spoke. Unmasked adventuress as she was, her dignity was in rather agreeable contrast to Julia's vindictive shrillness.
"It is hardly necessary to trouble Mr. Forbes with any further details," she said, "since, thanks to you, my plot against his peace has been exposed. I suppose you will want to take him away as soon as possible."
"Oh, at once." Julia showed signs of becoming hysterical. "The very first train. I feel as if I couldn't breathe in this atmosphere of deceit."
"I'm afraid there is no train before five o'clock, but I'll have the carriage ready in plenty of time. And now, if you will excuse me, I shall see about getting you some luncheon."
"Luncheon! Good heavens, I couldn't eat a mouthful. It would choke me."
Mrs. Knox seconded her niece admirably. "It would not be safe, Julia. A person capable of all this would not hesitate to poison our food."
Agatha accepted this tribute without comment. "Will you pack Mr. Forbes' things yourself?" she said, addressing Julia.
Again Mrs. Knox intervened. "Julia, I forbid you to go into that house, with this girl, and that dreadful, crazy creature—"
Forbes interrupted with signs of irritation. "You said that once before. There is no insane woman here."
"I am afraid you are not a very good judge of whatisor isnothere, Mr. Forbes," replied Aunt Estelle, scoring again. "We had a most unpleasant encounter with a woman clearly insane. She positively gibbered."
"Yes, Burton," Julia cried with shrewish enjoyment, "you have been made a laughing-stock allsummer, poor dear. You've kept writing about this fine old place. I wish you could see it. It's simply in the last stages of dilapidation."
"It's ready to fall to pieces," corroborated Aunt Estelle. "I didn't venture inside, but the glimpses of the interior I got from the window showed that everything was fairly moth-eaten."
"Yes," Agatha admitted quietly. "We are very poor, so poor that a blind boarder seemed providential. Won't you sit on the porch till the carriage is ready?" she added politely. "I'm sure Mr. Forbes is tired after his long walk."
"Oh, please," protested Julia, her self-control shaken by the other's calm, "please drop this pretext of being so interested in Mr. Forbes' welfare. After the fraud you have practised on him all summer you can hardly expect him to believe anything you say."
"Oh, no," said Agatha. "I don't expect that for a moment. And now if you're sure you won't eat a little luncheon, I'll bid you all good afternoon." She went across the grass to the house, carrying herself with her chin high, moving deliberately. No one could have guessed the fact of which she was so certain, that during the encounter she had ceased to be a girl, that she had leaped without any interveningstages of maturity and middle life, straight to old age, that dreadful old age, beyond hope or joy, the age that is death in life. Agatha remembered wonderingly that once the mere flicker of sunshine through leaves, the mere fragrance of a flower, had a magic to quicken her pulses.
A little after three the carryall appeared. Howard was driving, and Forbes' suit-case and other impedimenta lay on the seat beside him. As he helped his passengers in, he explained that the trunk would be sent by express next day. This announcement was received in frigid silence whereupon Howard, too, became sulkily silent and used the whip on the fat bays with such effect that they covered the five miles between Oak Knoll and the village station at an unprecedented rate of speed.
Forbes thawed a little when Howard helped him to alight, and stood for a moment beside him. "Good-by, Mr. Forbes," the boy said huskily. "I'm awfully sorry you're going."
He put out his hand and after an instant's hesitation Forbes gripped it. He had grown fond of the boy. "Oh, Howard," he said, his voice betraying his hurt, "I wouldn't have believed it of you."
He heard Howard gulp and then burst out sobbing. Fortunately for the boy's pride, the hour was early and the station platform lacked its customary contingent of loafers.
"We didn't mean anything, Mr. Forbes," Howard choked. "Aggie wanted to take boarders, so she could send me to school, but when they saw how old and shabby the house was, they wouldn't come."
"Is she your sister?"
"Kind of one. Her father married my mother. She's better than a thousand real sisters."
"Burton," said Julia's voice beside them, "I wouldn't encourage the boy by listening to him. Probably that young woman has coached him in a new series of lies."
"Aggie never tells lies," Howard challenged her hotly. "This was like a charade or something. Mr. Forbes thought she was old and so she pretended to be. We had lots of fun and it didn't do anybody any harm." He appealed to Forbes. "She took good care of you anyway, didn't she, Mr. Forbes?"
"Really, Burton," expostulated Julia, "I can not allow this to go on. These people evidently regard you as fair game. It's dreadful that your blindness should put you so at the mercy of the unscrupulous,but I shall see that you are not imposed on while I am with you. Send this boy away."
"He doesn't need to send me away," Howard exploded indignantly. "I'm going." He seized Forbes' hand again. "Good-by, Mr. Forbes. Come and see us some time."
Julia gasped. "Did any one ever imagine such impertinence!" she asked of high heaven. "Such people seem to be without natural shame. I suppose they are so accustomed to being found out in falsehood and fraud that they take it as a matter of course. In the interest of justice there should be some way of punishing them. Couldn't they be prosecuted, Burton, for obtaining money under false pretenses?"
Forbes made no reply. Apparently he did not share Julia's lofty enthusiasm for abstract justice. His air of bewildered dejection suggested a lost child, rather than a man rescued from a false and intolerable position by the lady of his heart.
CHAPTER XVIII
WARREN GETS A TIP
Ridgeley Warrenhad been to the station to bid a friendbon voyage. He presented himself armed with a box of chocolates, the latest novel and three brand-new witticisms culled from a roof-garden program the previous evening. The pretty girl had accepted his offerings with marked graciousness and had laughed convulsively at each of the jokes, thereby intensifying Warren's habitual sense of being on good terms with himself and all the world. His spirits unclouded by the pang of parting, he strolled toward the exit, trying to decide where to dine, when his own name reached his ears coupled with a fervent ejaculation, "Mr. Warren! Thank heaven!"
Warren spun on his heel to encounter Julia advancing with extended hand. Julia was not one of Warren's favorites, but her pleasure at the sight of him was contagious. "Gosh!" he exclaimed agreeably, "thisisluck."
It was while shaking hands with Julia that Warren became aware of Mrs. Knox's imposing figure in the background. And scarcely had he lifted his hat in recognition of her presence, when his eye fell on Forbes, a pale and woebegone object, committed to the clumsy guardianship of a station porter.
Warren turned on Julia blithely. "Don't tell me you've sprung a surprise on us. Don't say that I should have come with my pockets full of rice."
"Oh, Mr. Warren, be serious, please." There was gentle reproach in Julia's uplifted eyes. "It seems really providential meeting you here. Now you can take charge of Burton till he finds some suitable person to look after him."
"What's become of the nice little chap who has been on the job all summer?"
"Oh, Mr. Warren!" Julia's gesture indicated the futility of attempting immediate explanations. "It's a long, a dreadful story, and it will take time to make you understand."
"Hm! I'm not usually considered so dense."
"But this isn't like anything else. It's incredible. I can hardly believe it myself. Let's go to some quiet place where we can have dinner and talk things over."
"Yes, for heaven's sake, let us have dinner," snapped Mrs. Knox. An unusually early hour of rising, together with a mid-day fast, had reduced her to an unwonted state of nervous irritability. Forbes, too, seemed wrapped in impenetrable gloom. It was not a cheerful party.
Warren's curiosity was aroused. He found a taxi, bundled the dejected trio inside and gave the driver directions. He was rather shocked to see how ill Forbes looked on nearer view, but he concealed that emotion under his usual cloak of levity, and told humorous stories all the way to their destination, covering the lack of responsiveness on the part of his audience by roars of appreciative laughter.
The staid hotel which Warren had selected, though yielding to modern demands sufficiently to institute a roof dining-room, discouraged such innovations as would be likely to attract the light-minded, and Warren's party had no difficulty in securing a table. Warren assumed the prerogative of host and ordered with a lavishness productive of a marked unbending on the part of Mrs. Knox. Julia, too, was hungry enough to look forward to a good dinner with unwonted anticipation, and she smiledon him appreciatively. Only Forbes remained moodily aloof.
It was over the soup that Warren said cheerily, "Well, now, what's it all about?" He was beginning to realize that something unusual must have occurred to bring Julia and her aunt to town in August, as well as to account for Forbes' strange, dispirited silence.
Mrs. Knox immediately protested. "Oh, Mr. Warren, don't spoil a good meal by bringing up that abominable affair."
"Oh, yes, let it wait, please, Mr. Warren," sighed Julia. "Actually when one realizes what wickedness there is in the world—deceit and imposture and things of that sort—it seems fairly heartless to enjoy one's self."
"Then we'll wait for explanations till dinner is over," Warren conceded, with undiminished buoyancy. But although he made himself entertaining in his usual fashion, his mind was busy with the problem Julia had suggested. Who was the girl hitting, with her talk of deceit and imposture? She could not refer to Miss Kent, naturally, and Howard was equally out of the question. Could it be that Hephzibah's existence had come to her attention? Was it possible that Forbes had been playing a lone hand and had thereby become involved in an entanglement from which his betrothed had magnanimously rescued him? The unrelieved melancholy of Forbes' face and manner rendered this explanation entirely plausible.
When the coffee was brought on and the men lighted cigarettes, Warren felt, not unnaturally, that his hungry curiosity had a right to satisfaction. "Well, I'm as ready to be shocked as I ever shall be," he said. "Let's hear what has happened. Don't tell me that the staid Miss Kent was on the point of eloping with old Forbes."
To Warren's surprise, this apparently innocent witticism caused Forbes to flush darkly. He noticed, too, that Julia's expression lost something of its pensive sweetness, but even then he was unprepared for the acidity of the tone with which she answered him.
"There is no Miss Kent."
"Eh?" Warren looked rather stupid.
"Strictly speaking," admitted Julia, "there is a person who calls herself by that name. But the nice old lady who was Burton's father's friend has been dead a dozen years."
Warren knocked the ashes from his cigarette with painstaking deliberation. "Must be a rather lively old ghost," he commented, striving to live up to his principle of never showing surprise, "according to all Forbes tells."
"Oh, poor Burton," Julia cried, with a glance of angelic commiseration in the direction of her grimly silent lover. "Wouldn't you have thought that Burton's misfortune would have appealed to the better instincts of the most depraved? But instead, they take advantage of his blindness to trick him in the most infamous fashion. The person who calls herself Agatha Kent—I suppose it really is her name, though any one so absolutely deceitful is as likely to lie about one thing as another—"
"Well?" trumpeted Warren, his strained patience showing itself in the unnecessary loudness of his challenge.
"Do hush, Mr. Warren, everybody's looking at us. This Kent woman isn't a nice motherly person. She isn't old at all, not a bit older than I am."
Warren sucked at his cigarette for a moment and blew the smoke through his nose. He needed a little time in order to preserve the imperturbable demeanor on which he prided himself. He looked atJulia to be sure she was in earnest, looked at Forbes to see if he were not going to deny this incredible story, and then expressed his feelings by a low whistle.
"Not a nice motherly person," he repeated inanely. "About as old as you are."
"She may even be a little younger," Julia admitted generously.
Warren's air of incredulity deepened. He threw the uncommunicative Forbes a challenging glance.
"Do you mean that Forbes has been spending all his time with her for the past three months and never suspected that she wasn't an old woman?"
"So he claims." Julia's inflection was decidedly tart.
Forbes made one of his rare contributions to the conversation. "I wouldn't have believed such a thing possible myself, but blindness makes one an easy victim."
"Poor Burton!" murmured Julia, melting at once. "To think that any girl should have the heart to take such advantage of another's misfortune."
"But I can't see what she was getting at," Warren demurred. "I've heard that occasionally ladies represent themselves as younger than they really are,and the reason for that seems plain enough. But why the devil should a young girl want to make herself out an old maid of seventy?"
"Purely mercenary at the start," Julia opined. "As I understand it, Burton saw her advertisement for a boarder, and wrote her, supposing she was his father's old friend. And she decided to pass herself off as her great-aunt so as to get as much out of Burton as she could."
"That young woman must have plenty of nerve. It's plain she needed the money, as far as that goes. Place is terribly run-down."
"Oh, shockingly," Mrs. Knox corroborated him, in her deepest tones. "All the furniture I could see through the windows seemed mere wrecks."
"On its last legs," Warren agreed. He waited for a moment and then asked casually, "Well, what's the fuss about? What harm did it do?"
The two women uttered a simultaneous ejaculation of horror. "A piece of barefaced fraud," cried Mrs. Knox.
"She has been getting money under false pretenses," flared Julia. "I believe she can be arrested like any other swindler, and punished."
Warren shrugged his shoulders. "I can't see where the harm comes in," he persisted stubbornly. "She made Forbes comfortable all summer, so comfortable that now he looks like a baby that's being weaned. She took his money, but judging from the meals I ate there, she gave him his money's worth. If she'd been an old party, passing herself off as a youthful beauty, Forbes would have a right to kick. But under the circumstances is seems to me you're making a mountain out of a mole-hill."
Warren's amiable defense of the guilty was not well received. Aunt Estelle regarded him with open hostility, and Julia seemed pained by his moral obtuseness. A flicker of interest lighted Forbes' impassive face and suggested to Warren that his line of argument appealed more strongly to his masculine listener than to the women. Although he held no brief for Agatha Kent, he pressed his advantage.
"We don't know, any of us, what we might do if we were up against it. I've often thought I would commit highway robbery if I were hungry enough. I'll say this for the girl, anyway: She must be a peach of an actress. If she could knock around with a man all summer, walk with him and talk withhim and pet him a little, when he was down in the mouth, and yet never let him suspect that she wasn't old enough to be his grandmother—"
"Really, Mr. Warren," Julia said with asperity, "I can't see any point in continuing this conversation. I had hoped you might be able to make some helpful suggestions regarding Burton, for of course I understand that you can't be burdened with him for more than a few days. But if you are going to spend the evening defending that brazen, red-haired—"
"What!" roared Warren. This time hehaddone it. The head waiter looked in his direction apprehensively.
Aunt Estelle took the protest from Julia's lips. "Pardon me, Mr. Warren, but I must remind you that my niece and I dislike to be made conspicuous by such demonstrations."
Warren ignored the reproof. "What did you call her?" he demanded of Julia, whose only answer was an offended stare.
"Did you say she was red-haired?"
"I—I did. Though why you should attach any importance to anything so trivial, I confess I don't understand."
Warren did not attempt to enlighten her. He indicated to the waiter that he was ready for his check and his manner was offensively jubilant. "I'm afraid," he said genially, "that you'll have to make some plan for disposing of old Forbes besides committing him to my tender mercies. I've just remembered that I'm going out of town in the morning, early train."
Julia looked startled. "But what is Burton to do, then?"
"Just what he would have done if you hadn't run across me. Though if you'd like my candid advice—"
"Yes, please," said Julia, and tried to look winning. It did not suit her that Warren should slip away in this cavalier fashion, leaving her with a blind man on her hands. She had important plans for the remainder of the week. Twenty-four hours was all she could possibly spare for Forbes.
"Then I advise you to marry him offhand. You have taken him away from one young woman who was devoting herself to making him comfortable. I should say that the least you could do was to follow her example."
Julia's gasp of rage made Warren think of a catwhose tail has been trodden on. From across the table Forbes promptly requested him to mind his own business.
"Just a bit of good advice, old man," Warren soothed him. "Take it or leave it, as you please. Anything more I can do for you people before I go?"
A frigid silence indicated that any service he could offer would be unwelcome, whereupon Warren, having tipped the waiter with a liberality indicative of a jocund spirit, took his smiling departure, leaving dejection behind him.
After a talk with the night clerk, it was arranged that Forbes should remain at the hotel, an adaptable bell-boy agreeing to act as his valet in the morning. Before Mrs. Knox and Julia took refuge in another hostelry, the lovers had a moment to themselves.
Julia was in an unpleasant mood. The emphasis Warren had laid on Miss Kent's histrionic powers had awakened her ready suspicion. As she found herself alone for a moment with her lover, his look of weary dejection aroused her resentment.
"It's most extraordinary, Burton," she complained, "that you should never have suspected herof being younger than she pretended. I could see that Mr. Warren didn't believe it for a minute."
Forbes replied with perfect conviction that Warren was an ass.
"I should have thought that if you didn't find it out when you were holding her hands, you would have realized it the moment you took her in your arms."
"Damnation!" Forbes was goaded beyond endurance. "I never took her in my arms."
"She said you did," insisted Julia, eying him suspiciously. "In that preposterous letter she wrote me, you know. She said you often held her hands and patted them and that sort of thing."
"I did, I admit it. I supposed her a contemporary of my father's, you remember."
"And she said that once, under rather unusual circumstances, you took her in your arms."
"An absolute lie!" blazed Forbes. "But of course if you are going to doubt my word, Julia—"
Julia said no, that she did not doubt him. She added that when a person had lived a lie for months, one more little falsehood would not mean much. Then she gave him her hand to kiss, and was annoyed when he only pressed it and said good night. She had to remind herself that though there was no one near to witness the act of devotion, Burton could not know that he was unobserved, and his undemonstrative demeanor was undoubtedly due to his unwillingness to compromise her.
It was while the adaptable bell-boy was conducting his charge to his room, that enlightenment came. Forbes gave a convulsive start. "Damnation!" he exclaimed, for the second time in fifteen minutes.
"Yes, sir, our floor, sir!" The bell-boy eyed him expectantly. He had an adventurous spirit, though condemned to carry suit-cases and bring ice-water on request. It looked as if there might be something doing with a gentleman who jumped so high and swore so roundly in a public elevator.
Forbes had only realized that the letter Julia had quoted had contained no falsehood. He understood Warren's excitement over the discovery that Agatha Kent was red-haired. Agatha and Hephzibah were one and the same.
The circumstances which led to his taking her in his arms were unusual, indeed. In the close corridors of the city hotel he seemed to smell again the scent of sun-kissed fields. As the bell-boy grippedhis arm, he felt against his heart the pressure of that lithe young body, shaken by sobs. His cheek had brushed another, smooth and fragrant. His pulses had answered the indefinable challenge of youth and beauty. They thrilled again at the mere memory.
Forbes did not fall asleep till nearly morning. He lay awake, trying to decide how far the situation was altered by the fact that Agatha Kent had saved his life.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WORM TURNS
In thehour or two of troubled sleep closing his wakeful night, Forbes dreamed vividly and woke with Agatha's voice echoing in his ears. He started up, his lips parted to speak her name, then dropped back upon his pillows with a sense of desolate loss that tried his powers of self-control.
So faithfully had his memory reproduced every intonation of the familiar voice that it had seemed to bring the living woman to his side. He recognized the maternal note which had appealed to him the more because of his unmothered boyhood, the undertone of indulgent humor which was characteristic of the friend on whom he had learned to lean. Only there was no such friend. Her place had been taken by a stranger, capable of bewildering changes of identity, Miss Kent, Hephzibah, and now this newcomer, Agatha, self-confessed impostress who could, even when unmasked and flouted, preserve the dignity which is the heritage of race. He found himself thrilled by an inexplicable pride as he remembered the even voice with which she had answered Julia's shrillness.
The adaptable bell-boy presented himself in due time and awkwardly assisted him with his dressing. After visiting the barber, he was conducted to the hotel dining-room, and here the realization was brought home to him that for many a month Agatha's tact had stood between him and embarrassment. She had prepared his food so that he ate without any especial sense of being at a disadvantage. His fork was always at hand when he wanted it. His glass of water and his cup of coffee were magically present to his need. In the hotel dining-room he heard whispers at his back, and once a sound like smothered laughter, and he tingled with the shamed consciousness of being a show for curious eyes. His face burned throughout the meal, and his eating was largely pretense.
Forbes' engagement with Julia was for ten o'clock. At quarter before the hour, the bell-boy who had taken him in charge conducted him to a stiff little parlor on the second floor, and left him after a whispered explanation to the maid. Time isproverbially slow-footed from the standpoint of lovers, but as Forbes sat waiting he felt sure that his impatience did not explain the seemingly endless duration of those fifteen minutes. The maid came to him at last to ask if there was anything she could do.
"I'd like to know the time, please."
"Half past eleven, sir."
"Half past eleven," Forbes repeated. Oddly his first emotion was a feeling of relief that Agatha did not know.
The parlor maid was offering encouragement. "Prob'ly something's happened to detain the young lady, sir. But I don't believe she'll be much longer."
"Let us hope not," Forbes replied dryly. The proudest of men, he winced at the unmistakable sympathy of the woman's tone. It was not fair that he should be subjected to such humiliation.
Julia arrived upon the stroke of noon, voluble over some undeniable bargains in blouses. She had stopped at one of the exclusive little shops, preferred by the knowing to the big emporiums, only intending, she explained vivaciously, to make one small purchase. But the woman had kept showing her the loveliest things, and all so reasonable. Therewas practically no one in the place, so that it had seemed like shopping in some strange city. And it was worth coming to town in the hot weather just to pick up such bargains.
"I'm glad your effort was not thrown quite away," Forbes remarked with an irony that glanced harmless from Julia's armor.
"Oh, no, Burton, I don't grudge any sacrifice I have made. Getting you out of the clutches of that harpy was worth it all."
She waited for a suitable expression of gratitude from the gentleman she had rescued. After a pause which Forbes failed to fill appropriately, she spoke again, and this time with grave seriousness.
"Now, Burton, it's only two hours before my train leaves and I must have luncheon, so we'd better lose no time deciding on the wisest course to take in this affair."
Again Forbes failed to respond. Julia eyed him suspiciously.
"I hope you haven't an idea of passing this outrage over without taking any action, Burton. It's that sort of laxity that makes criminals."
"Perhaps you have decided on the punishment appropriate to this particular crime," said Forbes, hisvoice rich in ironic inflections, which again passed harmlessly over Julia's head.
"To tell the truth, I have. There's only one point on which these mercenary people are really susceptible, and that's money. My advice is to write her that unless she returns every penny you paid her, you will prosecute her for swindling."
"She might not be able to do that, Julia. I judge from what you all say that she must be poor."
"Oh, she's evidently that. Everything about the place is poverty-stricken, and the gown she wore that day was so faded that you could hardly tell the original color. But I believe she has all that money put aside, for don't you remember, the boy said she wanted to send him to school."
"I remember. And you advise me to demand the money she has saved for his schooling, and ask her to charge up my board for those months to charity?"
Julia held to her point. "It's the sort of thing she'd feel, because it's evident there's nothing she wouldn't do for money. I confess I can't comprehend that temperament. Money means so little to me that I simply don't understand how it's possible for people to worship it as they do."
He listened with growing irritation. That this girl who had never earned a dollar, and had never denied herself anything she wanted, should assume so superior an attitude, offended his sense of justice. "Perhaps if you knew more of the value of money," he cut in crisply, "you might respect it more."
"Oh, I know I'm impractical, Burton. Dad was always making fun of me for that." The pensiveness of her tone was still evident as she added, "Perhaps you'd like to have me write the letter before I go."
"What letter?"
"To that woman, of course, threatening to prosecute her unless she returns the money."
His pause was long enough to give the idea that he was considering her suggestion. His tone when at length he spoke, implied nothing of the sort.
"Thank you, Julia. I shall not need your services. And when I write Miss Kent, I shall enclose a check to cover my board till the first of November."
He heard her catch her breath. "You mean you are going to pay a premium for being tricked and deceived?"
"She deceived me and that's not easy for me toforgive. But I'm hardly ready to sponge my living from a girl who is making a hand-to-hand fight with poverty."
"Dear, it's dreadful the way you men let your chivalry run away with you. I suppose if you were on a jury, you couldn't bring yourself to convict a woman of murder."
"I hardly think Miss Kent's offense can be classed in that category," Forbes said stiffly. "I suffered chiefly through the jolt to my sense of dignity. That's always been a sensitive point with me."
Julia sighed. "I can't bear to have you talk that way, Burton. It's bad enough for Mr. Warren to make light of falsehood and treachery. But it seems to me a person capable of that, is capable of anything." She laid her hand lightly on his. "Trust a woman's intuition, Burton. Let me write that letter."
Her touch not only left him cold, but roused his antagonism. He felt an irritated certainty that he was being played upon. "Thank you, but I have nothing to say to Miss Kent that I can not entrust to a public stenographer."
She did not take away her hand. "Let's not talk of that dreadful woman any more," she said, in alowered voice. "Fate has given us this little hour out of the years, and we mustn't waste it."
Her words brought back something Agatha had said, her scathing scorn of those who took the easy way, and then held fate accountable. The remembrance steeled him against the insidious tenderness of her voice.
"You made your choice, Julia, as you had a right to do. And I wish you every happiness."
The fragrance of a delicate perfume he had always associated with her enveloped him. He felt the pressure of her body against his arm.
"What a queer, quiet hotel this is, Burton. Right in the heart of the city and yet we're as much alone as if we were off somewhere in the woods."
Had she been sensitive, she might have perceived a curious rigidity in the arm against which she leaned, an ominous tightening of the obstinately silent lips. Her vanity felt the challenge of his failure to respond. She flung prudence to the winds. "Burton! Burton!" she murmured, and whether her emotion was real or assumed, he did not know, "why don't you kiss me?"
His fastidious recoil was strengthened by the suspicion that she was attempting by playing on hispassion to mold him to her will in the matter of Agatha's punishment. He moved away a little. "Excuse me," he said, "I shouldn't dream of taking such a liberty with the fiancée of Murray Prendergast."
"Oh, don't!" He felt her shudder, and again wondered if it were real, or a pretense. "All the years ahead belong to him, and just this little moment is yours and mine."
"I lay no claim even to a moment of your time, Julia. I asked from you all or nothing."
"Tell me just once that you love me, Burton."
At his continued silence, she drew herself away. "You're different. You don't care for me as you did."
She waited vainly for him to deny the accusation. Then again she caught his hand. She might have been a loyal wife, fearing that her husband's heart was slipping from her grasp and longing to be reassured. "Burton," she implored, "tell me whether you love me."
"I thank God—no."
She fell back, and he could hear her stormy breathing. Well as he knew every inflection of her voice, he hardly recognized it when she spoke again.
"That wretched woman! That creature! She's to blame. She's stolen your heart from me."
"Don't be a fool." The brutality, foreign as it was to Forbes' training and temperament, seemed demanded by the occasion. "My heart and all the rest of me was yours while you chose to keep me. You threw me away like a worn glove when my trouble came, and looked about for a more fitting match."
"Burton, you said yourself—"
"I own I made your way easy for you, Julia. I was fool enough to be satisfied to have you yourself and made no inconvenient demands in the way of loyalty and truth. And the fate you are so fond of invoking was kinder to me than I deserved."
"You love her. You love that abandoned—"
"Stop!" he commanded. "Don't dare finish." But he himself went on talking rapidly. "As far as Miss Kent is concerned, of course I have made it impossible for her ever to think well of me again, since after her months of uninterrupted kindness, I could listen to your venomous attack upon her, and not speak a word in her defense."
"How dare you! How dare you speak like that to me!"
"Whether I love her or not, I don't know. It's too bewildering for me to be sure. But I know she's the most loyal friend, and the dearest comrade and the bravest, most unselfish—"
Julia sprang from her place beside him with a cry. His face was toward her, and at the sound of her voice, an extraordinary thing happened. He saw her for an instant quite distinctly, though the face he had loved had undergone as hideous a change as if death and decay had done their devastating work upon it. Secure in the knowledge of his blindness, she faced him with the mask thrown aside. He saw her features distorted by hate, her eyes narrowed malignantly, her lips drawn back from the teeth. Something Hephzibah Diggs had said in their memorable interview flashed across his mind. "When she showed herself up for what she was, you'd ought to have got down on your marrow bones and thanked the Lord."
Darkness shut down over the unwelcome vision. There was a rushing in his ears so that he heard only faintly Julia's farewell, "I hate you! Oh, how I hate you!" He leaned back against the cushions, realizing that he was a sick man, but enveloped in a strange serenity. When next the parlor maidproffered her services, he sent her to telephone for his physician. An hour later he was comfortably ensconced in a private hospital on the outskirts of the city, and sick as he felt, his mood was increasingly cheerful, for the doctor considered the momentary return of vision, elusive and disappointing as it had been, most encouraging.
It was a week before Forbes was equal to dictating a letter to Agatha. He passed over the peculiar circumstances of their parting, expressed rather formally his sense of gratitude and enclosed a generous check. His acknowledgment came with gratifying promptness. But the nurse on opening the envelope was puzzled.
"It doesn't seem a letter at all, just bits of paper. Why, it looks like a check, torn into little pieces."
"You can't find the number of the check among the scraps, can you?" asked Forbes.
The nurse could and did and Forbes' suspicion became certainty. He turned on his pillow, unreasonably wounded. The Agatha Kent he had loved and trusted had never been, and this stranger who called herself by the familiar name had rejected his overture of friendship.
CHAPTER XX
THE DAY AFTER
Theday of judgment has its drawbacks, but it is the day after that really hurts. The first shock numbs. It is when the nipping pain begins, the remorseless pain too cruel to kill, that the sinner takes the full measure of his punishment.
On the day of Forbes' departure, Agatha ate her evening meal as usual and went to bed at eight o'clock. She slept heavily till midnight, roused and speedily dozed off again, but now to be the victim of torturing dreams.
Years before a pet dog of Howard's had become old and sickly and Agatha's father had decided it must be killed. He had attempted to shoot the animal in its sleep, but his nervousness had caused him to miss his aim. It had taken three shots to finish the business. Agatha had come upon the scene just in time to see the look the dying brute turned on its idolized master, and the incident had stamped itselfon her memory as the supreme tragedy in her experience. She invariably dreamed of it when feverish and ill. This night she underwent the familiar agony with a difference. In the grotesque necromancy of the dream-world, the wounded dog had become Forbes, turning his stricken gaze upon the friend who had done him to death. She woke in a cold sweat and did not sleep again.
At four o'clock she was up and cleaning house as the one adequate antidote for the remorseful thoughts that threatened to wreck her reason. She worked furiously all the morning, barely stopping to eat. Miss Finch watched her from a distance, heart-wrung and afraid, but knowing from experience that at certain crises Agatha was best left to herself. Howard, with the characteristic masculine reluctance to witness suffering out of his power to relieve, took his fishing rod and departed for a day of his favorite sport.