Part 14 (1/2)

”Did the Leroys know it?”

”Why, naturally, I should suppose so.”

That was all that Alexina wanted to know, yet not all, either. Her colour rose a little. It made her pretty. ”Do you know anything of the Leroys since?”

”Not a word,” said Mrs. Carringford.

”What do you hear from Miss Harriet and Major Rathbone?”

”They are still East. Dr. Ransome came back yesterday.”

”Yes; I know he did,” said Mrs. Carringford. ”He was here to see Emily last night. He's a nice boy.” There was emphasis in her way of making the statement. Harriet Blair had once remarked that Mrs.

Carringford was that anomaly--a sane woman. Yet she opposed the visits of Austen Blair and spoke heartily concerning the other one. ”Garrard is a nice boy; I like him.”

CHAPTER SIX

Alexina became twenty-one in May. She had found that in the settling of her affairs it would be necessary for her to remain in Louisville and so had written her mother to come to her there. She explained about the change in her life to the Carringfords, to find that they knew all about her mother; probably her little world, Georgy, Dr.

Ransome, knew it, too, while these years she had comforted herself with the thought that, at least, it was her secret shame.

Mrs. Carringford put an arm about her and kissed her. There was approval in the action.

Emily looked at her, then laughed nervously, while a vivid scarlet rose to the roots of her chestnut hair.

As Alexina pa.s.sed through the front-room study going home, the old minister glanced up from his writing and called her name. He pushed his spectacles back onto his leonine head, looking up as she came toward him. She was surprised, for he never had seemed conscious even of her comings and goings.

”There are two ties that are not of our making,” he told her; ”the spiritual tie between the Creator and the created, and the material tie between the parent and the child. They are ties not of duty but of nature, as indestructible as matter. G.o.d go with you.”

She felt strange and choked, though she was not sure she knew what he meant.

A week after she became of age she was dismantling the bay-windowed room of such things as were hers. Little by little it grew as cold and cheerless as the one adjoining, now the personality of Aunt Harriet was gone out of it. What would become of Uncle Austen after both were gone?

She had tried to force from him some expression of feeling, at first wistfully, then determinedly. There is a chance, had he responded, that she would have made other arrangements for her mother. Then she told herself she did not care and went hotly on with her preparations.

She had taken two bedrooms and a parlour at a hotel, and had written her mother to go directly there, but the night of her arrival the girl felt she could not go to meet her. It was too late an hour anyhow, she would wait until morning, but she shrank so from that first moment she could not sleep.

She and her uncle met at the breakfast table the next morning. She made one or two attempts at conversation. ”I go to-day, Uncle Austen,”

she said at last, and, leaning forward, pushed a paper across the table to him. It was the final statement of the household expenditures under her management.

Her board from her first coming had been paid into the general house fund, and, accordingly, she had included against herself charge for these several days in the new month.

Noting it, Austen Blair nodded; it was the first approval accorded her for some time.

She laughed. ”I go to-day,” she repeated.

Her uncle, who had risen, put the paper, neatly folded, into his wallet, then crossed to her and put out his hand.

”I will not see you again then?” he said, and shook hands.