Part 17 (1/2)

This denouement, this climax to her somber expectations, struck Flora as something wildly and indecently ridiculous. ”Why, but it's impossible!”

she protested, and began helplessly to laugh.

”Well, I'd like to know why?” Ella snapped. ”I'm sure papa is twice as rich as old Britton was, and twice as easy.” She went off into sobs behind her handkerchief.

”Oh, don't, Ella, don't cry!” Flora begged, petting the large expanse of heaving shoulders. ”I didn't mean anything. I was just silly. Of course it may be that she wants to marry him. But she never has before--at least, I mean, I don't believe she wants to now. What makes you think she does? What has she done?”

”Well,” Ella burst out, ”why is she coming here all the time, when she never used to, and petting papa? Why does she bother to be so agreeable to me when she never was before? Why does she make me ask her to dinner, when I don't want to?”

Each question knocked on Flora's brain to the accompaniment of Ella's furious rocking. She could not answer them, and Ella's explanation, absurd as it seemed, coming on top of her high expectations, wasn't impossible. It was like Clara to have more than one iron in the fire; but when Flora remembered the pa.s.sionate intentness with which Clara had demolished the order of her room, she couldn't believe that Clara would pause in the midst of such pursuit to pounce on Judge Buller.

”Oh, Ella,” Flora sympathetically urged, ”I don't believe there's really any danger. And surely, even if she meant it, Judge Buller wouldn't be--”

”Oh, yes, he would,” Ella cut her short. ”Why, when she came yesterday he was just going out, and she went for him and made him stop to tea.

Think of it--papa stopping to tea! And he was as pleased as Punch to have her make up to him. He hasn't the least idea of what she's after.

Papa isn't used to ladies. He's always just lived with me.”

This astonis.h.i.+ng statement looking at Flora through Ella's unsuspecting eyes had nevertheless a pathos of its own. It conjured up a long vista of harmonious existence which the two, the daughter and the father, had made out of their mutual simplicity, and their mutual gusto for the material comforts which came comfortably.

”But I'll tell you one thing,” Ella ended, still rocking vigorously; ”if she comes here to-night to dinner when she knows I don't want her I shall tell her what I think of her, before she leaves this house! See if I don't.”

”Don't do that, Ella,” Flora entreated, ”that would be awful.” She was certain that such an interview would only end in Clara's making Ella more ridiculous than she was already. ”Let me speak to her. I don't mind at all,” she declared bravely, and in a manner truly, though she was fully aware that speaking to Clara would be anything but a treat.

”Oh, would you?” said Ella eagerly. ”I really would be awfully obliged.

I hated to ask you, Flora, but I thought perhaps you might be able to--to, well, perhaps be able to do something,” she ended vaguely. ”Do you think you could?”

”I'll speak to Clara to-night,” said Flora heroically, ”or to-morrow,”

she added; ”I'm afraid I won't see her to-night.”

”Well, I'll let you know if it makes any difference,” said Ella hopefully.

Flora knew that nothing either of them could say would make any difference to Clara, or turn her from the thing she was pursuing; but by speaking she might at least find out if Judge Buller himself were really her object. And Ella's wail of a.s.sured calamity, ”Papa has always been so happy with me,” touched her with its absurd pathos.

She kissed Ella's misty cheek at parting. It wasn't fair, she thought remorsefully, for people like the Bullers to be at large on the same planet with people like Clara--and herself--and--and like--Her thoughts ran off into the fog. At least, thank heaven, it was the judge Clara was trailing and not Kerr.

The bells and whistles of one o'clock were making clangor as she ran up the steps of her house again. In the hall s.h.i.+ma presented her with a card. She looked at it with a quickening pulse. ”Is he waiting?”

”No, madam. Mr. Kerr has gone. He waited half an hour.”

Down went her spirits again. Yet surely after their last interview she ought not to be eager to meet him again. ”In the morning,” she thought, ”and waited half an hour. How he must have wanted to see me!” She didn't know whether she liked that or not. ”When did he come?”

”At eleven o'clock.”

At this she was frightened; he had missed Harry by less than half an hour.

”He waited all that time alone?”

”No. Mr. Cressy came.”