"Indeed I'm not!" Miss Martha repudiated the charge with energy. "And I'm not nearly as well able to help her as Calvin is. So he sent you. He has a conscience about it, after all. I don't suppose he'd consent to her living with him?"
"Not for one moment," returned Dunham quickly. "Whatever course you consider, that idea must be dismissed."
"Whatever course I consider," repeated Miss Lacey bitterly. "Judge Trent has no business to leave all the considering to me. It's cowardly, and it's mean, and I don't care one bit if you tell him I said so!"
"I shan't," returned Dunham. "He has sent me. He is prepared to do something, anything in reason that you think best."
After this Miss Lacey's problem descended heavily upon her, and she averted her head and looked gloomily at the flying landscape; so Dunham opened his magazine and read until they reached Boston.
CHAPTER IV
HOTEL FRISBIE
The Frisbie being a commercial house in a crowded business centre, Miss Lacey was glad of Dunham's safe conduct amid clanging bells and interlacing traffic wagons. She followed him through the dark hall of the hotel and into an elevator. Leaving this, they entered the depressing stretches of a long parlor whose stiff furniture and hangings clung drearily against a harassing wall paper as dingy as themselves. Finding the room empty, Miss Lacey began to speak excitedly as soon as they were seated and Dunham had sent the bell-boy on his errand.
"Exactly the sort of a hotel my brother Sam would have come to!" she said. "I wondered why Sylvia chose it. Like as not he's brought her here before."
Then her lips snapped together, for she remembered she was not going to speak slightingly of her brother before a stranger.
"Too bad he was not the sort of man with whom you and Judge Trent could have been in sympathy," replied Dunham civilly. "It would have made the present situation easier."
"Then Calvin has told you about it," returned Miss Martha, with mingled relief and resentment, "and you understand why we can't feel anything except a painful duty in this matter. If Sylvia had stayed West like a reasonable being, instead of rushing on to Boston without our permission, we would have helped her what we could—at least the judge would. It would have been a great deal simpler to send a little money to Springfield, Illinois, than to have the worry of the girl right here with us—neither of us wanting her—we couldn't be expected to." Miss Lacey's tongue was loosened now and all reserves broken down. "I'm not in a position to assume the care of anybody, and as for Judge Trent, you know how set and peculiar he is, and besides that, my brother always made his wife perfectly miserable"—
"It's a lie!"
Miss Lacey sank back in her chair and Dunham sprang to his feet as the girlish voice rang out, and a black-clothed figure stood before them. She had been standing behind one of the heavy hangings watching the passing in the seething street when the two entered the room, and until now had listened tense and motionless.
For a silent moment the visitors faced the girl, whose crop of short, curly hair vibrated, and whose eyes sent forth sparks of blue fire as she stood there, indignation incarnate. Her glance roved from one to the other, and Miss Martha pinched herself to make certain that she had not fallen into a bad dream, while Dunham crimsoned under the burning gaze.
"Syl—Sylvia, is that you!" exclaimed Miss Lacey unsteadily.
The girl scorned to reply. White and accusing she stood. Miss Martha looked up at her companion appealingly. "Mr.—Mr.—Sir Walter—Oh, I don't know your name!"
The young girl half closed her eyes and looked down on her aunt with a strange expression.
"Do you," she asked slowly, "talk like that about your dead brother even to persons whose names you haven't learned?"
"Great Scott!" thought Dunham, whose crimson was fast becoming prickly heat. "What have I got into!"
"I know this gentleman—I do, Sylvia," returned Miss Martha earnestly. "He is your Uncle Calvin's—yes, your Uncle Calvin's trusted friend."
"I should judge so," returned the girl, fixing the unhappy Dunham with her gaze. "I should judge his position to be very nearly one of the family. Does Uncle Calvin know his name?"
Dunham had for some years been aware that his height was six feet. Now he appeared to himself to be shrinking together until he was twin to his employer. It would be a fortunate moment to present his card to these ladies! For the first time in his life he found his hands in his way.
"The situation is very peculiar—very," stammered Miss Martha nervously, "and I'm very sorry, very sorry indeed that you were listening."
"Oh, so am I!" ejaculated the girl, the angry tenseness of her face changing and her voice breaking as she threw up her hands in a despairing gesture. The pathos of the black figure struck through Dunham's mortification.
"I wouldn't have hurt your feelings for anything," pursued Miss Martha earnestly.
"Wouldn't you?"
"No; and I wish you would believe it and not look at me so strangely. I never had hysterics in my life, but I feel as if I might have them right off, if you don't stop."
The young girl had regained her self-control. "It might be the best ending to the interview," she said, "for I could leave you then to—to the trusted friend. I don't know what to do now." She clasped her hands over her face for a second, then dropped them.
"She's dreadfully theatrical, dreadfully," thought Miss Lacey.
"She is broken-hearted," thought Dunham; and pulling himself together he found his voice.
"My name is Dunham, Miss Lacey," he said, meeting the blue eyes where the fire had burned out, showing the face so white, so young. "This is in the day's work for me, and I'm sorry. I am in Judge Trent's office, and he sent me here with your aunt to represent him."
"My aunt saved a lot of time," rejoined the girl slowly, speaking low. "She represented them both while I stood there behind the curtain." Her hands pressed together, and she looked again from one to the other.
"There isn't anything for you to stay for now, is there?" she added, after a painful silence.
"Why, of course there is!" exclaimed Miss Martha. "We haven't made any plan at all."
"What plan had you thought of making?"
Miss Martha cleared her throat and looked up at Dunham.
"I—we—wanted to ask what your plans were."
"They're nothing to you, I'm sure," returned the girl.
"Why, they're a great deal to us. You mustn't think Judge Trent and I don't feel any responsibility of you. We do."
The girl's lips quivered into something that tried to be a smile.
"How did you intend to show it before—before you came in here this morning?"
"Why, we"—Miss Martha cleared her throat again, "we—feel sure, of course, that—unless your father left you money you—you will want to find something to do, and we intend to help you find it."
Sylvia looked like a pale flower as she stood there. There rose in Dunham the involuntary desire to protect that any man who saw her would have felt.
"And to pay your expenses until you do find it," he added hastily. "That is Judge Trent's idea," he declared, in a recklessly encouraging tone. "To pay your expenses so long as you need it."
The girl's quivering smile grew steadier. Her pride stiffened under this man's regard.
"Where?" she asked, with self-possession. "Not at the Touraine, probably."
It was like a downward jerk on a balloon. Dunham suddenly remembered the memoranda and his employer's shaggy gaze.
"At the Young Women's Christian Association," he replied