Daphne Deane E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Daphne Deane is a small-town girl who has been trained for a life of faith and simple devotion. Then she falls helplessly in love with architect Keith Morrell - who is engaged to another woman! Daphne finds her faith tested to its limits.

Leseprobe

Daphne Deane

by Grace Livingston Hill

First published in 1937

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Daphne Deane 

by 

Grace Livingston Hill

Chapter 1

The sky was very blue, yet there were tiny dabs of cotton clouds lingering in the distance for a glorious sunset, which they understood was being staged that evening. The sun was golden and gracious, sifting down like fine powdered metal dust over the late afternoon, and glorifying even the grimy old sweatshirts of the ball players as they hurtled over the wide diamond, or poised with hands on bent knees, and intent gaze on the pitcher.

High up on the grandstand, a village-made affair of weather-beaten boards, Keith Morrell sat outlined against the golden-blue of the sky. He was not especially interested in the ball game, but the grandstand offered the only attractive resting place while he waited for the five o'clock train, which was supposed to bring a local real estate agent who had charge of the old Morrell homestead. He had written the agent, William Knox, that he would be at his office that afternoon to consult with him about the sale or rental of the place, but Knox, with the easygoing ways of the suburban agent, had gone to the nearby city to meet another man, and left word he would be back at five o'clock. Keith Morrell was thoroughly disgusted with him, and almost thought to go away without seeing him, only that he knew he would have to return another day, inevitably, and who knew but Knox would have another call to the city when he came the next time? So he strolled about the familiar streets a few minutes until he discovered the ball game going on at the old stand where he had often played himself in days gone by. He climbed to the top row and sat there looking about him, trying to bring back the picture of other days, trying to bridge the five years that had passed since he had been in town last.

A great many things had happened since then. The family had closed the house during his second year in college and gone to Europe, and he had spent his summers there with them, his briefer vacations with classmates at their homes. Then at the close of his college course he had met his parents in England and they had toured the Orient together for several months. It was while he was taking a special course in architecture in England that his father had died, and a year later his mother. All the ties of his boyhood home wiped out! And now he was back in his native land and his native town!

He hadn't wanted to come here. His mother's death was too recent and he dreaded old familiar scenes. His grief was too new to bear going back to where his life had been so closely associated with hers. But the agent had insisted that he come and understand thoroughly the terms on which the prospective buyer would take the house, and finally he had come, running down from New York on the noon train, hoping to get the matter finished and get the four o'clock train back. This delay was most annoying.

He looked around at the people who were beginning to swarm up the little grandstand. It would soon be filled to capacity, for Rosedale was only a suburb, and this ballpark was just a village enterprise, a sort of community affair.

He looked down among the players, and marveled that they all seemed so young to him, none over sixteen or seventeen. They seemed so much more immature than high school students had when he was one of them. And yet, he had been only seventeen himself when he graduated from high school. Had he looked as youthful as some of those kids down there tearing around that diamond as if the fate of the universe depended upon winning that game?

Suddenly it came to him that he was thinking in terms of a very old man who was soured on life, and here he was barely twenty-three. Probably to some other eyes he looked even now as immature as those youngsters down there did to him.

And just then one of the fellows, tall, well built, with springy brown hair that waved crisply, walked over from the bench below the grandstand to a girl sitting at the extreme end of the stand, in the third row up, and handed her a watch and a wallet. He was a nice-looking chap with big brown eyes and well-chiseled features. And he didn't look so immature after all, now when he raised his eyes and smiled. He was probably only about seventeen at the most, but already there was a set about his well-molded chin and his pleasant lips that showed determination and purpose.

Keith noticed the girl now for the first time. She must just have taken her seat, for the place had been vacant a moment before, he was quite sure. She was a pretty girl. She had ripply brown hair like the boy's, yet where the sunlight touched it, it gleamed almost golden.

Then she lifted her eyes and turned about, looking up behind where Morrell sat, in answer to a motion of the boy. They were both looking up and waving to someone at the farther end of the seat, an older man with iron-gray hair and a plain business suit who smiled and waved back to them. The girl had brown eyes, too. The boy and girl must be brother and sister. When they smiled they looked very much alike. The girl's features were delicate and lovely. There was a haunting familiarity in them. Could it be that she reminded him of his mother? It seemed to him that she looked as he imagined his mother might have looked at nineteen or twenty. Was she someone he should remember? No, surely not, for he never could have forgotten a face like that! He reviewed rapidly the local girls he used to know, girls who were in his social set before he went to college, but she was none of them. No, she must be some newcomer since he left.

And now the skirmishing on the field had stopped and the real game had begun. He could see the good-looking young giant who had just given his watch to the girl on the stand, stride out and take his place. Ah! He was pitcher! Morrell settled into a comfortable position, his hands clasped around one knee, and gave himself up to the beauty of the day, in retrospect imagining himself a boy again with a real interest in that game down there.

Then his gaze wandered back again to the girl as she sat watching. He noticed the sweetness of her face and studied it idly, letting it recall his mother's sweet expression. It interested him to watch her.

She did not seem to have come with anybody, she was sitting apart from the young people who were clamoring noisily to one another about the game. She had just dropped down at the end there among the younger children. They smiled at her now and then, and one little girl reached across two others, gave her a bunch of wilted violets to hold and received a radiant smile. Could that be her little sister? And why was he so much interested? Just because he was lonely, and afraid of thinking back into the past? Then there came a boy of twelve, all out of breath, bearing a bag from the grocery that looked as if it might contain a loaf of bread, and dumped it in the girl's lap. That must be another brother. He was asking for something. A clean handkerchief was handed out surreptitiously, and he hurried around to the front to curl down on the grass with his knees drawn up to his chin. Yes, that must be her brother. But there was a different kind of understanding between this sister and her family from that of most girls with their younger brothers and sisters. At least, the girls he knew. There was no impatience in this girl's face, no protest at being made a dumping-ground for their various belongings. There seemed to be a comradery between them, as if they were all a part of a pleasant whole.

He studied the girl intently. More and more he admired the expression of her face. There was nothing sharp or self-centered or restless about it. It almost seemed as if the word peace would describe the look in her eyes as she turned to smile at the little girl.

She was wearing a simple white dress, cool and becoming, and a little white felt hat that showed her soft brown hair. To his eyes, her outfit seemed to fit perfectly the day and the moment. It almost seemed as he studied her that she wore her garments with distinction. And yet there was a sweet quietness of refinement that set her apart from the crowd of smart young people who obviously felt themselves to be socially the elite of the town. Her garments lacked the bold sophistication that marked so many of her day. There was no lipstick and no blush, he was sure, on that face. He hadn't thought about it before, but suddenly he knew he had an aversion to lipstick. There was a soft flush on this girl's cheek that he felt sure was real. He found himself glancing again and again in her direction. And when the young giant pitcher was doing his part she had on her face a breathless interest that made the soft color deepen. Yes, that was real!

Suddenly he realized that he had been staring at her, and she must have felt it, for she turned and let her glance go sweeping up over the seat behind her until it found his gaze, and her eyes went wide, and full of something almost like recognition. For an instant he thought she was going to nod to him as if she knew him. She didn't of course, but he wished she had. His glance lingered, and suddenly there was a withdrawing in hers, a kind of quick blankness and a hurrying on of her gaze, but the color had stolen up over her cheeks as she turned away. She had probably thought he was someone else and then discovered her mistake and was embarrassed by it. He felt a definite disappointment. He almost wished that he had been able in time to make his own glance a little more encouraging. He had never practiced the art of picking up strange girls, but here was a girl he felt he would distinctly like to know. Strangely familiar, too, yet he could not place her.

His thought traveled back to Anne Casper, the girl he had been trying to persuade himself he was interested in. She had been definitely the cause of irritation to him for the last week or two, because she insisted on taking a part in the fashion show that was being put on in a smart resort that month for the benefit of some charitable purpose; modeling, by her own choice, some exceedingly modern bathing suits. He thought of it now with a frown as he continued to study furtively the girl down at the end. Was he all wrong? Was it true as Anne Casper had tried to convince him that everybody, "simply everybody" wore such scanty garments on the beach all day and nobody thought anything of it? Why was he so sure that this girl wouldn't appear in one of those obnoxious affairs? Was it just because she reminded him of his lady-mother, and he knew she would not have approved such apparel?

More and more as the game went on he became interested in watching the girl's reaction to the game, and her eagerness in her brother's good work. More and more he wished he had some way of meeting her. But she did not so much as glance around again.

Well, he would be gone back to New York in a short time now, and he would likely never know who she was. And that was too bad, for he would certainly like to test out his intuitions about her and see whether she was different from the girls he knew, or whether after all she was just a girl like any of them and would prove to be just as disappointing as they all were, if he once had a chance to get to know her.

He found himself taking a deep interest in the young pitcher. Good work he was doing, and the team was playing up to him well. When that chap got to college he would likely make a name for himself in the athletic world.

The sun was getting lower, and the lights on the girl's hair were beginning to take on a reddish tinge instead of the gold. The game had been a clean, close one and would soon be over now. It was almost time for the agent's train to come in, but Keith Morrell had forgotten about that train. He was trying to plan a way to get nearer to that girl, to see how she really looked face-to-face, to invent some excuse for speaking to her. Perhaps if he was nimble and got down to her vicinity before the game was quite finished, she might drop one of her parcels, or the wallet she was holding, and he might be fortunate enough to pick it up and restore it to her. It might give him a legitimate cause for looking into her eyes, even for speaking perhaps.

So much did this thought obsess him that when two men beside him rose and stepped over his feet to get down, he followed them stealthily, unobtrusively to the ground, making his way by a devious path over behind the grandstand, and mingled with a group at her end of the stand who were eagerly watching the finish of the game. He did not turn to look at her, but from the side of his eye a furtive glance could see her now and then.

When the game was over she did not drop one of her packages as he had hoped, but she lingered for a moment standing by her seat till the big pitcher came over with his sweater tied around his broad shoulders and claimed his wallet and watch. He grinned at her, said a hurried word, and departed with his friends. She watched him go with a smile and came slowly away, still smiling, speaking to this one and that but not mingling with the crowd.

The little girl came eagerly with a crowd of companions and explained something then flew off with the girls, and the youngster from the grass came and restored a grimy handkerchief and was off with another boy. The girl turned across the field and walked away toward the street.

It was just then that Morrell's path crossed hers. She looked up, and their eyes met. Then, suddenly he was sure that he had seen her before. He lifted his hat, his most courteous smile upon his lips, and spoke:

"I wonder if you aren't somebody I used to know," he said eagerly. And now he wasn't at all sure that she was, and there was a puzzled earnestness in her eyes as he looked into hers.

"Why, yes, I am," she said with a little twinkling smile playing almost mischievously about the lips, "but so very unimportantly that I doubt if you remember it."

He had a feeling that she was quietly laughing at him, though her voice was very gentle, but the color came into her face. She had seen that he did not know who she was. He felt suddenly mortified.

"It does not seem to me that anyone could have known you once and not have remembered you," he said. "I felt there was something familiar about you when I first saw you, but I'm ashamed to say I cannot place you. I decided perhaps it was just that you reminded me of someone. Do you mind telling me who you are? If there was any acquaintance at all I'd like to renew it."

"Oh, it wasn't an acquaintance," she said quickly. "I was only in your algebra class. You probably never knew I existed."

He turned and looked sharply into her face, trying to trace out a memory of her.

"You weren't that littlest girl of all, were you? The one with brown curls who was promoted into the class in the middle of the semester and then beat us all in exams? The smartest one of the class?"

The girl laughed.

"I don't know about the smartness. I had the brown curls and I was small enough. I used to be very sensitive about that. My name is Daphne Deane."

There was a sweet dignity about her as she said it, and Keith Morrell's eyes lit up with interest as he watched her.

"Now I remember. Yes, you were smart. I remember being terribly mortified that you got a problem once that I couldn't master. I sat up half the next night till I'd worked every problem in the lesson perfectly. No more taking chances the way I had been doing, not with you in the class!"

Daphne laughed.

"And I remember being terribly afraid of you," she said. "I never studied so hard in my life as that winter, just because I didn't want you to get ahead of me."

He grinned.

"We must have been helping each other a lot, I should say, though neither of us was aware of it. But say! I still can't place you beyond algebra class. Where did you live? I surely must have met you elsewhere besides in school."

"I think not," said Daphne gravely. "I never moved in your social orbit at all. I lived just where I live now. In the house that used to be the gardener's house on your father's estate!"

She lifted pleasant amused eyes to watch his face. What would he think of that? And she saw a look of utter amazement come over his face.

"You don't mean it!" he said. "As near as that, and yet I didn't know you! I cannot understand."

"That's easy to explain," she said lightly. "While we were growing up Mother kept us very close at home. Always in our own yard, except when we went to school or church, and our way to those led around another block from the way you went. Besides, you were a little older than I was. We just never came into any other contact, that's all. Although I knew you a great deal better than you ever knew me." She laughed again dreamily.

"Oh, I say!" said the young man wistfully. "Was that quite fair? Please tell me about it."

"Well, I guess there wasn't anything underhanded about it," said Daphne. "It was all perfectly natural. You remember the gardener's house--which we rented for a while until Father was able to buy it, after your garage was built with accommodations for your gardener over it?--it was in direct line with the western gable of your house. You know there was a rather high stone wall about our place, and from downstairs we could see very little of what went on at 'the big house' as we always spoke of your home, but from our upstairs back windows we could look across straight into the windows of your end room there. I've never been in your home of course, but I know pretty well the layout of that room for it was my fairyland to watch when I was a little girl. It had a great fireplace at the other side of the room directly opposite the big wide windows, and sometimes when the fire was burning it was our delight to stand with our noses against our windowpanes and watch the flames leap and dance over in your room. I don't know whether it was your playroom or nursery or what, when you were a little boy, but I can remember seeing you sitting on the floor in front of the fire building block houses, and running your wonderful electric train when you were a little older. Mother used to use you as an example of perfection for us children. One night when we were whining at having to go to bed I remember Mother saying, 'Come now, away with you to bed! The little boy at the great house is saying his prayers in front of the fire, and if you don't look out he'll beat you to bed!' And when we went to the window we could see you in pretty blue pajamas kneeling by your mother's knee in front of the fire, with your head in her lap. And after that we always ran to the window when we were sent to bed to see if the little boy in the big house was on his way to bed, too. But there! I shouldn't have told you that! You'll think we were very nosy little children, prying on your devotions that way."

"No, I won't think that!" said Keith gravely. "It's very touching to think you knew about those days--" His voice was husky with feeling. "I didn't know there was anybody left now that knew about those days since Mother died. I think it's rather wonderful for you to tell me that."

Daphne's cheeks were scarlet now with embarrassment. She looked up keenly to see if he was sincere.

"I was just thinking aloud," she apologized. "You see, it was the only excitement we children had when we were little, to watch the big house, and we wove it all into a sort of fairy tale. Mother had only to say, 'The little boy at the big house is going in from play now to do his lessons, and you must hurry in, too, and get your spelling, or he will get his homework done before you do,' and we would hustle in breathlessly and settle down to our tasks. You see you really were a means of grace in our household."

Daphne looked up and smiled, trying to cover her confusion with frankness.

He looked down at her wistfully.

"Well, I'm sure I wish I had known about it. Such rivalry might have been a means of grace to me, too. I'm quite sure I wasn't the angel-child you would make it appear. I guess I was taught to say my prayers all right, but I'm quite sure I un said them many a time when I wasn't being staged before a fireplace for an unknown and admiring public. But, please, tell me, if I was so well known to you, how was it that the only memory I have of you is that brief session of school when you were in my algebra class? How was it that I didn't meet you out places as we grew up? How was it that we didn't play together as children if our yards joined?"

Daphne smiled a bit distantly.

"Oh, we weren't in the same class with you socially at all, of course. My father had lost his modest fortune in a bank failure, and we were living in the gardener's house. And your father was a wealthy bank president living in a great beautiful old house with everything that money could buy. We had absolutely no connections at all. Even that six months we were together in algebra we scarcely knew each other to speak to."

"But why was that? My mother had no feeling of pride of that sort, pride of wealth or house or family. She only questioned whether my companions were decently behaved."

Daphne's eyes were downcast, but then she lifted them and raised her firm young chin with a little smile.

"I'm afraid my mother had," she said wistfully. "She did not want to force her way to the notice of people who might well consider her beneath them. She kept us very closely in the confines of our own yard. She was very careful who came to play with us, and she gave us our social contacts through make-believe. That was how you came to be our hero, you know, and how it came about that you never saw us enough to remember us."

The young man studied her face.

"It seems to have been a charmed way of bringing children up," he said. "But when you grew older, when your father bought the house and it was no longer our gardener's place, surely you went out among the other young people of the town? How was it that I did not meet you?"

Daphne shook her head.

"No, we didn't go out much then, either. Father was paying for the house, and saving to send us to college. We didn't have money for dressing the way others did who went out socially, and besides Mother had ideas about a lot of things, especially about girls' recreations when they were in school. And then afterward, you went away to college, you know."

"Yes, I know, but there were things before that. The high school affairs, picnics and parties and the like. There were a lot of functions, I remember. Did you never come to those?"

Daphne gravely shook her head.

"No, I had no time. Mother was sick all my senior year. I had to hurry home to work. I was housekeeper. She was very sick for a long time. We were afraid we were going to lose her." He voice trembled a little.

"Oh!" he said. "I didn't know. But I do remember I voted that your essay was the best of all. I was sorry that they did not make you valedictorian of the class instead of me. I told the principal so."

"That was nice of you," said Daphne. "I should have been terribly proud if I had known that. But of course I was only in that class on grace, having been promoted so late in the semester. It wouldn't have been right at all."

"Well, I think it would have been right. But of course the faculty didn't see it that way so I couldn't do anything about it. But I think true merit should always be recognized even if it does establish a precedent. Your essay was very original, and mine was merely technical."

She lifted her eyes to his.

"I thought yours was original," she said earnestly. "I never heard anybody get together a lot of statistics like those and make them really interesting, and then go to work and draw conclusions from them that held a vital truth."

"Did you think I did that?" he asked studying her face. "I tried to, but I didn't think it got across. Not with the professor anyway. He wanted me to leave that part out. I never thought he quite understood it, or else he didn't approve it. I used to suspect him of being a communist at heart. But, of course, I was very young."

"You had very keen thoughts though," said the girl. "I used to enjoy hearing your essays read because there was always something worthwhile in them. I didn't always agree with them. I was young, too, you know, and had ideas. But your essays were always interesting, and I loved the way you never fenced with an issue, but always faced it and clarified it."

"Say, that's great praise! Did I really ever do that?"

"You certainly did. That time when you were discussing the foreign policies, you made it so simple that the very dumbest of us could understand. And the one on the gold standard. I thought that ought to be published. As I think back to it, I still think it should. You know you were ahead of your times in anticipating some things that I haven't noticed anywhere else."

"But I was only a kid," he mused. "I guess likely I had absorbed some of my father's ideas. You know, I had a wonderful father."

"And a wonderful mother," breathed the girl softly. "Oh, I didn't know her face-to-face, but a girl can't watch a woman from a little distance daily, as I did your mother, and not know what she's like. And I guess my mother helped on my image of her, for she admired her very much, too. She had a lovely face and a charming, gracious way. You could see it in every movement as she walked about the grounds sometimes with her arm across your shoulder, looking down into your face when you were just a child. But there! I'm revealing again what a shameless onlooker I was."

"I think we should be very much honored that anyone had such unbiased interest in us," he said smiling. "I only regret that my mother couldn't have known you as you seem to have known her. I am sure the interest would have been mutual. Do you know what I thought of when I saw you sitting down on the grandstand below me? I wonder if I dare tell you? I thought you looked somehow familiar, and couldn't think who you reminded me of, and then it came over me that you reminded me of my mother. Somehow your expression made me think of her, the light in your eyes. I always felt that my mother was the dearest thing on earth."

"Oh!" said Daphne a little breathlessly. "That is the very nicest compliment I ever received. Of course, I know I aspire to be like her, but I shall treasure that thought at least. For she was very lovely. Mother feels that way, too."

They were almost to the Deane gate now, a white picket affair with an old-fashioned latch, set in the arch of a thick hedge, and Daphne paused and wondered whether she should ask him in. But before she had the opportunity, a flashy yellow sports car, which neither of them had noticed coming toward them, drew up with a flourish at the curb, and a rich, assured voice called out: "Well of all things, if there isn't Keith Morrell! Where have you been keeping yourself, darling? I hadn't heard you were in town."

Chapter 2

The girl in the yellow sports car leaned over and addressed herself to Keith Morrell. "If this isn't the best luck! If anyone was heaven sent, it is you. Do you know what you are going to do? You are going to hop right in with me and go home to my dinner party. I've just had a telegram from one of the men I'd depended on that he's met with an accident and can't come, and what to do I didn't know. I was on my way out into the highways and hedges to compel someone to come in to make even couples, and who should I happen on but you?"

She had gushed on, giving no space for greeting, and she smiled into Keith Morrell's face, utterly ignoring Daphne Deane.

"Why, it's Evelyn Avery, isn't it?" he said politely, lifting his hat, searching out a possible classmate from a face almost utterly changed by blush and lipstick and absence of eyebrows. "You know I've been away so long I'm afraid to make any rash statements, lest I might mistake a granddaughter for her grandmother. You certainly look young enough to be your own granddaughter."

"Well, now, I like that!" pouted the young woman. "You always did say things no one could quite understand, and left a person in doubt as to whether you meant a compliment or a slam."

"I assure you I was complimenting you," smiled the young man. "You know Miss Deane, don't you? Daphne Deane? She's another classmate. Since you're still living here I suppose you see her often."

The Avery girl thus adjured turned a cold stare on Daphne.

"Really?" she said with an almost insolent inflection. "Daphne Deane? It seems as though I remembered hearing that name before. You aren't that child that crashed into our class a little while before commencement and tried to grab all the honors, are you?" she asked with a disagreeable lift of her chin, measuring Daphne with a cold, appraising look.

Daphne grinned.

"That's my description exactly!" she said as if she enjoyed it. "I didn't think you'd remember me!"

Evelyn took the parry contemptuously.

"There are some things one can't forget even if one tries," she laughed, and then turning to the young man: "Honestly, Keith, I never was more in need of a friend than I am now, and I beg you will get in and go home with me at once."

Keith answered a little haughtily.

"I'm sorry. I'm meeting my agent who is supposed to arrive very soon now, and then I must hurry away and catch my train to New York."

"Agent?" said Evelyn. "What for? You aren't going to sell the house, are you? I hope that doesn't mean you are leaving town permanently, does it?"

"I am not just sure," answered Keith coldly. "The agent wrote he had a possible purchaser, or tenant. I have not decided what the outcome will be."

By his side Daphne caught her breath and put her hand up to her throat with a little quick movement and then down again. He felt the gesture rather than saw it, and he turned and looked at her.

"Should you care?" he asked.

But it was Evelyn who answered.

"Care?" said Evelyn. "I don't know that I should. This isn't such a desirable site anymore, and you could probably build something more up to date over near the park, say on Latches Lane or along Winding Way. There are some lovely sites over that way, quite near the golf course. But you certainly ought not to leave town. We've missed you terribly since you went away. However, I can't stay here and gossip. I've got to get back to my highways and hedges. Come, get in, and I'll take you to wherever you have to go, and then you'll have to come home with me to my dinner party. Come on, be a good sport! You can't do any business in New York until Monday, and I'll guarantee to get you to the midnight train if you'll stay and help me out."

Keith cast a worried look at his watch.

"If you'll just drop me at the corner of Maple Street, I'll be grateful," he said. "I'm late for my appointment already!"

Then he turned suddenly back to Daphne.

"I'll be seeing you," he said in a low tone. "I'd like your answer to that question."

Then, just as he was getting into the car there loomed a stalwart youth beside him with a white sweater tied across his shoulders and a mop of crisp bronze curls over a pair of keen hazel eyes.

"Oh, hello!" said Keith Morrell putting out a quick hand and grasping the big strong hand of the pitcher. "Congratulations! That was a good game! I enjoyed it, and you had the star part. You certainly have grown out of all recognition since I saw you last, but I hope I have another chance soon to watch you pitch. Some college is going to be proud of you soon, I can see."

"No chance!" said the youth, frowning almost haughtily. "I'm going to work!"

"Say, that's an idea!" said Morrell looking at him with interest. "I'd like to talk that over with you sometime soon and get your point of view. Just now I've got to hurry to a business appointment, but I'll see you again. Perhaps you don't remember me, but your sister will tell you who I am."

He waved his hand, for Evelyn had started her engine and drowned out further conversation, and they shot away from the curb.

"Who is the perfectly stunning-looking kid?" asked Evelyn Avery languidly. "One of your former caddies?"

And back on the sidewalk Donald Deane, known among his compatriots as "Donnie" Deane, stood glaring after the fast disappearing car.

"Now what the dickens was that hand-painted girl doing down our respectable street? That was Keith Morrell, wasn't it? Beats all how quick she can hunt 'em out the minute they land in town. Like molasses to the fly! What was he doing here?" He turned and gave his sister a searching look. "Come to borrow a key to get into his house or something?"

"No," said Daphne, watching the distance with a puzzled look in her eyes. "I gathered that he came down to meet his agent, something about a tenant or a possible buyer for the property."

"Good night!" said her brother with dismay in his voice. "Seems sort of awful, doesn't it, after all the way Mother made up fairy tales about the place, to have it pass out of the family that way. Still, I suppose it's what we've got to expect."

"Yes," said Daphne. "It probably looks old-fashioned and uninteresting to one who has spent several years abroad. But, of course, if he had really been the radiant loyal youth we pictured him to be--or rather Mother pictured, we believed--he couldn't do it! He'd have to keep the place for old association's sake."

"Well, he probably isn't what we thought he was!" said Don, frowning heavily and with a sigh of disillusionment. "I wish he'd stayed away. I hate like the dickens to lose a hero. There aren't so many these days! Mother made him out a sort of Sir Galahad, and I've about found out there aren't any more of them, so I hate to see him go."

Daphne laughed.

"It doesn't necessarily mean that he hasn't a fine character, you know, if he has to sell his property. Besides, it may be awfully hard for him to come back to the old home now his father and mother are gone."

Don shook his head.

"I couldn't do it!" he said firmly. "Not if I had to starve to keep it. Look at those lines! Look at those great columns, look at the curve of the porch and the arch of the mullioned window!"

Daphne laughed.

"There's more to it than lines," she said. "You've got architecture on the brain just now, but there's a certain character to that old house that makes it lovely, even if the lines weren't right. There's a family life that was lived there, that I feel somehow will live on in memories. I know it will in mine. Of course, Mother idealized it for us. I've been realizing that for some time. Yet there was something real about it that has grown into our lives, yours and mine, and perhaps the other children's, too, that can never die. Come on, Donnie, let's forget it. We can't do anything about it, and it's not for us to worry about. But I'm glad he liked your playing. Wasn't it nice of him to say so?"

She caught her brother's big hand and nestled her fingers into it affectionately, and together they went into the gate and up the steps of the pleasant white house behind the high hedge that was their home.

Chapter 3

Keith Morrell, as he stepped into the car and took his seat beside Evelyn Avery, had a distinct sense of loss, as if something pleasant that he was about to grasp had been ruthlessly torn from him. He hadn't time to analyze this impression and understand just what it meant. He didn't exactly connect it with Daphne Deane, the almost unknown girl out of a past that had not been conscious of her at all. He simply felt that something sweet and tender connected with his boyhood had touched him and given him a longing for things that were no more, made him almost wonder if such an atmosphere was still upon the earth somewhere.

But there was not time to reason about it. Evelyn Avery was very much in the present, and most insistent.

"Honestly, Keith," she said, as earnestly as a girl with such red lips was able to speak, "I'm in a horrible jam and I'm appealing to you to help me out. It's a matter of life and death so to speak, and I know you won't fail me. You were always so gallant toward anyone in trouble!"

She looked at him with daring black eyes into which she could, on occasion, put an essence of wistfulness that seemed almost real.

"You see, it's this way." She lowered her voice till her words took on the nature of a confidence. "Cousin Nada is staying with us. You remember Nada Beach who spent a winter once with us and went to school with me? Sort of a highflier, you know. Mother quite disapproves of her now, she's so much worse than she used to be. And she has a friend staying in the city whom she's crazy about, and as soon as she finds out that one of the men can't come to the dinner she'll do her best to get him asked. She's already suggested it to Mother in case someone fails. And it happens he used to be engaged to one of my guests and jilted her, treated her scandalously, and I simply couldn't bring them together at my house! You can see that. And I can't explain, either. I promised I would never tell anyone. I'm sure you will see what a jam I'm in and come to the rescue."

Keith Morrell tried to explain how necessary it was that he get back to New York at once, but Evelyn overcame all his arguments. He simply must help her out, and she would see that he got the midnight train from the city if that was absolutely necessary.

They had reached the agent's house by this time, and the young man, made to feel exceedingly selfish if he did not yield, gave reluctant consent.

"I'm not dressed for a formal dinner," he said as he got out, brightening at the thought of a real excuse at last. "You know, I didn't bring a suitcase with me."

"Oh, we're not formal," laughed Evelyn. "Anything goes in this town this time of year. Besides, I'll tell them I grabbed you from the train and compelled you to come in. Or, if you don't like that, my brother Bronson will lend you something. He has dinner coats galore. Though you're quite all right as you are."

"All right, I'll come!" he said as gracefully as he could.

"I'll wait for you," beamed Evelyn. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!"

And no protest could stir her from this decision.

He went into the agent's house feeling that he was caught in a trap, and it was all his own fault.