Leaving her box below stairs where her secretary and Mrs. Lumbard could if they wished whet their curiosity on its shape and the Ross-Graham label, she went in to lunch with her bonnet on.
The others of her family dutifully took their places. Adèle’s ivory tints were somewhat flushed. She knew from Miss Damon that she had scored a triumph with her invisible audience, and it was a certainty that that meant credit with Miss Frink. She cast an occasional unforgiving glance at the secretary who kept to his usual safe programme of speaking when he was spoken to.
Miss Frink addressed him now. “Here is a letter from John Ogden to our patient,” she said.
Adèle’s brown eyes suddenly glanced up, startled. Still, there were probably hundreds of John Ogdens in the world.
“Yes. I do feel mortified not to have written him as soon as I received his letter of introduction. He will think I’m a savage when he learns why he hasn’t heard from his young friend.” The speaker regarded the letter beside her plate. “He addressed it in care of the store. Mr. Stanwood was headed for Ross Graham’s, you know; and they had no more idea _there_ who Hugh Stanwood was than the man in the moon.”
“That is a little embarrassing,” returned Grimshaw circumspectly. “Is there anything I can do about it?”
“No,” returned Miss Frink good-naturedly, “since you didn’t stand over me and make me answer that letter.”
“You never showed me the letter of introduction,” said the secretary, “or I might have ventured—”
“Oh, you would have ventured,” returned Miss Frink, “though I don’t think, Grim, that your slogan is ‘Nothing venture, nothing have.’”
“My duty is to protect you, dear lady,” declared Leonard, unsmiling.
“Oh, I know that, and you’re a good boy,” said Miss Frink carelessly. She set down her tea-cup. “Well, I’ll go upstairs and take my medicine. I hope both the boy and Mr. Ogden will forgive me. Will you both excuse me, please?”
She left the room. Adèle longed to comment on the interesting-looking box she had passed in the hall, but she was still too angry with Grimshaw to address him.
“Miss Frink is in remarkably good spirits,” he observed; and because Adèle knew she could irritate him, she responded:
“Yes. She must have succeeded in finding something very fine for her protégé.”