The proposition was too general for the girl to embrace, but the simplicity of her answer was far from spoiling it. "My reason is awfully good."
Mrs. Gracedew did it complete justice. "I see. An older friend."
Cora listened as at a warning sound; yet she had by this time practically let herself go, and it took but Mrs. Gracedew's extended encouraging hand, which she quickly seized, to bring the whole thing out. "I've been trying this hour, in my terrible need of advice, to tell you about him!" It came in a small clear torrent, a soft tumble-out of sincerity. "After we parted—you and I—at the station, he suddenly turned up there, and I took a little quiet walk with him which gave you time to get here before me and of which my father is in a state of ignorance that I don't know whether to regard as desirable or dreadful."
Mrs. Gracedew, attentive and wise, might have been, for her face, the old family solicitor. "You want me then to inform your father?" It was a wonderful intonation.
Poor Cora, for that matter too, might suddenly have become under this touch the prodigal with a list of debts. She seemed an instant to look out
