The dog bounded jealously across the road at sight of the car and up to the minister with a wag and a glad grin of recognition then gave a friendly snuff to the girl’s hands, looked up, and smiled a dog greeting with open cordiality.

“What a dear dog!” exclaimed the girl. “What a beauty!” She was bending over him with the enthusiasm of a true dog lover, and Blink sauntered idly over and leaned against the car, pleased at her demonstration, eyeing her furtively, appraisingly. “May I introduce his master Barry Lincoln, otherwise ‘Blink’ to his intimate friends?” said Bannard.

The girl lifted frank eyes to Blink’s embarrassed ones and liked him at once. She put out her hand warmly and grasped his rough shy one as she might have done to an older man, and the boy’s heart warmed toward her.

“What a very interesting name!” she said cheerfully, “If I stay here long I am sure I shall try to qualify to use it. Is the dog’s name Link?”

The boy grinned.

“He’s Buddie,” he admitted shyly.

“Well, Buddie, I hope I meet you again,” she said, with another flash of warmth in her eyes for the boy whose own were now filled with open admiration. She passed into the white gate, and Blink looked after her with a new stirring in his heart, call it loyalty if you like; Blink had no idea what it was. He lifted his glance to the minister’s smile and found the same thing in his friend’s eyes, and an unspoken covenant flashed between them to protect her if ever she needed their protection. Blink would have expressed it in words: “She’s a good sport.” Blink and the dog stood by the car, Buddie wagging his plume of a tail vigorously, and watched the man and the girl go up the flower-boarded walk to the big mullioned door.

From inside the library Patterson Greeves watched the two figures arrive.

Joe Quinn watched from the shelter of the smoke bush close to the lilac hedge where he was digging about the tulip beds, and Molly the cook, having seen the car from her pantry window, had hurried up to the front hall window on pretext of looking for the housekeeper and was gazing down curiously on the two, wondering what next was coming to the old house.

At the extreme dark end of the back hall, Anne Truesdale, in hiding, could glimpse the minister’s hat through the side lights of the hall door and a snatch now and then of the lady’s feather, and she stood with hand involuntarily on her heart, waiting, not daring to come out till “that huzzy,” as she thought of Athalie, had gone upstairs. But Athalie, one foot on the lower step, had turned back to look at her irate father, perfectly aware that he was disturbed by the sight of something out of the window, and herself caught a glimpse of the minister returning. Ah! So that was why she was being sent upstairs! A good-looking young man and she bundled away! This was no part of Miss Athalie’s plan of life, so she whirled around on the lowest step and waited also.

Then the fine old knocker reverberated through the long silent house. Patterson Greeves retreated hastily in panic to his library, and Anne Truesdale, chained to duty by an inexorable conscience, was forced to come out and open the door.

The stage was set, and the actors came on as the door was timidly opened by Anne.

Chapter 7

Athalie Greeves came noiselessly forward to the library door, a look of expectancy on her round pink face, a cat-and-cream expression about her lips. As noiselessly Patterson Greeves forced himself to step to the doorway again, a heavy frown upon his brow, a look of extreme suffering—one would almost have said dread—in his eyes. Anne with frightened eyes peered bravely round the door, and the two on the wide flagging stones of the porch waited, the girl with wistful, eager, yet courageous eyes, ready for either love or renunciation, whichever the indications showed; the minister hovering tall above her, a look almost of defiance on his strong face, an air of championship and protection about him.

Nobody spoke for the first instant, which seemed almost like an eternity. The two girls saw each other first, for Patterson Greeves stood within the library door.

The girl on the steps was dressed in a blue-gray tweed suit, well fitted and tailored, and a trim little soft blue straw hat with a sharp black wing piquantly stabbing the folds of the straw. Her hair was golden in the sunlight and as she stood seemed like a halo around her face. The light of the morning was in her eyes as she peered into the shadows of the hall then suddenly grayed with chill and reserve as she met the eyes of the other girl.

Athalie’s plump face grew suddenly hard, her lips drooped, her eyes glared, her head went slightly forward with a look of stealth and jealousy, and her hand went instinctively out to catch the door frame. Her whole form seemed to crouch with a catlike motion, and green lights danced in her eyes, though they might have been reflected from her dress. The minister lifted amazed eyes and saw her. He put out an involuntary hand of protection toward the girl by his side.

Then Patterson Greeves stepped into the hall sternly, his back to Athalie, and came toward the door. He looked and stopped short, his hands suddenly stretched out and then drawn back to his eyes with a quick hysterical motion as if he would brush a fantasm from his vision. “Alice!” came from his lips in a low, broken tone of agony, as if the torture and mistakes of the years were summed up in the word.

During that instant while he stood with his fingers pressing his eyes Athalie began stealthily to step back and across the hall to the wide arched doorway of the stately old parlor that ran the depth of the house on the other side of the hall from the library. Her eyes, wide and round, were fixed on her father. An instant later there was only left the swaying of the old silk cord tassel that held the heavy maroon curtains of the doorway.

Then the girl on the doorstep came to vivid life and stepped up quickly toward her father with eager light in her face.

“Father!” She said the word with a world of reverence and stored-up love, tender, caressing sound, so genuine, so wistful, it could not fail to reach the heart of any man who was not utterly dead to his fatherhood. They were clasping hands now, looking earnestly, eagerly into one another’s eyes.

Anne Truesdale, behind the door, averting her loyal gaze; the minister with anxious attitude upon the doorstep; the alien daughter behind the heavy curtain, one eye applied to a loophole close to the door frame, were breathless witnesses of the moment. Then Patterson Greeves drew his daughter within the library door with the one word “Come,” and closed the door behind them. The minister came to himself, murmuring that he would return or telephone later, and departed. Anne Truesdale closed the front door, and with an anxious glance as she tiptoed by the library door, vanished up the stairs. A soft stirring at the end of the back hall where Molly listened, a cautiously closed latch, and all was still.

Athalie in the big dim parlor held her breath, listening, peered cautiously and then drew back and gazed around her with a leisurely air.

The room was wide and very long, with windows heavily curtained in the old-fashioned stately way. The ceilings high, the walls hung with dim old portraits in heavy gilt frames. The floor was covered with heavy velvet carpet, rich and thick in scrolls and roses, bright with care, though the years had passed many times over it.