Loud and shrill and shriller and more piercing, from the west wing of the house, overhanging the garden, the sound reached them--an alarum that set Flora's heart to leaping. Startled apart, they listened.
The words came from them simultaneously, and almost at the same instant Flora had started across the lawn. The sight of an aproned maid coming out on the veranda and peering down the garden set her running fleetly.
"It's a telephone for Miss Gilsey," the girl said.
She knew so well the voice she had expected at the other end of the wire that the husky, boyish note which reached her, attenuated by distance, struck her with dismay and disappointment.
"Ella, oh, yes; yes; Ella." What was she saying? Ella was using the telephone as if it were a cabinet for secrets.
"Clara told me you were down there," she was explaining. "I saw her this morning, yes. Well,"--and she could hear Ella draw in her breath--"I'm so relieved! I thought you'd be, too, to know. I _was_ perfectly right. She was after him."
Flora faltered, "After whom?" There flashed through her mind more than one person that, by this time, Clara might possibly be after.
"Why, after papa, of course!" Ella's injured surprise brought her back to the romance of Judge Buller. Her voice rose in sheer bewilderment. "Well?"
Ella's voice rose triumphantly. "I got it out of her myself. I just came right out to her at last. She seemed awfully surprised that I knew; but she owned up to it, and what do you think? I bought her off!"
"Bought her off?" Flora cried. Each fact that Ella brought forth seemed to her more preposterous than the last.
"Why, yes, it's too ridiculous; what do you think she wanted?"
At that question Flora's heart seemed fairly to stand still. That was the very question she had been asking herself for days, and asking in vain.
Ella's voice was coming to her faint as a voice from another world. "She wanted that little, little picture--that picture of the man called Farrell Wand. Don't you remember, papa mentioned it at supper that evening at the club? Isn't it funny she remembered it all this time? Well, she wanted it dreadfully, but Harry wanted it, too, and papa said he had promised it to Harry; but I got it first and gave it to her." Ella's voice ended on a high note of triumph.