“Oh, no, they are quite safe in a box in my drawer, though they are nothing to bother about, for they do not belong to anything of ours, and both your father and our lawyer said that they fitted no business desk or box of father’s.”
“That may be,” said Lucy, guilelessly, “but Tom Brownell asked me particularly if I would beg you to lend them to him. You see he has a sort of genius for fitting odd numbers together, and finding those ownerless keys as he did, they seem to have fascinated him strangely.”
“Tom Brownell,” mused Brooke; then, becoming in her turn suddenly all on the alert, she continued: “Why, he was that reporter who contradicted the story of father’s feigned illness in the _Daily Forum_, was he not? And pray, where did you stumble over him again?”
“I haven’t stumbled over him—that is, I mean not to any great extent. I wish I had, for he’s a most refreshing person,” answered Lucy, at first surprised into confused utterance and next growing defiant and continuing recklessly: “Didn’t you recognize him as the college friend of Charlie Ashton? Oh, I thought you did! Well, he is, anyway, though he wouldn’t go to Charlie’s red New Year’s tea, even when I begged him; and he doesn’t go to dances or play bridge, for he’s on the jump most of the time with his newspaper work. He’s been to the house a couple of times, with Charlie, of course, and father being at home and unshakable, we four have sat down to a solemn game of genuine whist; and you know yourself that to sit opposite to a youngish man for two whole evenings under such circumstances and not hate him is a proof of remarkable character, and as I can’t be accused of anything of that kind, it lies with him, you see.”
“Did he ask for the keys that night?” said Brooke, with overtransparent innocence, which, however, passed unnoticed.
“No, quite another time, when, having observed my intense interest in cards, he dropped in between assignments (while he was waiting for it to be time to take the speeches at an important corporation dinner, I think) and offered to teach me solitaire; but that was yet more melancholy than the whist, for as he had to look over my shoulder, I couldn’t even gaze at him, so we drifted to casino, which allowed both sight and speech!