Her departure with Grimshaw a few minutes later was decorous. Miss Frink was at the door.
“Hugh will want to say good-bye to you,” she said. “Won’t you call him, Grim?”
“Oh, no,” interrupted Adèle. “He is at his studies. Don’t disturb him. We shall always be meeting.”
Miss Frink stood on the veranda and watched the motor drive away. She drew a long breath of the sweet air. Whatever should come now, Adèle was gone from the house. The relief of it!
In the motor, the two, sitting side by side, exchanged a mutual regard.
“It was very, very sweet of you to write me that note,” said Grimshaw.
“There has been some trouble between you and Miss Frink,” he pursued.
Adèle lifted her eyebrows and gave a little laugh. “Yes. Mr. Ogden kindly tipped her off that I was merely the step-grandchild of her beloved chum.”
“Yes. Complicated, isn’t it?—and not worth while trying to understand. It served her as well as anything else as an excuse to get rid of me.”
Grimshaw frowned. He was angry with his employer for sending this lovely creature away from the luxurious home, the Steinway grand, and himself; but Miss Frink’s novel gentleness in their interview chained his always cautious tongue; then, if Adèle had really deliberately misrepresented facts, he knew how that must have offended Miss Frink’s rigorous principles.
“You will find the change to the simplicity of the Cooper home rather hard, Adèle.”
“No harder than your discovery that henceforward you are second-best in your home,” she returned; but her voice was sympathetic, even tender. “Perhaps you will have to go away.”
“No; she doesn’t want me to leave,” he answered dispiritedly. He turned again suddenly to his companion: “You must tell me, Adèle, how I can help you. How about this teaching business?”
She smiled at him, her sweetest. “Leonard, can you see me trudging around in all weathers and teaching youngsters how to play scales?”
“Hu—somebody said it was like harnessing a blooded horse to a coal wagon to make me teach.”
Color rushed to Grimshaw’s face. “Adèle, it can’t be! You know I—”
She interrupted him with a laugh. “Look out! You nearly ran into that Mr. and Mrs. Rube in their light wagon. Now, I’ll talk to the motor man if he doesn’t look at me.” Grimshaw kept eyes ahead, and she continued. “I never had the dimmest idea of teaching. I knew something would turn up, and it has. Did you notice Mr. Goldstein draw me aside for a few minutes last night?”