One morning Jemingham, who had seemed preoccupied, said to Frank:
"I wonder if I can ask you--" He paused and looked doubtfully at Frank.
"Of course. Why, you can even touch me if you want to."
"I wonder if your--if Mrs. Burt would invite Mrs. Ashton Welles to dinner?"
"That way you could meet Mrs. Welles, and--"
"You mean," said Frank, trying to look like Sherlock Holmes, "I could ask her about your--about her sister?"
Jerningham jumped to his feet in consternation.
"You can't ask her that until you know her so well that you can take a friend's liberty. Promise me you won't ask her until I myself tell you that you may! Promise!"
There was in his eyes a look of such intensity that young Wolfe was startled.
"You must make friends with her first. She must learn to like you--"
Francis Wolfe smiled a trifle fatuously. It was merely boyish. A little more, however, would have made the smile ungentlemanly. Jerningham continued, very earnestly:
"Listen, lad. She will have to do more than merely like you--she will have to trust you. And the only way to make a young and pretty woman trust a _young_ and not unattractive man is by having that man never, never, never fail in respect of her. He may be in love with her, or he may only pretend to be in love with her; but he must act as if he regarded her with such awe that he dare not make direct love to her. Do you get it?"
"There is no but. She must first like you, which is not difficult; and then she must trust you as a true friend, which is, to say the least, a slower matter. Be a brother to her. Do you think you like me well enough to do this for me now?"
Jerningham looked at young Wolfe steadily--a man's look.
Frank said: "I'll do it gladly. And my sisters--"
"They must never know about--about Naida!" interrupted Jerningham, hastily.
"Of course not. But they will do anything for me--and for you, too!"
That is the true story of how it came about that Mrs. Ashton Welles was taken up by the Jack Burts; and how she met Francis Wolfe; and how Mrs. Stimson invited Mr. and Mrs. Ashton Welles to one of her old-fashioned and tiresome but famous and very formal dinners; and how Frank again took in Mrs. Welles. Thereafter they met often. At some of these dinners they met Jerningham.