We are immensely
glad to have you with us. . . . Mother, can't you see we have most
thoroughly mystified her; swooping down on her like this without giving
her an inkling of how and why we expected her?"
Roderick Norton and Florrie Engle had drawn a little apart; Virginia,
with her back to them during the greeting of Mrs. and Mr. Engle, had no
way of knowing whether the withdrawal had been by mutually spontaneous
desire or whether the initiative had been the sheriff's or Miss
Engle's. Not that it mattered or concerned her in any slightest
particular.
In her hand was the note of introduction she had brought from Mrs. Seth
Morgan; evidently both its services and those of Roderick Norton might
be dispensed with in the matter of her being presented.
"Of course," Mrs. Engle was saying. An arm about the girl's slim
waist, she drew her to a big leather couch. "Marian never does things
by halves, my dear; you know that, don't you? That's a letter she gave
you for me? Well, she wrote me another, so I know all about you. And,
if you are willing to accept the relationship with out-of-the-world
folks, we're sort of cousins!"
Virginia Page flushed vividly. She had known all along that her mother
had been a distant relative of Mrs. Engle, but she had had no desire,
no thought of employing that very faint tie as an argument for being
accepted by the banker's family.
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