And so with the entrance into that automobile began still another chapter in Geraldine Melody's life. While they drove through the attractive avenues of the resort and Mrs. Barry pointed out the cottages belonging to well-known people, the young girl was making an effort for her own self-possession. To be alone with the mother of her knight was exciting, and her determination was not to allow any emotion to be observable in her manner. She did not yet know whether she was present as a seamstress or as a guest. She felt that in either case she had been summoned for inspection, for of course Ben had left his mother in no doubt as to his sentiments. Mrs. Barry evinced no embarrassment. Her smooth monologue flowed on without a question. Perhaps she suspected the tumult in the fluttering heart beside her, and was giving the young girl time. At all events, nothing that she said required an answer, and Geraldine obediently looked, unseeing, at every object she pointed out.

The motor rolled across a bridge. "Here you see Keefeport even boasts a little river," said Mrs. Barry. "The young people can enjoy a mild canoe trip as well as their exciting yachting. I am going to stop at my cottage and give a few orders, so long as I am here."

Another five minutes of swift riding brought them to the driveway leading to a cottage placed on a rocky height close to the sea. "We have a rather wonderful view, you see," Mrs. Barry's calm voice went on. "Perhaps you would like to get out and walk about the piazza while I speak with the caretaker."

Geraldine followed her out of the luxurious car, feeling very small and insignificant and resenting the sensation made upon her by the imposing surroundings. She wished herself back with Miss Upton and the cat; but she mounted the steps and stood on the wide porch looking on the jagged rocks beneath. The sea came hissing in among them, flinging up spray and dragging back noisily in the strong wind to make ready for another onslaught. The vast view was superb and suggested all the poems she had ever read about the sea. Mrs. Barry had gone into the house and now came out with the caretakers, a man and wife, with whom she examined the progress of flowers and vines growing in sheltered nooks. Geraldine resolutely shut out memories of her knight. The girls whose summers were spent among these scenes were his friends, and among them his mother had doubtless selected some fastidious maiden who had never encountered disgraceful moments.

"I belong to myself," thought Geraldine proudly, forcing back some stinging drops, salt as the vast waters before her. "I don't need anybody, I don't." She fought down again the memory of her lover's embraces. Ever afterward she remembered those few minutes alone on the piazza at Rockcrest, overwhelmed by the sensation of contrast between herself on sufferance in her cheap raiment, and the indications all about her of the opposite extreme of luxury—remembered those moments as affording her a poignant unhappiness.

"I won't ask you to come into the cottage," said Mrs. Barry, approaching at the close of her interview. "The rugs haven't been unrolled yet, and it is all in disorder. Isn't that a superb show of sky and sea, and never twice alike?"

"Superb," echoed Geraldine.

"You are shivering," said her hostess. "It is many degrees colder here than over in the sheltered place where Miss Upton has her shop. I have quite finished. Let us go back."

They went down to the car and were soon speeding toward Keefe. Beside Lamson sat the imposing hatbox. Somehow it added to Geraldine's unhappiness, as if jeering at her for an effort to appear what she was not.

She must talk. Her regal companion would suspect her wretchedness.

"What are you going to make your curtains of, Mrs. Barry?" she asked.

The commonplace proved a most felicitous question. The lady described material, took her measurements out of her purse, and discussed ruffles and tucks and described location and size of windows, during which talk the young girl was able to throw off the spell that had held her mute.

She did not suspect how her companion was listening with discriminating ears to her speech, and the very tones of her voice, and watching with discriminating eyes her manner and expression. Ben had told his mother to take her magnifying glass and she had begun to use it.

When the motor entered the home grounds at Keefe, Geraldine resisted the associations of her last arrival there. A faint mist of apple blossoms still clung in spots to the orchard.

Lamson carried her poor little effects and the hateful, grandiose hatbox into the living-room where one day she had regained her scattered senses.

"You may take these things up to the blue room," Mrs. Barry said to the maid who appeared, "and you will give Miss Melody any assistance she requires."

Geraldine followed the girl upstairs to the charming room assigned to her. Every dainty convenience was within its walls. The pleasant maid's manner was all alacrity. It was safe to believe that she knew more than her mistress about Geraldine, and the attitude toward her of the young master of the house. The guest looked about her and recalled her room at the Carder farm, the patchwork quilt at the Upton Emporium, and her last shakedown under the eaves of the Keefeport shell house.

Between the filmy white curtains at these windows she could see the rosy vestiges of the orchard bloom. The furniture of the room was apparently ivory, the bathroom silver and porcelain. Azure and white coloring were in all the decorations. The maid was unpacking her boxes. Geraldine was ashamed of her own mortification in allowing her to see the contents.

"I think I'd rather do that myself," she said hastily.

"Some ladies do," returned the girl.

"Especially," rejoined Geraldine, "when they are not used to being waited upon!"

She accompanied this with a look of such frank sweetness that she counted one more victim to her charms.

"She isn't one bit stuck-up," the maid reported downstairs, "and I never saw such hair and eyes in all my life."

"They've done for Mr. Ben all right," remarked the chauffeur. "I guess Madam thought it was about time to get acquainted."

When Geraldine came downstairs an hour later, she was arrayed in the cheap little green-and-white house dress which had been one of her purchases with Miss Upton, and was intended for summer use in the shop. As she wandered into the living-room, Mrs. Barry walking on the piazza perceived her through the long, open windows and came to join her.

"Did you find everything quite comfortable?" she asked solicitously.

"Perfectly," replied Geraldine. "It is quite wonderful after one has been leading a camping-out life."

Mrs. Barry continued to approve her intonation and manner.

"You certainly have passed through strange vicissitudes," she replied. "Sometime you must tell me your story-book adventures."

"They are not very pleasant reminiscences," said Geraldine.

"Very well, then, you shall not be made to rehearse them."

A maid appeared and announced dinner.

Geraldine's repressed excitement took away her appetite for the perfectly served repast. Mrs. Barry's regal personality seemed to pervade the whole establishment. One could not imagine any detail venturing to go wrong; any food to be underdone or overdone; any servant to venture to make trouble. The machinery of the household moved on oiled wheels. A delicate cleanliness, quietness, order, pervaded the home and all its surroundings.

Mrs. Barry made no comment on her guest's lack of appetite. When they had finished, she led her out to the porch where their coffee was served.

"Now, isn't this an improvement on Rockcrest?" she asked as they sat listening to the sleepy, closing evening songs of the thrushes. "Imagine trying to drink our coffee on that piazza where we were this afternoon. There is a more sheltered portion, a part that I have enclosed in glass; but my son likes the front to be all open to the elements."

"It is very beautiful here," said Geraldine. "It must be hard for you to tear yourself away even later in the season."

"That is what does it," returned Mrs. Barry, waving her hand toward a large thermometer affixed to one of the columns. "When you come down some morning and find the mercury trying to go over the top, you are ready to flit where there are no great trees to seem to hold in the air." The speaker paused, regarding the young girl for a moment in silence. An appreciation of her had been growing ever since they left Keefeport, and now for the first time she allowed herself a pleasure in Geraldine's beauty. It was wonderful camouflage if it was nothing more. "Do you enjoy music, Miss Melody?" she asked suddenly.

The girl gave her a faint smile.

"Foolish question, isn't it?" she added. "I usually play awhile in the evening." She set down her cup and rose.

Geraldine rose also, looked pleased and eager.

"I'm so glad," she replied. "I have no accomplishments myself."

A vague memory of having heard something about a cruel stepmother assailed the hostess. She smiled kindly at the girl. "Some people have gifts instead," she said. "Stay here. I will go in and try to give you some happy thoughts."

Geraldine sank back in her chair, her eyes fixed on the graceful elms and the vivid streaks across a sunset sky.

As the strains of Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms came through the open window it necessitated some, effort not to have too happy thoughts. The skillful musician modulated from one number to another, and Geraldine, all ignorant in her art-starved life, of what she was hearing, gave herself up to the loveliness of sight and sound.

When Mrs. Barry reappeared, the girl's eyelids were red, and as she started up to meet her she put out her hands impulsively, and the musician laughed a little as she accepted their grasp, well pleased with the eloquent speechlessness.

When Geraldine waked the next morning her first vague thought was that she must shake off sleep and help Mrs. Carder. That troubling sense faded into another, also troubling. She was to spend a whole day, perhaps several whole days, with the rather fearful splendor of the mother of her knight. That in itself would not be so bad, Mrs. Barry had shown a kind intention, but the knight himself might return at any hour. Why had she come? Yet how refuse when her previous hostess had so energetically thrown her out of the nest?

The sun had gone behind clouds. She rose, closed her windows, and made her toilet, then descended to the hall where Mrs. Barry met her with a pleasant greeting and they went in to breakfast.

"We're going to catch some rain, it seems," she said. "It is nice Miss Upton is moved and settled."

"Yes," rejoined Geraldine, "and curtain-making can go on just as well in the rain."

"You had a good sleep, I'm sure," said the hostess, regarding her freshness.

"Yes, I am ready and full of energy to begin," said the girl. "I feel that I am going to do the work quickly and go back sooner than Miss Upton expects. It is nice for them to have some young hands and feet to call upon."

"I hope you don't feel in haste," returned Mrs. Barry politely. She was so courteous, so gracious, so powerful, and such leagues away from her, Geraldine longed to get at the work, and know what to do with her hands and her eyes.

Very soon the curtain material was produced. Mrs. Barry had the sewing machine moved into the living-room where there was plenty of space for the billowy white stuff, and they began their measuring.

The air was sultry preceding the storm, and a distant rumbling of thunder was heard. The house door was left open as well as the long French windows which gave upon the piazza.

The guest had slept late, delaying the breakfast hour, and the two had been working at the curtains only a short time when a man, strange to Mrs. Barry, walked into the living-room. Approaching on the footpath to the house, Geraldine only had been visible to him through the window. He believed her to be alone in the room, and the house door standing open he had dispensed with the formality of ringing and walked in.

Something in the wildness of the intruder's look startled the hostess and she pressed a button in the wall.

She saw Geraldine's face blanch and her eyes dilate with terror as the man approached her, but no sound escaped her lips. The stranger put out his hand. The girl shrank back. The queen of Keefe stepped forward.

"What do you mean by this?" she exclaimed sternly. "What do you wish?"

The man turned and faced her. "I've come on important business with this girl. My name is Rufus Carder—you may have heard of it. Geraldine Melody belongs to me. Her father gave her to me." He turned back quickly to the girl, for Mrs. Barry's face warned him that his time was short.

"You may have gone away against your will, Gerrie," he said. "It ain't too late to save your father. Come back with me now and there won't be a word said. Refuse to come, and to-morrow all his pals shall know what he was."

Geraldine straightened her slight body. Terror was in every line of her delicate face, but Mrs. Barry saw her control it. The details of the stories she had heard came back to her vividly. She realized the suffering and the fate from which her boy had delivered the captive. Geraldine was exquisite to look at now as she faced her jailer. That ethereal quality which was hers gave her spirituelle face a wonderful appeal.

"Ben was right," thought Mrs. Barry with a thrill of pride. "She is a thoroughbred."

"Mr. Carder," she said, approaching still nearer, her peremptory tone forcing him to turn his long, twitching face toward her, "Miss Melody is about to marry my son. He will attend to any business you may have with her."

"Huh! That's it, is it? You don't look like the kind of woman who will enjoy having a forger in the family."

The girl's eyes closed under the stab.

"Geraldine, I should like you to go upstairs, dear," said Mrs. Barry gently. The girl moved slowly toward the door, Carder's eyes following her full of a fierce, baffled hunger.

He turned on Mrs. Barry with the ugliest look she had ever beheld in a human countenance.

"Your son has stolen my boy, too, my servant, and I've come after him," he said. "The law'll teach that fellow whether he can take other people's property. That boy was bound to me out o' the asylum and I won't stand such impudence, I warn you. Where is he? Where is Pete? I've got a few things to teach him." The furious man was breathing heavily.

"I understand that you have taught him a few things already," replied Mrs. Barry, her eyes as steady as her voice. "I think, as you say, the law may take a hand in your affairs. My son and Pete have gone to the city now, and I fancy it is on your business."

"What business?" ejaculated Carder, fumbling his hat, his rage appearing to feel a check.

"That I don't know, really. I was not interested; but I seem to remember hearing my son use your name.—Lamson, is that you?" she added in the same tone.

The chauffeur was standing at the door. "Yes, Mrs. Barry, you rang."

"Show this man the way to the station, Lamson."

Rufus Carder gave her one parting, vindictive look, and strode to the door.

"Out of my way!" he said savagely, as he pushed by the chauffeur and proceeded out of doors and down the path like one in haste. Mrs. Barry believed he was, indeed, in haste and driven by fear.

She proceeded upstairs to Geraldine's room and found the girl pacing the floor. She paused and gazed at her hostess, her eyes dry and bright. Mrs. Barry approached and took her in her arms. At the affectionate embrace a sob rose in the girl's throat.

"When he says it, it seems true again," she said brokenly. "Ben says it is probably a lie, but I don't know, I don't know."

"That wretch declaring it makes it likely to be untrue. Ben tells me you have lost your father, and if no proceedings were taken against him in his lifetime, I should not fear now. My son hints at disreputable things committed by this man, and if he can prove them, which he has gone to do, and Pete promises that they can do, then the culprit will not want to draw attention to himself by starting any scandal, not even for the joy of revenge on you. Forget it all, Geraldine." The addition was made so tenderly that the girl's desperate composure gave way and she trembled in the enfolding arms.

Mrs. Barry loved her for struggling not to weep. She kissed her cheek as she gently released her. "You are safe, and beloved, and entering a new world. You are young to have endured so many sorrows, but youth is elastic and the future is bright."

Geraldine's breast heaved, she bit her lip, and no eyes ever expressed more than the speaking orbs into which the queen of Keefe was looking.

"I know all that you are thinking," said Mrs. Barry. "I know all that you would like to say. Don't try now. You have had enough excitement. I have always wanted a daughter. I hope you will love me, too."

She kissed the girl again, on the lips this time, and there was fervor in the return.

The next day Mrs. Barry telephoned to half a dozen of her son's girl friends and invited them to come to a sewing-bee and help with the curtains for her cottage. She said that Miss Melody was visiting her and that she would like them to know her. So they all came, wild with curiosity to see the girl that their own Ben had kidnapped and who was going to make him forget them; and Geraldine won them all by her modesty and naturalness. The fact that Ben's mother had accepted her gave her courage in the face of this bevy who had grown up with her lover from childhood. They were too uncertain of the exact status of affairs between the beautiful stranger and their old friend to speak openly of him to her, but almost every reminiscence or subject of which they talked led up to Ben. Of course, some among the six pairs of eyes leveled at Geraldine had a green tinge, and there were some girlish heartaches; and when the chattering flock had had their tea and cakes and left for home, there were certain ones who discussed the impossibility of there being anything serious in the wind.

Ben was not even at home. Would he have gone away for an indefinite time as his mother said he had done, if he was as engrossed in the girl as gossip had said? Had not that very gossip proceeded from the humble walls of Miss Upton's shop where the stranger had apparently found her level? The Barrys had always held such a fine position, etc., etc., etc.

"Oh, but," said Adele Hastings, "that girl is a lady. Every movement and word proves it."

"Besides," added another maiden, "her being humble wouldn't have anything to do with it. It never has, from the time of King Cophetua on."

"Well," put in the poor little girl with the greenest eyes of all, "I think it is very significant that Ben has gone away. You notice Mrs. Barry didn't invite her to come until he had gone, and that common Mrs. Whipp called her by her first name. I heard her myself."

On the whole, Geraldine had scored, and really, although she was at peace with the whole world, the fact of Mrs. Barry's approval dwarfed every other opinion and event; for it meant that no longer need she set up a mental warning and barrier against thoughts of her lover.

A few days afterward Ben telephoned to have Lamson at the station at a certain hour, and he and Pete returned from their strange quest. Little he dreamed of the stir that telephone message caused in his home.

All the way out to Keefe on the train he was planning interviews with his mother and wondering whether the seed he had dropped into her mind before leaving had borne fruit. He had promised Geraldine not to coerce her, and the girl's pride he knew would not submit to opposing his mother's wish. Therefore, when Mrs. Barry walked out on the piazza to meet him, it was a very serious son that she encountered.

"What is the matter, Benny?" she asked as she kissed him. "Have you failed?"

"No, indeed. I have succeeded triumphantly. I've got Carder in a box, and, believe me, he won't try to lift up the lid and let anybody see him."

"He was here soon after you left," said Mrs. Barry calmly.

Ben looked surprised and alert.

"What did he want?"

"Pete; and he was going to have him or put you in the lock-up. Also he wanted Miss Melody. He's a wretch, Ben. I'm glad you went after him."

"He'll not trouble her any more," said the young fellow, walking into the house with his mother clinging to his arm. "Carder is going to have ample leisure to think over the game he has played. Isn't it a strange satire of fate that should make insignificant little Pete the boomerang to turn back and floor him? Pete's an ideal witness. He sees what he sees and he knows what he knows, and nothing can shake him because he doesn't know anything else. Great Scott! when I located the facts at that hospital and linked them together and brought an accusation against Carder, it was like opening a door to a swarm of hornets. He has made so many people hate him that when the timid ones found it would be safe to loosen up, they were ready to fall upon him and sting him to death. He's safe to get a long sentence, and it will be time enough when he comes out to talk to him about Mr. Melody's debts—if Geraldine wishes it."

Ben looked around suddenly at his mother.

"Have you been to Keefeport to see Geraldine?"

She returned his gaze smiling, and feigned to tremble. "I'm so glad I have, Ben. You look so severe."

"And did you take that magnifying glass?"

"Yes."

"Wasn't I right?" asked Ben with some relief.

"You were. I like the girl. I feel we are going to be friends."

"Well, then, how about her being a clerk for Miss Upton?"

Ben asked the question frowning, and flung himself down beside his mother where she had seated herself on a divan. Why couldn't her blood run as fast as his? Why must she be so cold and deliberate at a crucial time? "Going to be friends!" What an utterly inadequate speech!

"I want to talk to you about that," rejoined his mother. "Will you please go into my study and bring me a letter you'll find on the table?"

Without a word, and still with the dissatisfied line in his forehead, the young man rose and moved away toward the closed door of the sanctum.

He opened it and there was a moment of dead silence. Mrs. Barry could visualize Geraldine as she looked standing there, radiantly expectant, mischievously blissful. The door slammed, and all was silence.

The mother laughed softly over the bit of sewing she had picked up. For a minute she could not see very plainly, but she wiped her eyes and it passed.