We must borrow the money. It's only a little over a year until I'm of age, and then I can pay it all back. Surely we can find somebody to help us out!"

"Ah, my darling, your trust is born of inexperience. People do not lend money without security. There is absolutely no one to whom I can appeal."

Eleanor, sitting on the arm of his chair, suddenly started up.

"I have it!" she cried. "I know who will help us! Captain Phipps! He knows better than any one else what it means to you to have this next year free to finish the play. He will be _glad_ to do it; I know he will."

Mr. Martel looked slightly embarra.s.sed. "As a matter of fact, he has been approached on the subject," he said. "He was most sympathetic and kind, but unfortunately his money is all invested at present."

"Fiddlesticks!" cried Eleanor in a tone so suggestive of her paternal grandmother that Quin smiled. "What difference does it make if it _is_ invested? Let him un-invest it. I am sure I could get him to lend it to _me_, only I would hate awfully to ask him."

Mr. Martel's roving eyes came back to hers hopefully.

"I wonder if you could?" he said, grasping at the proffered straw.

"Perhaps if he understood that _your_ career was at stake, that my disappointment would mean _your_ disappointment, he would make some special effort to a.s.sist us. Will you go to him, child? Will you plead our cause for us?"

Eleanor hesitated but a moment; then she set her lips firmly. "Yes," she said, with a little catch in her voice; "I will. I'll go to him in the morning."

Quin, who had been staring out of the window, deep in thought, turned abruptly to Mr. Martel.

"When do you have to have the money?" he asked.

"By next Wednesday, the first--no, the second of April. The date is burned in my memory."

"You see, there's no time to lose," said Eleanor. "I'd rather die than do it, but I'll ask Harold Phipps to-morrow morning."

"No, you won't," said Quin peremptorily; "I am going to get the money myself."

"But he wouldn't lend it to _you_. You don't understand!"

"Yes, I do. Will you leave the matter with me until Sunday night, Mr.

Martel, and let me see what I can do?"

Quin made the suggestion as calmly as if he had unlimited resources at his disposal. Had the sum been six million dollars instead of six thousand, he would have made the offer just the same. The paramount necessity of the moment was to keep Eleanor Bartlett from borrowing money from a man like Harold Phipps. Mr. Martel's claims were of secondary consideration.

"We might let him try, grandfather," suggested Eleanor. "If he doesn't succeed, there would still be time for me to speak to the Captain."

"But, my boy, where would _you_ turn? What influence could you bring to bear?"

"Well, you'd have to trust me about that," Quin said. "There are more ways than one of raising money, and if you'll leave it to me----"

"I will! I will!" cried Mr. Martel in a burst of confidence. "I shift my burden to your strong young shoulders. For three days I have borne the agony alone. There were special reasons for Ca.s.sius not being told. He is one of the n.o.blest of G.o.d's creatures, but he lacks sentiment. I confess I have too much. These old walls are but brick and mortar to him, but to me they are the custodians of the past. Here I had hoped to sit in the twilight of my life and softly turn the leaves of happy memories. But there! Enough! 'The darkest hour oft precedes the dawn!' I will not despair. In your hands and my darling Eleanor's I leave my fate.

Something tells me that, between you, you will save me! In the mean season not a word, not a syllable to any one. And now let us have some music and banish these unhappy topics."

It was amazing how a gentleman so crushed by fate at five could be in such splendid form by seven. Mr. Martel had insisted upon having a salad and ices for dinner in honor of Eleanor's presence, and he mixed the French dressing with elaborate care, and enlivened the company with a succession of his sprightliest anecdotes.

It was Quinby Graham who was the grave one. He ate his dinner in preoccupied silence, arousing himself to sporadic bursts of merriment only when he caught Eleanor's troubled eyes watching him. Just how he was going to proceed with his colossal undertaking he had not the faintest idea. One wild scheme after another presented itself, only to be discarded as utterly impractical.

Under cover of leaving the dining-room, Eleanor managed to whisper to him:

"Make Ca.s.s let you take me home. I've simply got to talk to you."

But neither Ca.s.s nor Quin was to have the privilege. Mr. Martel announced that he was going to escort her himself. The only crumb of comfort that Quin was able to s.n.a.t.c.h from the wretched evening was when he was helping her on with her coat in the hall.

"When can I see you?" he whispered anxiously.

"I don't know," she whispered back; "every hour's taken."

"What about Sunday afternoon?"

"I've promised to motor out to Anchordale with Aunt Flo and Uncle Ranny to hunt for wild flowers. Think of it! When all this trouble's brewing."

"Anchordale," repeated Quin absently, holding her coat suspended by the collar and one sleeve. "Anchordale! By golly! I've got an idea! Say, I'm going along Sunday. You manage it somehow."

"But I can't manage it! You aren't invited; and, besides----"

"I can't help that--I'm going. What time do you start?"

"Three o'clock. But you can't go, I tell you! They won't understand."

"All ready, Nellie?" called a voice on the stairway; and Papa Claude, with a smile of perfect serenity on his face, bore lightly and consciously down upon them.

CHAPTER 16

During the rushing Easter vacation, Eleanor had seen less of Harold Phipps than Quin had feared. Considering the subliminal state of understanding at which they had arrived in their voluminous letters, it was a little awkward to account for the fact that she had found so little time to devote exclusively to him. They had met at dances and had had interrupted tete-a-tetes in secluded corners, and several stolen interviews in the park; but her duties as hostess to two lively guests had left little time for the exacting demands of platonic friendship. Now that the girls were gone, she had counted on this last Sunday at Uncle Ranny's as a time when she could see Harold under proper conditions and make amends for any seeming neglect.

But when Sunday came, and she found herself seated at Aunt Flo's small, perfectly appointed dinner-table, she found it increasingly difficult to keep her mind upon the brilliant and cynical conversation of her most admired friend. To be sure, they exchanged glances freighted with meaning, and as usual her vanity was touched by the subtle homage of one who apparently regarded the rest of humanity with such cold indifference.

He was the first person, except Papa Claude, who had ever taken her and her ambitions seriously, and she was profoundly grateful. But, notwithstanding the fact that she felt honored and distinguished by his friendship, she sometimes, as now, found it difficult to follow the trend of his conversation.

An hour before she had received an agonized note from her grandfather saying that nothing had been accomplished, and that, unless she could use her influence "in a quarter that should be nameless, all, all would be lost!"

Her dark, brooding eyes swept the table with its profusion of silver and cut gla.s.s, its affectation of candle-light when the world without was a blaze of sunshine. She looked at Uncle Ranny, with his nervous, twitching lips and restless, dissatisfied eyes; at Aunt Flo, delicate, affected, futile; at Harold Phipps, easy, polished, serene. What possible chance would there be of rousing people like that to sympathy for poor, visionary Papa Claude? For three days the dread of having to fulfil her promise had hung over her like a pall. Now that the time was approaching, the mere thought of it made her head hot and her hands cold.

"Cheer up, Nell!" her uncle rallied her. "Don't let your misdeeds crush you. You'll be in high favor again by the time you get back from Baltimore."

"Are you sharing my unpopularity with the family?" asked Harold.

Eleanor confessed that she was. "I've been in disgrace ever since my party," she said. "Did Uncle Ranny tell you the way we shocked the aunties?"

"I did," said Mr. Ranny; "also the way sister Isobel looked when little Kittie Mason shook the shimmy. It's a blessing mother did not see her; I veritably believe she would have spanked her."

"A delicious household," p.r.o.nounced Harold. "What a pity they have banished me. I should so love to put them in a play!"

"But I wouldn't let you!" Eleanor cried, so indignantly that the other three laughed.