Part 5 (1/2)
”Judge Ostrander!”
Next minute they were together in a small room, with the door shut behind them. The energy and decision of this mite of a woman were surprising.
”I was going--to you--in the morning--” she panted in her excitement.
”To apologise,” she respectfully finished.
”Then,” said he, ”it was your child who visited my house to-day?”
She nodded. Her large head was somewhat disproportioned to her short and stocky body. But her glance and manner were not unpleasing. There was a moment of silence which she hastened to break.
”Peggy is very young; it was not her fault. She is so young she doesn't even know where she went. She was found loitering around the bridge--a dangerous place for a child, but we've been very busy all day--and she was found there and taken along by--by the other person. I hope that you will excuse it, sir.”
Was she giving the judge an opportunity to recover from his embarra.s.sment, or was she simply making good her own cause? Whichever impulse animated her, the result was favourable to both. Judge Ostrander lost something of his strained look, and it was no longer difficult for her to meet his eye.
Nevertheless, what he had to say came with a decided abruptness.
”Who is the woman, Mrs. Yardley? That's what I have come to learn, and not to complain of your child.”
The answer struck him very strangely, though he saw nothing to lead him to distrust her candour.
”I don't know, Judge Ostrander. She calls herself Averill, but that doesn't make me sure of her. You wonder that I should keep a lodger about whom I have any doubts, but there are times when Mr. Yardley uses his own judgment, and this is one of the times. The woman pays well and promptly,” she added in a lower tone.
”Her status? Is she maid, wife or widow?”
”Oh, she says she is a widow, and I see every reason to believe her.”
A slight grimness in her manner, the smallest possible edge to her voice, led the judge to remark:
”She's good-looking, I suppose.”
A laugh, short and unmusical but not without a biting humour, broke unexpectedly from the landlady's lips.
”If she is, HE don't know it. He hasn't seen her.”
”Not seen her?”
”No. Her veil was very thick the night she came and she did not lift it as long as he was by. If she had--”
”Well, what?”
”I'm afraid that he wouldn't have exacted as much from her as he did.
She's one of those women--”
”Don't hesitate, Mrs. Yardley.”
”I'm thinking how to put it. Who has her will of your s.e.x, I might say.
Now I'm not.”