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Page 17
"Hello, Florrie," Norton was saying quietly. "I have brought a caller
for your mother. Miss Engle, Miss Page."
"How do you do, Miss Page?" Florrie replied, regaining her poise and
giving one of her hands to each of the callers, the abandon of her
first appearance gone in a flash to be replaced by a vague hint of
stiffness. "Mama will be so glad to see you. Do come in."
She turned and led the way down the wide, deep hall and into the
living-room, a chamber which boldly defied one to remember that he was
still upon the rim of the desert. In one swift glance the newcomer to
San Juan was offered a picture in which the tall, carelessly clad form
of the sheriff became incongruous; she wondered that he remained at his
ease as he so obviously did. Yonder was a grand piano, a silver chased
vase upon a wall bracket over it holding three long-stemmed, red roses;
a heavy, massive-topped table strewn comfortably and invitingly with
books and magazines; an exquisite rug and one painting upon the far
wall, an original seascape suggestive of Waugh at his best; excellent
leather-upholstered chairs luxuriously inviting, and at once homelike
and rich. Just rising from one of these chairs drawn up to the table
reading-lamp, a book still in his hand, was Mr. Engle, while Mrs.
Engle, as fair as her daughter, just beginning to grow stout in
lavendar, came forward smilingly.
"Back again, Roddy?" She gave him a plump hand, patted his lean brown
fingers after her motherly fashion, and came to where the girl had
stopped just within the door.
"Virginia Page, aren't you? As if any one in the world would have to
tell me who _you_ were! You are your mother all over, child; did you
know it? Oh, kiss me, kiss me, my dear, for your mother's sake, and
save your hand-shakes for strangers."
Virginia, taken utterly by surprise as Mrs. Engle's arms closed warmly
about her, grew rosy with pleasure; the dreary loneliness of a long day
was gone with a kiss and a hug.
"I didn't know . . . ." she began haltingly, only to be cut short by
Mrs. Engle crying to her husband:
"It's Virginia Page, John. Wouldn't you have known her anywhere?"
John Engle, courteous, urbane, a pleasant-featured man with grave,
kindly eyes and a rather large, firm-lipped mouth nodded to Norton and
gave Virginia his hand cordially.
"I must be satisfied with a hand-shake, Miss Page," he said in a deep,
pleasant voice, "but I refuse to be a mere stranger. 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. She did not care to come here like
the proverbial poor relation.
"You are very kind," she said quietly, her lips smiling while her eyes
were grave. "But I don't want you to feel that I have been building on
the fact of kinship; I just wanted to be friends if you liked me, not
because you felt it your duty. . . ."
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