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Page 18
"You are the only woman who can," muttered the young man.
The girl still stood in her tracks.
"You said--" she began.
"I know," interrupted the man, "but you won't let me talk
seriously, so I joke. But some day----"
"Oh, look!" cried the girl. "There's Fred."
She ran from him down the road. The young man followed her
slowly, his fists deep in the pockets of the great-coat, and
kicking at the unoffending leaves.
The chauffeur was peering through a double iron gate hung
between square brick posts. The lower hinge of one gate was
broken, and that gate lurched forward leaving an opening. By
the light of the electric torch they could see the beginning
of a driveway, rough and weed-grown, lined with trees of great
age and bulk, and an unkempt lawn, strewn with bushes, and
beyond, in an open place bare of trees and illuminated faintly
by the stars, the shadow of a house, black, silent, and
forbidding.
"That's it," whispered the chauffeur. "I was here before.
The well is over there."
The young man gave a gasp of astonishment.
"Why," he protested, "this is the Carey place! I should say
we WERE lost. We must have left the road an hour ago.
There's not another house within miles." But he made no
movement to enter. "Of all places!" he muttered.
"Well, then," urged the girl briskly, "if there's no other house,
let's tap Mr. Carey's well and get on."
"Do you know who he is?" asked the man.
The girl laughed. "You don't need a letter of introduction to
take a bucket of water, do you?" she said.
"It's Philip Carey's house. He lives here." He spoke in a
whisper, and insistently, as though the information must carry
some special significance. But the girl showed no sign of
enlightenment. "You remember the Carey boys?" he urged.
"They left Harvard the year I entered. They HAD to leave.
They were quite mad. All the Careys have been mad. The boys
were queer even then, and awfully rich. Henry ran away with a
girl from a shoe factory in Brockton and lives in Paris, and
Philip was sent here."
"Sent here?" repeated the girl. Unconsciously her voice also
had sunk to a whisper.
"He has a doctor and a nurse and keepers, and they live here
all the year round. When Fred said there were people
hereabouts, I thought we might strike them for something to
eat, or even to put us up for the night, but, Philip Carey! I
shouldn't fancy----"
"I should think not!" exclaimed the girl.
For, a minute the three stood silent, peering through the iron
bars.
"And the worst of it is," went on the young man irritably, "he
could give us such good things to eat."
"It doesn't look it," said the girl.
"I know," continued the man in the same eager whisper.
"But--who was it was telling me? Some doctor I know who came
down to see him. He said Carey does himself awfully well, has
the house full of bully pictures, and the family plate, and
wonderful collections--things he picked up in the East--gold
ornaments, and jewels, and jade."
"I shouldn't think," said the girl in the same hushed voice,
"they would let him live so far from any neighbors with such
things in the house. Suppose burglars----"
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