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The two men smiled as they went out, as though they were saying to themselves, "Queer little piece to have all that money!" Mr. Gardiner took a great many words to explain to Adelle that her guardians had thought it best "after due consideration" to send her to an excellent boarding-school for young ladies Herndon Hall. He rolled the name with an unction he had learned from his wife.
Next she sent Adelle to the dentist and had her teeth straightened, a painful operation that dragged through several years at great cost of time and money, and resulted finally in a set of regular teeth that looked much like false ones. Having provided for her outside, the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form," and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture.
When at last the girl entered the little hotel salon where he had been cooling his heels for the half-hour, he had a distinct quickening of this latent purpose. Adelle Clark was not at this period, if she ever was, what is usually called a pretty girl. She had grown a little, and now gave the impression of being really tall, which was largely an effect of her skillful dressmaker.
All this Archie tried to make Adelle understand, when unexpectedly she gained a knowledge of his operations in Seaboard. She happened to open some letters from his brokers that came to Archie during his absence letters that clamored for more ready money with which to pay for options that Archie had taken upon the common stock of the new company.
He had had ample time, naturally, to think over the astounding communication Adelle had made to him, though he had come to no clear comprehension of it. A poor man, who for years has longed with all the force of his being for some of the privilege and freedom of wealth, could not be told that a large fortune was rightfully his without rousing scintillating lights in his hungry soul.
The young teacher, who had taken Miss Thompson's place because of a sudden indisposition that attacked the head mistress, had made Adelle uncomfortably aware that something was wrong, but she put down her coolness and unsympathetic silence during their brief journey to the fact that Miss Stevens was a "teacher" and therefore felt "superior," "Rosy," as the older Hall girls called Miss Stevens, was not at all "superior" in her attitude to the girls.
Archie, who had been drinking enough since his game to give free rein to his poor temper, immediately began the attack within hearing of the stone mason. "So this is where you are! I've been looking for you all over the place. Thought you were too tired to go to the polo," he said accusingly. "I only just came up the hill for a little walk," Adelle explained.
Having taken the direct route to London in Adelle's swift car, she had had ample time to change her gown, and now looked specially groomed and ready for the encounter, with keen, knowing green eyes. Closing the door carefully, Miss Comstock turned, looked Adelle over from her hat, which was still slightly tipped, to her ungloved hands. "Well?" she remarked with perceptible irony.
The young banker had had it in mind to see Adelle in any case she had left a sufficiently distinct impression with him for that. There may have revived in his subconsciousness that earlier dream of capturing for himself the constantly expanding Clark estate, although as yet nothing had defined itself positively in his active mind.
"It's a mighty long time since grandfather left Alton more'n fifty years." "Clark's Field has only been put on the market for a little over ten years," Adelle remarked. "They couldn't do it before, as I told you." "But it's been settled now," the mason demurred. "I don't know the law, but it must be queer if the property could hang fire all these years and be growing richer all the time."
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