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Updated: June 14, 2025
Ostrander, after some consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and, munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl. "MY DEAR WHITING: "It was I who borrowed your car and who ran away with your junk. I am putting my address at the head of this, so that if you want it back you can come and get it.
"No!" said Miss Helen indignantly; "you were not so foolish?" Ostrander laughed. "I'm afraid what you call my folly didn't avail, for they wanted what they saw in my portfolio." "Of course," said Helen.
She might believe in the miracle of a reversal of judgment in the case of a falsely condemned criminal, but not of an Ostrander accepting humiliation, even at the hands of Love. She felt that in justice to this new friendship she should say so. "Do you ask me?" she began. "Then I feel that I must admit to you that the Ostrander pride is proverbial.
She, therefore, answered: "Yes; I have been thinking, and this is the result: You must either explain publicly and quite satisfactorily to the people of this town, the mystery of your long separation from Oliver and the life you have since led in this trebly barred house, or accept the opprobrium of such accusations as we have listened to to-day. There is no middle course, Judge Ostrander.
They both laughed as if some singular restraint had been removed; Helen even forgot the incident of the bread in her relief. Then they compared notes of their experiences, of their different concierges, of their housekeeping, of the cheap stores and the cheaper restaurants of Paris, except one. She told him her name, and learned that his was Philip, or, if she pleased, Major Ostrander.
"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?"
But whatever the mysteries of the place, a greater one awaited them beyond, and presently realising this, they burst with one accord through the second gate into the mass of greenery, which, either from neglect or intention, masked this side of the Ostrander homestead. Never before had they beheld so lawless a growth or a house so completely lost amid vines and shrubbery.
"Perhaps he does not know his folly. Perhaps he thinks because I was thrown aback to-day by those public charges against my son and a string of insults for which no father could be prepared, that I am seriously disturbed over the position into which such unthinking men as himself have pushed Mr. Oliver Ostrander.
"We will not speak his name," broke in Judge Ostrander, assuming a peremptory bearing quite unlike his former one of dignified reserve. "I should like to hear, instead, your explanation of how my son became inveigled into an engagement of which you, if no one else, knew the preposterous nature." "Judge Ostrander, you do right to blame me. I should never have given my consent, never.
Beyond them was the great front door of Colonial style and workmanship, a fine specimen once, but greatly disfigured now by the bolts and bars which had been added to it in satisfaction of the judge's ideas of security. Many years had passed since Judge Ostrander had played the host; but he had not lost a sense of its obligations.
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