Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/117

Rh But her persecutor exhibited no signs of taking his departure. Instead, he stepped closer, seeming to suffer some mysterious inward deliquescence as he studied her with a sympathetic if slightly watery eye.

"My dear girl," he softly intoned, with one hand stretched out in her direction, "as a friend of your family—and I trust I may regard myself as such—but more as a friend of your own, I am compelled to say that I think you are taking the wrong course in this. I know whereof I speak. You are too young, too innocent, too—er—too sweet, to be dragged without knowing what you have to face into the brutalities and humiliations of litigation like this. Indeed, my child, I think too much of you, of your"

"Good afternoon," interrupted Teddie with that rising inflection which can make two innocent words so unmistakably dismissive. For Teddie was worried. For a moment or two, indeed, she felt terribly afraid that he was going to kiss her. And during the last day or so, she remembered,