Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/115

 them shrewdly from the predatory world to which he belonged—the world that would have destroyed Judge Wales and his fine old benevolence and his unworldly idealism, if Warren had not defended him.

Warren had now to defend the judge's granddaughter. That was how he saw the situation and his duty in it. He had nothing against Pritchard—except that he was a subservient, inoffensive, secretarial valet who would never be anything else. He considered that Pritchard was no man to take care of a gentle girl and protect her children from the dangers of a cruelly competitive social system. If it was she who had given Pritchard the ring—

He first arranged the necessary machinery for finding that out. He removed a paper-fastener from the corner of a typewritten report, put a box of cigars on the edge of his desk-top, and laid the loose sheets of the report on the box. Then he went to his door and called, "Meta!"

She answered from the front room. He returned to his desk and began to gather up some papers. She came to the door and stood there, not quite smiling, but with the happy recollection of an interrupted smile still lingering in her face. She was of the type of dark Southern beauty that matures young, but she was still girlish, and she waited in a girlish attitude, with her hands clasped behind her.

He said, looking for something in his desk: "Tell Fred to bring the car around. I have to go