: The Coast of Chance by Chamberlain Esther Chamberlain Lucia Underwood Clarence F Illustrator - Love stories; Theft Fiction; Mystery fiction

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

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uldn't put it off until she can?"

"I couldn't put it off a moment," Flora ended with a little breathless laugh. "I do so wish you would come down with me this morning, for I must go, and you see I can't go alone."

Mrs. Herrick, sitting there, composed, in her cool, flowing, white and violet gown with the red flowers in her lap, still looked at Flora inquiringly. "But aren't there some women in your party old enough to make it possible and young enough to take pleasure in it?"

Flora shook her head. "Oh, no," she said. Her house of cards was tottering. She could not keep up her brave smiling. She knew her distress must be plain. Indeed, as she looked at Mrs. Herrick she saw the effect of it. Gaiety still looked at her out of that face, but the warmth, the spontaneity were gone; and the steady eyes, if anything so aloof could be suspicious, surely suspected her.

Her heart sank. If only she had told the truth--even so much of it as to say there was something she could not tell. What she had said was unworthy not only of herself but of the end she was so desperately holding out for. Now in the lucid gaze confronting her she knew all her intentions were taking on a dubious color, stained false, like her words, under the dark cloud of her own misrepresentation. Yet they were not false, she knew. Her motives, the end she was struggling for, were as austere as truth itself. She could not give up without one bold stroke to clear them of this accusation.

"Do you think there's anything queer about it?" she faltered.

"Queer?" To Flora's ears that sounded the coldest word she had ever heard. "I hardly think I understand what you mean."

"I mean is it that you think there's more in what I'm asking of you than I have said?" The two looked at each other and before that flat question Mrs. Herrick drew back a little in her chair.

"I have no right to think about it at all," she said.

"Well, there is," Flora insisted. "There's a great deal more. I am sorry. I should have told you, but I was afraid. I don't know why I was afraid of you, except that in this matter I've grown afraid of every one. It's true that there may be people going down--at least, a person. But it isn't, as I let you think it, a house party at all. It's for something, something that I can't do any other way--something," she had a sudden flash of insight, "that, if I could tell you, you would believe in, too."

Mrs. Herrick's look had faded to a mere concentrated attention. "You mean that there is something you wish to do for whoever is going down?"

"Oh, something I must do," Flora insisted.

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