The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest Part 14

The dusk was deepening. After a time footsteps behind them could be heard. It was as if some one were following them.

A screech owl called and startled her; Tory had a sudden attack of nerves; running ahead a few yards, she stumbled. The footsteps were coming nearer.

Memory Frean put an arm about her.

"Stand still, Tory. Let us wait here and see who is approaching."

CHAPTER XI

OUT OF THE PAST

The stranger was a middle-aged man with iron-gray hair. He was carrying his hat in his hand and enjoying the beauty and fragrance of the late evening in the woods.

As Tory rushed toward him, Miss Frean stepped back into a deeper shadow.

The newcomer was Tory's uncle, Mr. Richard Fenton.

"How stupid of me to have been frightened!" she exclaimed. "I have been taking supper with Miss Frean and she is walking back to camp with me. You were coming to camp to see us?"

Mr. Fenton agreed, walking forward to speak to Memory Frean. Except for an occasional meeting upon the streets of Westhaven, and one or two brief conversations with regard to the Girl Scout camp in Beechwood Forest, they had not seen each other in many years.

To-night in the depth of the woods, with Tory walking between them, they talked as if neither of them recalled any past intimacy.

"I have been a little worried about you, Tory," Mr. Fenton said finally. "You have not been in town to see me in a number of days. I thought it was agreed that we were to see each other once a week."

Tory nodded.

"Yes, I have missed you dreadfully, but I have been so busy. I thought if you became very lonely you would come and find me," she announced, with the familiarity of a delightful intimacy.

By and by when Miss Frean and Mr. Fenton continued talking, the barrier between them increasing, Tory scarcely listened, thinking their conversation not particularly entertaining.

They were merely discussing the weather and the scenery.

In another quarter of an hour the lights of the camp showed nearby.

Darkness had not completely descended. Outdoors one could still see one's way.

The chief lights appeared inside the evergreen cabin, while in front of the door stood a large automobile.

Fearing that Kara had grown unexpectedly worse, Tory darted away from her companions and into the cabin.

The car she saw was not Dr. McClain's.

Entering the room, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, she found it filled with people.

Kara sat in the center in her wheeled chair. She looked pale but excited and interested.

Three visitors were standing near her. They were Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Hammond and the little girl, Lucy Martin, whom they had adopted some months ago.

In the years at the old Gray House on the hill in Westhaven Lucy had been Kara's special charge.

If Tory had been fascinated by the little girl's extraordinary beauty in the past, she was more startled to-night. The room was lighted only by candles and a single large lamp under a yellow shade.

Lucy wore a pale yellow dress of some filmy, soft material and a large hat circled with a wreath of flowers.

She had removed her hat and held it as one would a large basket. Her dark hair made a stiff aureole about her delicately cut face with its pointed chin, large brilliantly black eyes and full red lips.

Then Tory was both startled and repelled by the younger girl's expression.

She was staring at Kara with no suggestion of sympathy or affection; instead, she looked shocked and frightened and even disdainful.

Kara was extending her hands toward the little girl with more animation and pleasure than Tory had seen her reveal since her accident.

And actually, with a faint shudder, Lucy was drawing away.

An impulse to seize the little girl by the shoulders and forcibly thrust her out of the evergreen cabin a.s.sailed Tory.

She moved forward. In the meantime Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, becoming aware of Lucy's behavior, were endeavoring to conceal her rudeness.

"Kara, Lucy has been insisting each day that we bring her to see you.

We did not know at first that you had gone from the Gray House.

Afterwards Mr. Hammond was away for a short time and we were waiting for him," Mrs. Hammond remarked, speaking hurriedly but with extreme graciousness.

She was a pretty, exquisitely dressed woman of about thirty years with light brown hair and eyes. She appeared an agreeable society woman but without any especial force of character. Evidently if she cared a great deal for Lucy, the little girl in time would have small difficulty in having her own way.

This would not be equally true with Mr. Hammond.

At present he was divided by annoyance with his adopted daughter and a kind of puzzled curiosity.

He was staring about the gay room filled with girls and then at the figure in the wheeled chair.

Kara appeared to be interested in no one save Lucy.

Now as the child shrank away from her, her thin hands dropped in her lap, her face looked whiter and her gray eyes with the heavy dark lashes grew sadder and more wistful.

A little murmur, not actually voiced and yet capable of being heard, ran through the room.

This time Lucy must have understood the antagonism among the group of Girl Scouts that her manner had created.

At one time, and only a few months before, Kara had been everything to her, sister and nurse and friend. A few months of wealth and she seemed completely spoiled.

"You have many friends, Kara, but if there is anything Mr. Hammond and I could possibly do for you, you have only to let us know," Mrs.

Hammond suggested at this moment, not very tactfully.

"You are very kind, but there is nothing to be done," Kara returned coldly.