Free Beauty for Ashes by Grace Livingston Hill

all that she did, I’m ashamed.”
    “Times have changed,” said her father sharply. “You were not required to do so much. Your circumstances were different. If you were back in those times and had the same necessity upon you, I’ll warrant you would do as well.”
    “I wonder,” said Gloria thoughtfully.
    The telegram that Mr. Sutherland had spoken of so lightly without any real idea one would come, arrived over the telephone as they were coming down to breakfast the next morning:
    Y OUR PRESENCE IN OFFICE IMPERATIVE TODAY .
    I MPORTANT NEWS FROM E NGLAND JUST ARRIVED .
    Gloria’s father turned troubled eyes upon her.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ve got to go home at once. I’ll have to fly if I can catch a plane in time. Will you stay here? I can probably return tomorrow or the next day. Or will you go with me? I could send the chauffeur up on the train to bring down the car.”
    Gloria’s eyes took on a look of panic. “Oh, I’d rather not go home—yet!” she pleaded. “Would it be all right for me to stay here a little while longer?” Her eyes sought Mrs. Weatherby’s face, which reassured her.
    “Sure, you’re as welcome as the spring in winter!” exclaimed John Hastings, pulling out his chair from the breakfast table. “And Mr. Sutherland, you’ve time to eat your breakfast.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll drive you down to the airport. There’s a plane that leaves about the time we’ll get there. I’ve gone on it myself.”
    In ten minutes more they were on their way, for Gloria decided to ride down and see her father off into the sky.
    They sat together in the backseat with the Hastings in front.
    “I’m afraid you’re going to be mighty lonesome,” said the father, taking his distracted mind from his business for a glimpse at his daughter.
    “No,” said Gloria, “I’ll be all right. I’ve got some thinking to do while you’re gone, and I found a lot of old books in the parlor bookcase. I’m going to sit in the hammock on the porch and read between thinks.”
    She kept up a cheerful front till he had kissed her and gone, even until the plane was a mere speck in the distance. Then suddenly there descended upon her a sick feeling of desolation. Why had she let him go without her? Why had she not gone along with him?
    And like a great bird of prey, all the burden of her sorrow and the shame of Stan’s death came down upon her terror-stricken soul. How was she going to endure the days without her father?

Chapter 5
    A ll the way back to Afton Gloria was listening to Emily Hastings with her ears, as the kindhearted woman told her who lived here and there and what was what along the road, but her heart was suddenly living over again the tragedy that had come into her life and crying out in horror.
    It was as if her father had been a kind of protection that had been around her, in which she had been able to exist as in a new world, living back in the years of his early life. But now that he was gone, the glamour of this place was gone with him, and it became a foreign atmosphere in which she could not breathe normally. She looked into the far bright sky that had swallowed him up a few minutes before and wished she had gone with him. Going home would not have been any worse than being in a strange world with people who thought they had to entertain her every minute, while all the time she was longing to crawl away in a hole and hide.
    Every detail of that terrible funeral lived itself over hour by hour in her mind as the day crawled through its seemingly endless minutes. Every expression on every face she had seen since Stan’s death passed before her in review. She shrank again from Nance and her bitter words, her covert sneers at herself for caring about that girl. And then her mind leaped to Cousin Joan and Aunt Miranda’s blunt questions. She saw again the cold, unsympathetic glances of those two and knew they were enjoying her discomfiture as if she had been a worm on a